6 Basic General Management Roles For Managers To Embrace Asap
The core abilities and strategies that make a team consistently successful are emphasized by great leaders. Great general managers use the same strategy. They are aware that one-time enhancements like restructurings, significant cost savings, or reorganizations cannot be the foundation for long-term greater performance. Sure, if they find themselves in a circumstance where doing so is required or advantageous, they’ll act in such a broad manner. But avoiding that kind of circumstance is their top concern. And they accomplish this by concentrating on the six fundamental responsibilities that underpin any general manager’s position: establishing strategy, allocating resources, training managers, erecting the organization, and supervising operations.
This list shouldn’t come as a surprise; after all, the core general management roles should be understandable. It aids in defining the task’s scope, establishing priorities, and identifying significant connections between various areas of activity.
Table of Contents
Shaping the Work Environment
Every organization has a unique work environment, and that environment’s historical legacies heavily influence how managers react to challenges and opportunities. However, shaping—or reshaping—the environment that a general manager inherits from the past is vital. And it holds true for large corporations like General Motors and General Electric as well as small and medium-sized businesses.
A company’s work environment is governed by three factors:
(1) the performance standards that are in place and set the pace and caliber of employees’ efforts;
(2) the business concepts that describe the company’s nature and operations; and
(3) the people, concepts, and values that are in place and specify what it’s like to work there.
Performance standards are the most crucial component of these three since, generally speaking, it is a general management role to dictate the caliber of the effort the business makes. Key managers typically emulate the general manager’s high expectations. Subordinates are unlikely to do much better if the GM’s standards are lax or unclear. Thus, maintaining high standards is the main way that top general managers influence and utilize their skills throughout the whole company.
Although it may seem apparent, I’ve seen several general managers who, because they didn’t actively decide what was essential to them, ended up with contradictory cultural values and inconsistent behavioral standards.
Crafting a Strategic Vision
The finest general managers are usually active in strategy formation, initiating the process, not merely overseeing it, as they are the only executive who can commit the entire firm to a certain plan. They either start with a strategic vision for each organization or rapidly develop one after accepting a new position.
The finest GMs build on current capabilities while looking for new advantages since they know that long-lasting competitive edges are difficult to produce. They start by increasing the sales and earnings of the best items in their best markets with their best distributors. The quicker payoffs that follow are then used to help finance future edge searches. For instance, Pepsi focused on its heartland areas, grocery chains, and new huge containers in the 1970s—all of which were Pepsi’s strengths. In contrast, Pepsi had the resources to fully commit to more substantial locations in the 1960s because it invested so much time, money, and effort in attempting to support weaker markets, products, and channels.
Even worse, its managers believed it was simpler to increase a market share from 5% to 10% than to increase it from 30% to 35%. Actually, it was the opposite, as is typical for most businesses. Building on your strengths also prevents rivals from launching their own efforts since they will be too busy responding to yours.
Marshaling Resources
All general managers claim that their resource allocation supports competitive strategies, maintains the company’s financial stability, and generates strong returns. However, if you examine how the process functions in most firms, you’ll see overwhelming support for marginal enterprises, low-reward projects, and operational requirements. Simply put, lacks strategic emphasis.
Another general management role is to focus more resources on circumstances that offer the chance to achieve a significant competitive edge or at the very least strengthen one they already possess. The top GMs also take several little steps to reduce their front-end risks, such as contracting out trial runs and renting facilities and equipment. They make an effort to stay away from procedures that can’t be used elsewhere. They grudgingly add overhead. To gauge the market and manage expenses, they conduct regional rollouts. When they are certain that the plan will succeed, they go to war to defend it.
Developing Star Performers
Everyone is aware of how crucial it is to find and develop competent managers as well as to keep them engaged and effectively used. But not everyone takes the necessary steps to make this happen. In reality, relatively few businesses do. Poor performance has two main causes: inadequate standards and a lack of managerial skills.
The finest general managers are ready to take the difficult decisions necessary to improve a business. They don’t try to justify their inaction by assuming that more experience will make poor management stronger or a good performance exceptional. As a result, each year instead of a group that is only one year older, they have superior managers in key positions.
The finest general managers are always surrounded by decent individuals who are achievers rather than friends or allies. They don’t merely recruit people who fit their own mold; they tolerate—even encourage—a wide range of styles. Since you can never have enough good people, they are continually increasing their critical mass, which results in a talent pool that is deeper and better each year. In this manner, when possibilities present themselves, they won’t need to make room in one area of the firm for a new employee in another.
Organizational Bodybuilding
One of the most creative general managers I know once told me with pride about his strategy to decentralize and reorganize his company in order to make decisions more quickly, execute better in local markets, and decrease expenses.
I’ve seen plenty of general managers (GMs) who believed they were tackling significant issues with logical-sounding reorganizations but omitted the most crucial component—the right leader. Certainly, you cannot disregard organizational logic or strategic fit. However, individuals are typically the most important factor.
Up and Running
Operational and implementation oversight is a general manager’s sixth and final area of accountability. This entails creating strong plans, seeing opportunities and issues early, and acting swiftly in response to both.
Most top GMs are highly focused on achieving outcomes. They have committed to implementing their operating strategies, not merely making sincere efforts to do so. They are aware of the figures and what is necessary to meet them. They leave enough wiggle room in their expenditures to account for competitive threats, innovative new ideas, or weaker volume since they are aware that such practices are common. They don’t consistently fall short of their profit strategy due to anticipated unforeseen circumstances, in contrast to less resourceful GMs.
If sales suddenly decline, they act more quickly than others to reduce expenses, curtail discretionary spending, and get rid of losers. However, they don’t forgo competition in order to appear respectable in a terrible year.
Of course, these six obligations don’t cover everything. The GM’s personal style, expertise, and leadership abilities are crucial components of the total. But any GM may improve their effectiveness by concentrating their efforts on these six areas. If you want to explore more about general management roles then there are numerous online resources and platforms offering free general management textbooks for a more detailed understanding. And as general managers, it should entail accelerating and increasing the frequency of the right things happening.