What makes a General Manager

The hallmark of General Managers is business acumen—the ability to see and understand a business in its totality.

The other fundamentals for a General Manager at a minimum are: 

• Understanding how the business makes money relative to the competition and perceived opportunities. 
• Seeing the business as whole, positioning it ahead of others in relation to the speed and character of change on the outside, and making strategic bets that will position the business for the future. 
• Knowing who the customers are, what the segmentation is, and what customer behaviour is. 
• Choosing the right set of business goals and being prepared to manage risks. 
• Developing and continuously maintaining competitive advantage, including building new capabilities and shedding those no longer relevant.
• Delivering both short-and long-term business results. 
• Working with people who are expert in a wide variety of disciplines and drilling deep into the issues they raise and solutions they propose from the perspective of the business as a whole. 
• Developing alternative solutions by changing assumptions on the issue at hand. 
• Generating and allocating resources across the business as a whole and balancing both the short and long terms. 
• Mastering the numbers to deliver quarter by quarter results.

Compiled by

Mir Shamsul Alam