Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with the respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kaiser, Kevin, 1964–
Becoming a top manager: tools and lessons in transitioning to general management / Kevin Kaiser, Michael Pich, and I.J. Schecter.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-118-85857-8 (hardback)
1. Executive ability. 2. Chief executive officers. 3. Management. I. Pich, Michael T. II. Schecter, I. J., 1971– III. Title.
HD38.2.K35 2015
658.4′2–dc23
2014038165
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-118-85857-8 (hbk)
ISBN 978-1-118-85856-1 (ebk) ISBN 978-1-118-85855-4 (ebk)
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Illustration: © kraphix/shutterstock.com
Acknowledgements
Numerous people helped us make this book a reality, beginning with Rosemary Nixon of Wiley, who first discussed with us the possibility of basing a book on the content of INSEAD's Transition to Management Programme (formerly the International Executive Programme) and worked diligently with us to find the right structure and shape for the manuscript. Thanks also to the rest of the global Wiley team for taking the book all the way to the finish line, including Kathe Sweeney and Ashton Bainbridge for shepherding it through the early stages, Jenny Ng for helping fine-tune it over the course of several months and Holly Bennion for overseeing the entire process, which anyone who has ever written a book knows is neither simple nor quick.
We are extremely grateful to Katherine Philips-Kaiser, who first proposed the idea of crowd-sourcing the content for the book and whose company, AmphiMedia, created and managed the interactive platform that was essential to making this project work. AmphiMedia also did an outstanding job of coordinating all matters relating to the participants and their contributions.
We are also grateful for the financial support of the ABN Amro Managing for Value Research Fund at INSEAD, which covered various costs related to this project.
Thank you to Moriah Productions in Singapore for planning and shooting the videos for that interactive platform, and to the actors who brought to life our fictional general managers, along with the accompanying cast of characters who gave voice to their mentors, sounding boards and foils.
Lastly, we are indebted to all of those who took time out of their busy lives and daily schedules to watch our fictional GMs in action and to provide the invaluable commentary, insights and anecdotes that give the book its true breadth and scope. Our contributors represent 18 different nationalities (including many who have spent time as expatriates) and a wide range of industries, functional backgrounds and roles. It is thanks to the input of this diverse group that we can confidently say our discussion of what it takes to become a successful general manager in today's global world transcends cultures and borders. You have our sincerest gratitude.
Introduction
Functional leaders promoted to executive positions often find themselves lost at sea – unfamiliar not only with the responsibilities surrounding their new role but unsure of the skills and tools necessary to execute them successfully. The marketing manager promoted to partner; the communications lead moved up to the boardroom; the unit head who suddenly finds himself at the executive table. Individuals in such positions tend to quickly discover that the knowledge and capabilities that allowed them to thrive in their previous job have little bearing on the new one, and that a whole new set of skills – or rather, a whole new way of thinking – is suddenly required. They realize that to deliver their new mandate they must change. But how?
We decided the best way to answer this question would be to pose it to past participants of our executive education programmes, a broad mix of people from different backgrounds, industries, companies and geographies with one thing in common: they are somewhere on the new learning curve of what it means, and what it takes, to become a successful general manager. We asked this community to participate in the project via an interactive online platform through which they would watch videos of our three fictional general managers in action1 – general managers created to represent a fair cross-section of role, industry, background, gender, experience and personality – and then, in response to specific questions we provided, offer comments, observations and stories of their own related experiences.
We were delighted both by the enthusiastic response from so many willing contributors who took time out of their jobs and lives to watch the videos and provide comments, and by the depth and diversity of the insights and reflections they offered. These insights and reflections not only provided great context for the chapters that follow, they also allowed us to identify 10 key success factors that we feel will help guide others in making a similar transition from functional to general management. We present these 10 themes below, which you will see repeated throughout the book.
Key Success Factors for Transitioning to General Management
Being an effective general manager requires the same thing today as it will require tomorrow: the willingness to lead, the openness to learn and an unwavering commitment to creating long-term value. The transition to general management is a change indeed, and it requires serious mental and emotional effort. Frequently, it represents a shift away from everything one has known in the past, and often entails the unlearning of lessons one has spent years trying to make second nature. Moving from a task-oriented role to a role of managing the tasks of others (management) and then to general management (where one is now responsible for managing the managers) involves significant changes in scope and comprehension.
Among the most difficult of the changes required by moving from a role of management of task-oriented people to managing the managers is the complexity of the jobs of those you are now charged with managing. When managing people with relatively clearly defined tasks, it is not overly risky to characterize success and failure within those tasks as delivery against a set of clearly defined indicators. However, a manager's role is far more complex than can be easily summarized by a set of indicators, no matter how clear or concrete.
The success of a manager includes delivery on multiple dimensions, each of which is imperfectly captured by concrete indicators, and which, when viewed together, are extremely difficult to measure in any straightforward way. For this reason, to assess and motivate the performance of managers, the general manager must be capable of seeing beyond the concrete indicators, which might summarize ‘what’ the manager accomplished, to assess ‘how’ and ‘why’ the manager delivered against them. The general manager must be capable of assessing whether delivery against the concrete indicators might have been at the expense of the long-term health of the company. While this big-picture view is difficult to explain and nearly impossible to measure, there are key success factors that we feel will help any general manager achieve the task.
1. Questions are more