Q.  I was promoted into a director role in September. I always thought that I wanted to be at this level, but I am miserable. My boss keeps telling me he wants to “be strategic” but I can’t get him to tell me what he and the rest of the leadership team expects of me and my group.  What advice do you have for me?

A.  Many very successful managers struggle when they first make the move to director and one of the biggest challenges they often face is that fact that they no longer get clear direction from above.

Managers are typically responsible for executing plans. For the most part, expectations and measures tend to be communicated from above. The manager’s responsibility becomes organizing the team and the work to accomplish specific objectives.

All of this changes at the director level. According to Tom Turney, founder of T Squared Leadership, “At some point, employees who move up the ladder to management have to shift from execution to creating the plan and being strategic.”

What does it mean to be strategic? In my experience, executives want their directors to:
1.    Understand the organization’s overall priorities
2.    Proactively suggest what their team should focus on in order to move the whole organization forward

Doing this successfully means being able to read between the lines and understand what is important without waiting to be told what to do.

As Scott Eblin writes in The Next Level, you need to spend time with your senior executives up front to ensure that you understand what success means to them. Remember though, that at is level, you aren’t likely to get specific goals and metrics. Listen for priorities, for key organization-wide metrics, and major barriers or obstacles. Absorb what you hear. Discuss it with your managers. Then come back to your executive with specific plans about what your group or function will do and how you will do it.   And be prepared to make adjustments based on input from your executive team at this point.

One director I interviewed was frustrated that he wasn’t getting clear direction from his boss. He followed the process I outlined above and came up with five strategic goals for his department. His boss “shot two of them down” and told him that two others were really most critical. The director was upset – feeling as if he had wasted a lot of time. He said, “Why didn’t she just tell me what she wanted in the first place.” My response? Because figuring out how to close the gap between overall organizational strategy and your department’s work is your job.”  

As quality expert, Juran, pointed out decades ago, top management speaks the language of finance, whereas the front line speaks their particular technical language.  The managers in the middle are often counted on to bridge the gap and translate between the two.

So, if you are in a director-level role, stop waiting for direction from above and start setting the direction yourself.