The Idea in Brief

General managers (GMs) with highly structured workdays and rigid schedules close off channels—such as chatting in hallways and calling impromptu meetings—that would otherwise provide vital information and valuable relationships. Unplanned and unstructured activities help GMs address two critical challenges: figuring out what to do and winning widespread cooperation. The key tools for meeting these challenges are flexible agendas and broad networks of relationships. With flexible agendas, GMs capitalize on unanticipated opportunities that emerge in day-to-day events. With broad networks, GMs can use impromptu encounters to exert influence far beyond their chain of command.

The Idea in Practice

Effective GMs rely on agenda setting and network building to achieve their goals.

Agendas comprise activities that accomplish multiple goals, are consistent with all other corporate goals and plans, and are within the GM’s power to implement. These agendas address the GM’s long-, medium-, and short-term responsibilities. They include a broad range of financial, product, market, and organizational issues.

Networks extend up, down, and laterally to include everyone on whom the GM depends. He or she creates an environment in which network members work on the manager’s agenda and cooperate for the greater good.

Effective GMs use direct and indirect influence to get networks to respond to their agendas.

Examples of direct influence

  • Asking or suggesting that someone do something
  • Persuading someone to act in a way that supports the agenda
  • Negotiating a trade
  • Coercing

Examples of indirect influence

  • Staging a meeting or other event
  • Convincing a network member to approach a non-network member
  • Requesting several network members to take actions that influence others

All effective GMs get things done using these methods. The very best GMs mobilize more people to do more things through a wider variety of “reactive” behaviors: days not planned in much detail and filled with short, seemingly disjointed conversations. A chance hallway encounter with a member of the network that lasts two minutes can accomplish as much, if not more than, an arranged meeting that would require 15–30 minutes. Impromptu conversations are highly productive only when the GM has his or her agenda clearly in mind, and network relationships firmly in place.

Top managers can boost their GMs’ effectiveness if they

  • fill GM slots with candidates who know the organization and its people well. These individuals will more quickly develop a strong agenda and network.
  • don’t overemphasize the formal tools and simplistic situations of some management training courses. In particular, it’s best to avoid time-management programs predicated on rigid scheduling.
  • do not overload a new GM with a lot of specific assignments during the first three to six months. Instead, allow him or her time for collecting information, establishing relationships, and setting basic direction.
  • minimize required participation in the organization’s formal planning systems that focuses on rigid number crunching. Instead, encourage the new GM to focus on long-range strategic thinking and net-work building.

Basis of the Study

Between 1976 and 1981, I studied 15 successful general managers in nine corporations. I examined what their jobs entailed, who they were, where they had come from, how they behaved, and how these factors varied in different corporate and industry settings.

The participants all had some profit-center and multifunctional responsibility. They were located in cities across the United States. They were involved in a broad range of industries, including banking, consulting, tire and rubber manufacturing, television, mechanical equipment manufacturing, newspapers, copiers, investment management, and consumer products. The businesses they were responsible for ranged from doing only $1 million in sales to more than $1 billion. On average, the executives were 47 years old. All were male. Most were paid well over $200,000 in 1982 dollars.

Data collection involved three visits to each GM over 6 to 12 months. Each time, I interviewed them for at least 5 hours, and I observed their daily routines for about 35 hours. I also interviewed their key coworkers. The GMs filled out questionnaires and gave me documents such as business plans, appointment diaries, and annual reports.

I measured the performance of the GMs by combining hard and soft indices. The former included measures of revenue and profit growth, both in an absolute sense and compared with plans. The latter included opinions of people who worked with the GMs (including bosses, subordinates, and peers) as well as, when possible, industry analysts. Using this method, I judged most of the GMs to be doing a “very good” job. A few were rated “excellent” and a few “good/fair.” In many ways, Richardson’s day is typical for a general manager. The daily behavior of the successful GMs I have studied generally conforms to the following patterns:

1. They spend most of their time with others. The average general manager spends only 25% of his working time alone, and that time is spent largely at home, on airplanes, or while commuting. Few spend less than 70% of their time with others, and some spend up to 90% of their work time this way.

2. They spend time with many people in addition to their direct subordinates and their bosses. They regularly see people who may appear to be unimportant outsiders.

3. The breadth of topics in their discussions is extremely wide. GMs do not limit their focus to planning, business strategy, staffing, and other top-management concerns. They discuss virtually anything and everything even remotely associated with their businesses.

4. GMs ask a lot of questions. In a half-hour conversation, some will ask literally hundreds of them.

5. During conversations, GMs rarely seem to make “big” decisions.

6. Their discussions usually contain a fair amount of joking and often concern topics that are not related to work. The humor is often about others in the organization or industry. Nonwork discussions are usually about people’s families and hobbies.

7. In more than a few of these encounters, the issue discussed is relatively unimportant to the business or organization. GMs regularly engage in activities that even they regard as a waste of time.

8. In these encounters, the executives rarely give orders in a traditional sense.

9. Nevertheless, GMs often attempt to influence others. Instead of telling people what to do, however, they ask, request, cajole, persuade, and even intimidate.

10. GMs often react to others’ initiatives; much of the typical GM’s day is unplanned. Even GMs who have a heavy schedule of planned meetings end up spending a lot of time on topics that are not on the official agenda.

11. GMs spend most of their time with others in short, disjointed conversations. Discussions of a single question or issue rarely last more than ten minutes. It is not at all unusual for a general manager to cover ten unrelated topics in a five-minute conversation.

12. They work long hours. The average GM I have studied works just under 60 hours per week. Although GMs can do some of their work at home, while commuting to work, or while traveling, they spend most of their time at their places of work.

The behavior Richardson demonstrates throughout his day is consistent with other studies of managerial behavior, especially those of high-level managers. Nevertheless, as Henry Mintzberg has pointed out, this behavior is hard to reconcile, on the surface at least, with traditional notions of what top managers do (or should do).1 It is hard to fit the behavior into categories like planning, organizing, controlling, directing, or staffing. The implication is that such behavior is not appropriate for top managers. But effective executives carry our their planning and organizing in just such a hit-or-miss way.
A version of this article appeared in the March–April 1999 issue of Harvard Business Review.