Ever take a job with responsibilities you know nothing about?

[Anonymous]

Have an opportunity for an executive level job where some teams of people will report to me that are responsible for things I know nothing about like PR? I keep thinking I should pass because I don't want to fail but I also think this does happen and people do succeed.

[Anonymous]

Our organization recently went through a re-org, and the Senior VP now oversees marketing, PR, fundraising, donor relations and development, event planning, etc. She is not an expert in all areas, and I'd say there are some areas where she has very little experience. It is her job to make sure the departments are functioning as a unit, to cast the tone and vision, etc. She is a really incredible leader and communicator, knows the right questions to ask, etc, to keep everything on track. I'm guess many executive level jobs are like this. If you are a leader and a visionary and have good management skills, I would consider it!

[Anonymous]

I agree with PP. If your main responsibility is to manage and you are good at that, it should not matter that you have expertise in every area as long as you have good people working for you. I worked with a manager like this and she was great. Her skill was managing people and she did it well. She depended on her team to know their areas and ensured that we had access to the training and resources that we needed to get our jobs done.

[Anonymous]

I don't know if Alan Mulally posts here, but he did pretty good moving from Boeing to Ford. BTW, any fool can handle PR. Go for it.