General Management role

To deliver you must understand what the critical success factors are. Realistically these will span a multitude of areas such as Marketing, Operations, Finance, Information Technology and Sales. How then to answer the So What question, that is, sales have gone up by 6%, so what? Is this good? Should I be concerned?

The only real way to assess the outputs is to define success for each. Typically then what you, as the General Manager (GM), needs to do is one of two things:

1. Ensure your direct reports clearly communicate and track KPIs which incorporate each of the critical success factors. For each KPI there should be a simple Red-Amber-Green classification such that you can assess performance and thus answer the So What question.
2. Continually review the KPIs against all the inputs of the business. Without covering all of the inputs, it is very difficult to be sure the output will be delivered.

Some will regard such an analytical approach to be micro-management. Conversely, others will agree with the likes of Robert Kaplan and David Norton, creators of the balanced scorecard, that "if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it". Put another way, if you cannot define success across your various teams then you cannot effectively manage them.

Quality Programs such as Six Sigma are then used to deal with cases where the results of the KPIs are not what you desire or expect. It is no surprise then that the second step (after defining the problem) is to measure the problem.

Such a detailed analytical approach addresses the unique nature of the GM role. Ultimately the Board and Managing Director can and will be involved in the strategy process. There are however unlikely to get involved in the day to day running, unless there is a unforeseen problem that requires their intervention. Which brings us neatly again to the need to measure the critical success factors to ensure there are no unforeseen problems.