Kobe Bryant’s agent, Rob Pelinka, will soon be joining the Los Angeles Lakers as the team’s general manager, according to reports. The media have been questioning whether Pelinka will be a good fit, seeing how he has no front office experience, and all of his contract negotiations have always been from the player’s side, not the team’s side.
To me, this situation parallels the public relations and marketing professions. For the former, it’s not uncommon for reporters to jump to PR, since they’ve worked with PR practitioners through media relations efforts. For the latter, media sales reps will hop over to marketing departments, since they’ve worked with marketers through media buys.
In both cases, I’m sure the people who have transitioned jobs would agree that they only saw one portion of the responsibilities their new job entails, and that there’s a bit to learn. For example, in their new marketing role, the media sales rep may have to learn about brand management, market research and tradeshow marketing.
I think that Pelinka will succeed for the same reason that reporters and sales reps succeed: we’re in professions that rely more on experience than classroom learning (hence the reason why people can make these job transitions in the first place).