As general managers advance through their careers, they are often asked to bring their skills to bear on a new level of responsibilities. For the recently appointed country or business-unit manager of a multinational organization, such challenges can be especially daunting. To serve the needs of this type of manager, the School has introduced a comprehensive, six-week Executive Education program called The General Manager (TGM). The course enables participants to step back from their day-to-day responsibilities to gain a broad, integrated perspective on general management.

"We want TGM participants to understand how their role encompasses all organizational disciplines; to learn to manage up, down, across, and outside the organization; to perform a working assessment of their organizations; and to formulate solutions to their individual job challenges," notes TGM course head Professor Joseph L. Bower.

Relatively new to her position as vice president and general manager of North Carolina/South Carolina Consumer Services at BellSouth Telecommunications, Gloria R. Cockerham enrolled in TGM last spring, because she wanted to sharpen her skills, especially when it came to managing in a truly competitive environment. She suddenly found herself making decisions for the largest and most widely dispersed organization she had ever managed, and she "wanted to confirm that some of my own actions and instincts were on target." Cockerham's concern is common to many managers - and TGM participants - in similar positions in a broad range of businesses. Offered for the second time last spring, TGM brought together 43 senior-level general managers from more than a dozen countries, representing industries such as mining, textiles, computers and software, packaged goods, and pharmaceuticals. According to Bower, this "homogeneous mix" - a group that was demographically diverse but similar in managerial function - brought significant advantages to the classroom. "The participants' shared perspectives created a powerful bond that made for some very interesting discussions," he notes.

Cockerham agrees. "All of us have had to deal with restructuring, pay-for-performance, and personnel issues in a downsized or downsizing environment," she says. "We didn't need to have any background on these issues explained to us." With this solid foundation, she adds, the more than one hundred case studies used in the course came alive instantly, and the classroom visits by some of the cases' protagonists were enthusiastically received. Furthermore, the program's structure - two three-week units (one in March and one in May) - enables participants to identify a problem or issue, test some solutions between sessions, and then get feedback and analysis from participants and faculty when they return to HBS.

TGM's pool of collective experience was also cited by other participants as a key asset of the course. Jeffrey D. Thiemann, general manager of the rapidly growing NetMetrix division at Hewlett-Packard in Colorado Springs, Colorado, notes, "I came back with specific tools for doing my job, but it's learning from the experiences of others that broadened my own awareness as a manager." Following TGM's final session, Thiemann says he had "the confidence to rely more on my instincts and to take action quickly on less data, which is probably a result of studying so many cases and testing some of the principles on the job."

Next year, TGM's administrators hope to attract more clusters of general managers from a single company. "It's helpful to discover that diverse views exist within one's own organization," explains Bower, who is looking forward to a bright future for this innovative new program.

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