General Manager

A General Manager, or GM, is a middle-management-type person in charge of stuff, things, and people...and if that sounds vague, it is. It really is. But don’t worry; we’re about to de-vague it.

Regardless of industry or company, GMs usually have two primary responsibilities. First, they run their unit. Maybe their unit is an individual Chili’s location; maybe their unit is the assembly line at a manufacturing plant. Either way, they are generally in charge of what goes on there, including human resource stuff, equipment and physical resource concerns, budgets, and more. And second, they pass info back and forth between the peeps in their unit and the peeps in charge of the company.

Example. Let’s say we work the cash registers at All-Mart, the nation’s premier discount retailer. We’ve got a supervisor in charge of our day-to-day workdays, and our supervisor reports to our store’s GM, Mrs. Poobah. One day, Mrs. Poobah calls an all-hands meeting; biting our nails in anticipation and hoping there’ll be donuts, we all pile into the breakroom to hear what she has to say. First, she congratulates us all on meeting the store’s sales and revenue goals for the quarter. She tells us all about how our store in particular out-performed all others in the district. In other words, she’s talking about how her specific unit performed under her general management. Second, she tells us about the Corporate Big Wigs’ ideas on how All-Mart might be changing over the coming 12 months, and asks us for feedback. Said another way, she’s liaising between us (the front-line peons) and the corporate folks back at All-Mart’s HQ.

GMs don’t have it easy. If they really want to rock at their job, they’ve got to have a good blend of people skills, financial know-how, business acumen, and plain ol’ self-confidence. They’ve got to be able to make decisions, both long-term and on the fly, that benefit their unit, and will keep the Corporate Big Wigs happy. And sometimes, that can be a tough line to walk.