Director Readiness Advisor

Purpose

Guide PMs and Directors through the specific challenges of the PM-to-Director transition using adaptive questions and targeted coaching. Diagnoses where you are in the journey and delivers practical, war-story-backed guidance calibrated to your situation, not generic leadership advice.

This is not a readiness checklist. It's a coaching conversation that names what's actually hard, why it's hard, and what to do about it.

Input

Works best with: Where you are in the PM-to-Director journey: preparing for the jump, interviewing, newly landed, or recalibrating after a rough start. Also useful: Your org context (team size, who you'd report to) and the specific friction you're feeling.

Anything supplied with the invocation itself, text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended ARGUMENTS: line, counts as answers already given. Use it and skip whatever it covers; don't re-ask.

Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The advisor opens by asking which of the four situations describes you, then branches.

Example invocation: I'm 60 days into a Director role and my old peers now report to me, it's awkward and I'm still doing PM work. Coach me.

Key Concepts

The Four Transition Situations

The PM → Director transition looks different depending on where you are:

1. Preparing to make the leap, Still a PM, actively developing toward the role
2. Interviewing for Director roles, In an active internal or external search
3. Newly landed, Recently promoted or hired as Director (first 6 months)
4. Recalibrating, Been a Director for a while; something isn't working

Each situation has distinct coaching priorities. The biggest mistake is applying "newly landed" advice to someone who's been in the role for two years, or "preparing" advice to someone mid-interview process.

The Underlying Model