I experienced a really interesting conversation on a flight recently. When I say experience, I mean overheard! The guy sat next to me was visited by his boss mid (long-haul) flight and during a relatively normal business catch up he was asked a key question; "so what do you want to do next?" My neighbour had no answer.
I was shocked. A wave of empathy washed over me as I wanted to run to his rescue and help him articulate an answer! I share this story as I believe it is key that we each have an answer ready. You never know when this question is going to come. You might expect it in an annual review but it could come in the coffee line, in the elevator or indeed at 35,000 feet! The nature of the workplace means we all run fast and leaders don't (unfortunately) always have the time to think about individual development plans so individuals have to own their career planning themselves and be ready for the "What's next?" question.
This conversation made me think some more about the career path for a travel manager or travel buyer. When I first arrived at AstraZeneca, I was asked "what do you want to do next?" My answer was something along the lines of "I've only just arrived, give me a chance to deliver this role first."
Fast forward eight years and I can share I've had the same stock answer from the majority of people I've ever asked this question to, whether as a leader, a colleague or a mentor. Luckily I had an amazing leader at AstraZeneca who didn't give up on me and kept pushing me to think what next? With my passion for people a move into HR was suggested, or with my background at Cisco and Yahoo I can handle a high level tech discussion so maybe IT was my next step? I kept saying no, I love travel, I want to keep doing more of the same.
My leader helped me see the importance of knowing 'what next' and how limiting 'more of the same' could be, so I could prepare myself, get the experience I needed, maybe take on additional projects to show my readiness for that next role. I was very lucky to work for a leadership team who believed having an alumni of great people inside and outside of AZ was a good thing, so they even helped me plan my next step into the supplier world! (Think about it. They got 100% dedication from me during the six years I was there as I knew they had my personal interests as their first priority. Very clever.)
For anyone in a client-side travel role who wants to progress and climb the proverbial career ladder, loving travel and wanting to stay in travel could be a chink in your career path armour. Unless you're ready to take the leap across into supplier side, like I did.
I look across some high profile travel managers who have shown excellent leadership such as Mike Tangney at Google, Marc Zuber at Nestlé, Carlos Almendros at Cisco and Karen Hutchings at EY. Each has taken a very different path and each is very successful.
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A mentor can help you move in the right direction ©runeer/iStock
Mike has made his mark at Google and in business travel by delivering the ground breaking 'open booking' strategy and then delegating down through his team to now take on a broader role in the business. Marc has worked in a variety of roles across various departments at Nestlé; he is an excellent all-round general manager. Carlos has now moved on to a Procure 2 Pay role within Cisco (the next step on but I can only feel a sense of loss for losing his forward thinking brain from our sector). Karen at EY has taken a different path and has moved around various companies in travel leadership roles, so keeps the variety and career progression by moving across different sectors and companies.
So why does this even happen? I remember one of my team once telling me they wanted to be a 'CTO' (chief travel officer). It did make me smile and I was very careful managing their expectations that, in my opinion, there will never be a C level role for the travel client side. In fact, however passionate I am about this sector, I have consistently had to tell my client-side teams we are purely an enabler. It's our job to keep the business moving.
My aim as a corporate buyer was to make travel a non-issue to ensure our employees could focus on the core business at hand. If anyone tells you any different I'd love to hear their reasons. This fundamental state causes travel professionals an issue. The corporate side role will always be viewed as an enabling function and will therefore report into a larger group, eg procurement, HR, corporate services. So to move upwards you would need to plan a move into one of those roles. But is this the only choice? Here I try to articulate some of the career path options I see for the corporate travel manager/buyer.
1. The travel buyer butterfly - Travel is your thing and you would be happy moving from company to company. You enjoy the learnings moving from sector to sector brings such as how different it is to run a travel programme in a tech firm than in a financial services company.
2. The loyal learner - You love your company and all it stands for so why would you leave? Instead you can move around across departments using the network you've built during your travel role to open up possibilities within other departments. Maybe championing a well-being programme in HR, supporting corporate IT projects or indeed a move into sales, as I've seen very able 'selling buyers' do before.
3. The cross category career - You've earned your buyer badges across the travel category but realise you can progress your career by working across other spend categories such as professional services, packaging (sounds dull, it's not!), IT etc. This broadens your opportunities and takes you out of the travel niche.
4. The supplier switch - I would love to see more buyers switch 'sides' and become a supplier. It would bring greater understanding across the value chain and in turn expedite progress. It's not the easiest move but for me it was my only option having reached the self-imposed ceiling of a global travel director role. If I wanted to move up I had to move out. My move to a multinational travel management company was a huge education and truly took my knowledge bank to a whole new level.
5. The stayer - Of course another alternative is to stay in your same travel manager role for years. Career planning is a very personal decision and I know many who have stayed in the same role for years and have enjoyed many new personal challenges as their company and the industry evolves. However, I do feel in some case this can be limiting to personal, supplier and company progress.
I hope I've inspired you to think some more about your own career. One final piece of advice…if you're struggling with your career path, I recommend finding yourself a mentor to help work through the options, so you're 100% ready with an answer to the very important question "what next?" wherever, whenever or from whoever that may come.