Career transition from System/Network engineering to Manager/Director Role

jah8887

As a lead System/Network engineer, I was recently been promoted to a managerial or possible director role in my IT department since we had departures.    I am looking for guidance or suggestions of how to approach this career transition.  From what I know, I will need to learn financial budgeting, strategic planning and more.  Is there any courses I can take to help get me on the right path?

JDMurray

Because you need to understand budgeting, planning, strategy, leadership, etc. from the perspective of your employer, I would look first at what resources your own organization has to train you using its real business data, scenarios, and operational environment. The ability to cross-train in other departments is ideal, but few business orgs are setup for rotating new managers through various business functions to gain experience. (This would actually take years to do properly.)

If your business is not setup at all to train you, consider an MBA degree that is specialized in your type of business role (e.g., IT, healthcare, marketing, finance, etc.). This way you get generalized and specialized business management knowledge and experience and another credential for your resume and LinkedIn page. Hopefully your employer will subsidize your educational goals too.