Article: Monday, 12 May 2025
There’s a little-recognised role in business that helps organisations successfully transition from one state to another. Research has identified these people as ‘navigators’ and suggests that understanding their unique abilities could be key to helping businesses and other organisations thrive during uncertain times. An academic paper by Juergen Scherer, lecturer at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) describes the role and chartacterisatics of navigators, and makes recommendations for making the most of their skills for change management. Navigators in boundary-spanning roles: Insights from 12 interviews was recently published in the academic journal Leader to Leader.
Increasingly complex and fluid business conditions require organisations to find their bearings, seek the right direction, and steer towards their targets in the market. It’s the people in leadership positions – whether formally or informally – who do this. They are the navigators who proactively initiate, coordinate and finalise projects, capitalise on opportunities and mitigate risks, says Juergen Scherer, who is also a business consultant and coach.
Juergen says he was curious about the gap between organisations calling out for someone to help with navigation while lacking understanding about how this role functions and why it’s necessary. “I was particularly intrigued by the fact that these navigators do exist in many organisations, but they are often hidden in plain sight and their role is barely understood. These roles often come with high complexity, significant autonomy, and serious responsibility. Navigators thrive in these positions because they can see the big picture while managing the human and practical elements of change.”
Juergen interviewed 12 navigators that he had either got to know during his 30-year career in business, or who had met and worked with his business partners.
He identified some common characteristics. Navigators are people who have the ability to sense the need for a transition, can secure the human resources required to make the transition, and lead the change project to its conclusion. They have boundary-spanning roles, i.e., jobs that sit at the interface between an organisation and its external partners, especially when the relationship is highly complex and the person taking the role has autonomy and responsibility.
For them to perform in the role, they have a unique combination of ‘head, heart and hands’ says Juergen; this means cognitive, emotional and executional skills. As a business coach, he also identified that they should get appropriate recognition, training and development – as well as performance management – to be able to flourish within an organisation. Their training should develop all three skill areas, he said.
He found that navigators are less eager to grow themselves vertically into the hierarchy; instead, they prefer to develop horizontally or laterally in a way that broadens their organisational perspectives.
“They opt for boundary-spanning roles that have leadership potential rather than roles with managerial responsibilities that operate within silos. In their performance reviews, navigators are less motivated by feedback for past performance, but keen in feedforward conversations – conversations that anticipate results or effects – about how to provide better support for future assignments. They require different forms of recognition that are not necessarily money, and their training should cover the range of skills that support their roles
Navigators are important in disicplines and places other than businesses. Organisations dealing with pedagogy, sociology or psychology; organisations that are for-profit and not-for-profit; and governmental, political or institutional organisations. Navigators’ ‘head, heart and hands’ capabilities of sensing needs, securing resources and making the shift are all equally relevant.
It’s the responsibility of leaders to implement a navigator programme, and it’s a task that should not be delegated, Juergen recommends. “I introduced ‘acceleration teams’ during my role as President EMEA for Mauser Packaging,” he comments. “These are cross-functional, self-managed teams that identify a particular opportunity or challenge for the organisation – this is the sensing function – and then develop a project plan and team charter to secure the resources, and they make the shift happen by executing the change project to completion.”
“It is high time for organisations to recognise, enable, promote and reward navigators who help organisations to navigate through change processes,” he said, and recommended that organisations make good use of the navigators among their employees.
Read Juergen Scherer’s research paper Navigators in boundary-spanning roles: Insights from 12 interviews in the academic journal Leader to Leader.
Science Communication and Media Officer
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) is one of Europe’s top-ranked business schools. RSM provides ground-breaking research and education furthering excellence in all aspects of management and is based in the international port city of Rotterdam – a vital nexus of business, logistics and trade. RSM’s primary focus is on developing business leaders with international careers who can become a force for positive change by carrying their innovative mindset into a sustainable future. Our first-class range of bachelor, master, MBA, PhD and executive programmes encourage them to become to become critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinkers and doers.
