Does your GM or Senior Managers Ineffective or Inefficient?Understand the Important ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF GENERAL MANAGERS AND SENIOR MANAGERS

General managers and senior managers are the next level in the management hierarchy below that of the C-level executives where the former reports to one of the C-level executives. These managers implement the mission, vision, goals, and objectives of the organization established and approved by the C-level executives of the organization. These general managers and senior managers implement the goals and objectives through the efforts of the line managers, middle-level managers, staff managers, and lower-level managers. If the management style of the general managers and senior managers is ineffective and inefficient, it will result in poor implementation efforts and unsuccessful day-to-day operations. Corporate goal congruence is really effected through the detailed plans, budgets, and actions of the line managers, middle-level managers, staff managers, and lower-level managers. In a way, general managers and senior managers are the change agents in the organization, requiring effective managing skills such as planning, organizing, directing, controlling, communication, and motivation skills. They develop business plans for business units, divisions, or groups of businesses, and report their progress to C-level executives.

General managers and senior managers must ensure that all employees focus on the right things at all times to achieve improved performance results and increased productivity levels.


As part of their roles and responsibilities, general managers and senior managers may:
 Integrate production, inventory, logistics, and transportation activities for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
 Lower total manufacturing and service costs in order to lower selling prices, increase sales volume, and increase profits.
 Link production and service costs to cash flows and gross profits, operating profits, or net profits.
 Increase faster product and service deliveries to customers to achieve their total satisfaction (i.e., a shorter order-to-delivery cycle and faster time to market for new products and services).
 Introduce new production and service techniques and processes by leveraging technology to improve quality and to reduce costs.
 Eliminate non-value-added activities in production and service to trim waste and to lower costs.
 Focus more on value-added activities in production and services to provide a solid value to the customers and to the organization.
 Identify key drivers of cost, quality, risks, expenses, revenues, profits, business growth, competition, and performance. Focus on the root causes of these drivers and understand why these drivers go up and down.
 Seamlessly integrate the back-end systems with the front-end systems for (1) maximum data consistency, completeness, and accuracy, (2) better customer service and satisfaction, and (3) stronger connection of disparate and disconnected business processes.
 Build standardized, transparent, and repeatable production and service processes to provide the stable, consistent, and quality products and services that customers expect. First, streamline both upstream and downstream business processes involved in international licensing and franchising arrangements, and other operations; second, simplify; third, standardize; and then institutionalize.
 Understand that increases in sales velocity increase inventory velocity, which, in turn, increases production or service velocity, finance velocity, human capital velocity, and systems velocity. The goal is to synchronize these velocities in a cohesive manner.
 Implement the goal congruence concept by linking individual employee goals with those of the department/division and the organization, Remove or reduce the competing or conflicting goals.
 Implement crosscutting best practices across business units, divisions, departments, and functions through busting silos and building bridges.
 Link employee rewards, bonuses, and promotions to employees’ true performance and tangible results, and empower employees.
 Build solid working relationships with C-level executives in manufacturing, marketing, finance, human resources, IT and other functions through formal and informal approaches at the workplace.
 Foster ethical values and cultural sensitivity in light of workforce diversity.
 Encourage employees to continuously acquire and improve their knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) through targeted training courses, management development programs, and professional certifications.
 Establish a solid and sustainable chain of knowledge linked through the entire management hierarchy to ensure core knowledge competencies for all levels of employees in the organization.
 Invite production and service audits, management reviews, and self-assessments periodically and proactively to ensure continuous improvement in quality, cost, and delivery.
 Encourage employees at all levels of the organization to think differently and radically (i.e., out-of-the-box thinking) at all times, which can lead to new perspectives providing best-of-breed solutions.
 Participate in the succession-planning process for key positions.
 Analyze outside-in views (i.e., views of stakeholders about company management) and inside-out views (i.e., views of company management about stake-holders) to identify disconnections between these views and to integrate them in a coherent manner.

Does your GM or Senior Managers Ineffective or Inefficient?Understand the Important ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF GENERAL MANAGERS AND SENIOR MANAGERS