Basic Information of General Management: A Severe Accountability
Author: Mark KennedyPublisher:
Case Number: 533-01
Publication Date: Feb, 2005
Course Category: Management
Case Summary of General Management: A Severe Accountability
Accountabilities of GM are demanding and uncompromising.1. Demanding b/c need to balance competing demands of varied constituents.
2. Uncompromising b/c continuing in GM depends on delivering results.
Job of the GM: set direction, define goals, make plans, structure people and resources to pursue them, do it, and answer for the results.
To whom do they serve: Shareholders? GMs should develop specialties, but also understand broader context and accountability that got them to the top.
5 basic accountabilities of the GM: Governance (government), Organization and Partners (stakeholders) on vertical. Suppliers and Buyers on horizontal axis of star.
What It Really Means to Manage: Exercising Power and Influence
New managers must unlearn the deeply held attitudes/habits they developed when only responsible for self. The GM must learn to set and implement an agenda for a whole group. Two kinds of learning: task learning and personal learning.
New managers focus on their formal authority (rights and privileges of a promotion). Bosses and peers are hard to deal with for the GM. 2 sets of responsibilities: manage their team and also manage the context within which their team resides.
Power: def. as potential of an individual (or group) to influence another individual or group.
Influence: def as exercise of power to change behavior/attitudes/values of that individual or group.
To be effective, managers must find ways to acquire power and exercise influence with those on whom they are dependent. Need to cultivate networks (mutually beneficial relationships with those on whom they are dependent). Metaphor of currency exchange is used in article.
3 important criteria for evaluating power/influence:
1. Is it effective for individual?
2. Is it effective for organization?
3. Is it ethical?
What Effective General Managers really do:
2 fundamental challenges/dilemmas:
1) Figuring out what to do despite uncertainty and an enormous amount of potentially relevant information.
2) Getting things done through a large/diverse group of people despite having little direct control over most of them
Agenda Setting:
a. agendas tend to be less detailed in financial objectives, more detailed in strategies and plans
b. tend to focus on broader time frame
c. contains list of goals or plans that are not explicitly connected
--effective GMs rely more on discussions with others, develop agendas immediately after hire
Network Building:
--develop a network of cooperative relationships among people they feel are needed to satisfy their agendas
--often shape networks by moving, hiring, firing subordinates
--GMs use networks to exert indirect influence on people
--best performers tend to mobilize more people to get more things done, and do so using a wider range of tactics to influence people
Responsibilities of Top Mgmt
--do not put someone in a GM role just because he or she is a successful manager (unless he/she knows the business)
--Growing one’s own executives is a high priority
--Mgmt training courses overemphasize formals tools and unambiguous problems and situations
--People who are new to GM can probably be gotten up to speed more effectively than is the norm today
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