Business vs. Delivery Mindset

A lot of us, especially in the IT/ ITes industry start our careers working in a delivery set-up. As you do well, the scale of your responsibilities increases from managing your own work to that of a colleague, to a small team, and then a big team and then managing large client accounts. For a select few, excelling at delivery roles offers an opportunity to transition towards larger business centric roles. Yet not everyone is ready when they get this opportunity.

The basic difference between leading a delivery team and leading a business team is that in the former you are accountable for the output and in the latter you are accountable for the outcome.

Delivery leadership is about ensuring you can consistently deliver high quality output. As long as the output is great, that is where your accountability stops. It requires focusing on your team and understanding your clients. It's like a chef who is accountable to make an awesome cup of tea. His focus needs to be on selecting and using the ingredients wisely, to concoct the tea just as how his patron likes it.

Business leadership is about deciphering what is the business outcome you want to achieve. In that a great output is table stakes, for it is necessary for business growth/ renewals but is not a sufficient condition for the business to grow or even survive. It requires taking bets on what customer segments to focus on, how to divy up the limited resources, managing stakeholders & investors, etc. etc. Continuing the example of the Chef, here you are accountable for decisions like whether you will sell tea or cakes, when will the shop be open, how many chefs to hire, what does success look like (xx number of tea cup sold/ day, revenue growth,) etc.

One is not better than the other. It's just that they require different skill sets. Most of these skill sets can be learnt and honed with practice. Yet, if there is a common thread between people who successfully made this delivery leadership to business leadership transition, it is the mindset that they have showcased in their work even in their early careers.

Delivery Mindset
"I am accountable for delivering great a product/ output"

Business Mindset
"I am accountable for creating significant value or outcomes (you can define it in many ways) for my stakeholders. Delivering a great output is table stakes but not the only end game".