Long-standing head of department – what next?

Michael, a highly successful and long-standing head of department, acknowledged as an expert and leading authority in his field, wanted to clarify objectives for the next stage of his career and develop a strategy to achieve them. Having considered a number of options including various permutations of roles both within the organisation and elsewhere and discussed them frankly in the light of his assessed strengths, motivations and interests, a clear series of priorities were identified together with the steps required to achieve them. We continued working up to the implementation stage and the career analysis resulted in his taking up a new organisation-wide senior management role, a corresponding adjustment in other work and two developing opportunities for the longer term outside the organisation.