You Got The Promotion! Now What?

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One of the most profound transformations I witness in my coaching practice is when executives make the leap from being functional experts to true business leaders.

I've had the privilege of watching this transformation unfold with Melanie Naranjo, the brilliant Chief People Officer at Ethena. I first met Melanie when I joined Ethena as an advisor, and I've been consistently impressed by her willingness to challenge her own thinking and evolve as a leader. I remember when she made the transition to CPO, and we wrestled with her struggle of falling on the comfortable default of “doing more of the same” vs making fundamental shifts in how to approach work at an executive level.

This month, I've invited Melanie to share her story with you. Her insights illuminate the challenges, mindset shifts, and practical approaches that can help any executive navigate this often invisible transformation.

Hi, Everyone! I'm Melanie. 

A few years ago, someone asked me to spell out the difference between a VP of People and a CPO.

I didn't have an answer. The difference felt negligible to me. As a VP, you're already an expert in leading your function. As a C-level executive, you're... what? More of an expert in your function?

Fast forward 4 years, and I can confidently say there is, in fact, a meaningful distinction:

As an executive, you're a business leader first, and a function leader second. Your number one priority is to empower the success of the business.

As a VP, I saw my job as building the most innovative, cutting-edge People strategies. I took great pride in experimenting with initiatives that broke the mold: 

• Our $100 bonding perk allowed each employee to expense up to $100 each month towards hanging out with each other. It was a low-lift, controlled expense that provided an autonomous, flexible, and inclusive approach for all employees. And yes, it was a huge success. 

• Our No Negotiation Policy removed negotiation from the recruitment process to save time, improve transparency, and ensure we paid people based on their ability to do the job, not their negotiation skills.

I'm still incredibly proud of these strategies. But here's the thing: I didn't have "overall business success" in mind when I pushed these initiatives forward. I started with what I thought was best for my function, then retroactively found ways to justify it to leadership.

I could get away with it at the VP level—the initiatives passed because our leaders were thinking at a higher level, and they could see the throughline to overall business outcomes. 

But at the C-level, being function-first instead of business-first creates a dangerous disconnect between your priorities and the company's needs.

Thinking Like a CEO 

The common advice to "think like a CEO" sounds straightforward enough. But embodying this mindset is far more challenging than understanding it intellectually.

After all, you've spent years—perhaps decades—honing your functional expertise. Those muscles are well-defined and instinctive. Now you're being asked to develop an entirely different set of muscles and retrain your instincts. That's no small task.

Consider this scenario: Your company has an unexpected $20,000 available in the budget. Your department desperately needs those funds for a critical initiative. But so does another department, and their initiative might drive more immediate revenue.

My initial gut reaction, developed over years spent as a functional leader, might have been to advocate fiercely for my team's needs. To get territorial. To compete.

But I’ve learned to overrule that instinct in favor of what the business-at-large needs.

Exercising this new muscle has been a challenge, but the right path becomes clearer once I focus on why the business-first mindset really matters: 

• Prevents friction and division, transforming competition for limited resources into collaboration toward shared goals (save your competitive spirit for actual competitors, not colleagues)

• Dismantles silos that slow growth and weaken performance (remember: what good is a stellar department within a failing company?)

• Elevates your role to a strategic partner who helps the company adapt to change, manage risk, and build long-term value, expanding your influence and creating opportunities to grow as a leader with company-wide impact

These effects can be insidious. Habitually prioritizing your function erodes the success of the company little by little. So, my approach now is fundamentally different: I start with the business goals and design my team's initiatives to most effectively drive the success of the business. It ensures my work is relevant, impactful, and valuable at the highest level.

So, How Do You Know If You’re Doing It Right?

I'm a big fan of keeping it simple with easy-to-reference pulse checks.

If you're not sure where you are along the path of thinking like a business leader, consider these prompts:

• Do you often find yourself having to "make the business case" for your initiatives and proposals? (If you do, this is likely an indicator that you aren't starting with the business goals when designing your function's goals.)

• Do you understand how the various parts of the business work? Are you able to follow along in meetings outside your function?

• Do you have a general sense of the company vitals (burn rate, ARR) and your company's product differentiators at any given time?

If any of these have you grimacing with a lump in your stomach, don't fret.

While I can't promise you'll become an expert overnight, I can assure you all these skills are learnable over time.

A few tips:

• Get a grasp on core business drivers and metrics. Make these your guiding principles in everything that you do.

• Sit in on as many team meetings as you can: Product, Sales, Marketing, Finance — the more, the better. Understand what are these teams are optimizing for and why.

• Even if you've been at the company for years like me, ask questions. Have your CFO or Head of RevOps walk you through your company vitals and the variables that impact the business. Have your Head of Product dive into the challenges of the Product Roadmap. Ask your Head of Sales what their newest priorities and pain points are.

Whatever you do: Don't panic. The learning curve is steep, but the more reps you get in, the easier it will get.

It’s Jess Again… 

I want to thank Melanie for sharing her journey. The transition she describes—from functional expert to business leader—is one of the most challenging yet critical shifts executives must make.

It requires new skills and a fundamental rewiring of how you see your role and your relationship to the organization. As Melanie illustrated, this shift doesn't happen overnight, but it's essential for your effectiveness as an executive.

It connects directly to what we discussed in last month's newsletter about managing sideways. When you prioritize the overall business above your functional area, you build trust with your executive peers—perhaps the most valuable currency in leadership.

In my work, I've seen how the trust equation plays out in peer relationships. The denominator of this equation is self-orientation—how much you're perceived to be focused on yourself versus others or the collective goal. 

When your peers believe you're making decisions based solely on what benefits your department, trust erodes quickly. When you have allies optimizing for the same things, you get better results because you have more perspective, more sharing, and more people thinking about the solution set. 

This trust deficit doesn't just affect your relationships—it impacts your ability to influence, to collaborate effectively, and ultimately to drive business results. The business-first mindset Melanie describes moves executives from self-orientation (or department-orientation), building the foundation of trust that makes everything else possible.

For more Melanie, follow her on LinkedIn or listen to her candid conversations with Ethena CEO Roxanne Petraeus on their podcast “We’re Not Recording.”

Keep reading, keep leading,
Jess.

P.S. Did this issue resonate with you? Hit reply—I read every response 

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Ready to elevate your executive mindset? Schedule a free discovery session today to discuss your specific leadership challenges and explore how we can work together.

For more, follow me on LinkedIn or check out my website.

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