I went from architect to director, partly because I recognized I was already doing a lot of what a director should have been (we didn't have a Director of Techn

I went from architect to director, partly because I recognized I was already doing a lot of what a director should have been (we didn't have a Director of Technology at the marketing agency I worked for). Here's what I intuitively understood that made it easier for me to get the job and be broadly successful: - You're the public face of your group, you're essentially responsible for championing your team to those in the organization as a whole. - You need to be listening to those other groups and thinking about what your group can do to help - Aggregate all those things you hear at a more global level and think about how you can gather interested parties (from all areas) to solve them Specific example, we weren't closing as many software development projects because our sales teams didn't know what we could do. First, I worked with some of the sales guys to create some training to help them pick up on the signs that "this might be a dev project" and "this could be worth a lot of money". Second, I got in on a lot of RFPs and proposals to see what was being asked of us. I refactored the initial training to target the patterns we were seeing. Third, and this may not be applicable, I actually became a part of proposals and pitches. Nobody was bringing the tech folks in. Here's what I didn't think about/had to work on: - HR and management strategy at a much higher level. Knowing impending cuts are coming, the knots that come with having to be part of firing or laying off people. - Instead of keeping a smaller number of people that you work with closely happy and interested, you're trying to keep them AND their employees interested - Managing managers is totally different than non-managers - Budgeting strategy. Fighting to get training dollars, head count, new hardware (that wasn't really an issue), etc. It's kind of a zero sum game and politics will absolutely come in to play here. Maybe more so than anywhere else. - So many meetings. - It's a lot harder to feel like you've accomplished anything at the end of the day. You need to start measuring by weeks and months. - So many meetings, again. - You need to get people interested in your ideas for change. You really have to sell them in a new way to every person you talk to. - You better have ideas for change.