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Snapshot

General and Operations Managers (often called GMs, Ops Managers, Business Managers, or Directors of Operations) are the integrators who keep an enterprise running. They translate strategy into execution, align people and processes, own budgets and P&L, and deliver results consistently. In a small company, the GM is the second-in-command to the founder and touches everything from sales to HR. In a larger company, Ops leaders run divisions, plants, regions, or shared service functions and spend their time optimizing systems and developing leaders.

This guide breaks down what GMs actually do, where they work, the skills that matter, earnings and advancement, education pathways, employment outlook, and a practical plan to enter or level up in the role. You will also see how to evaluate motivational fit. If you want a quick, data-informed read on whether this path matches how you are wired, take the free MAPP Career Assessment at www.assessment.com.

What General & Operations Managers Do

Core responsibilities

1. Own the operating plan. Convert goals into weekly and monthly targets for revenue, cost, throughput, quality, and customer experience.
2. Run the P&L. Forecast, budget, manage cash flow, and report performance. Protect gross margin and contribution while investing in growth.
3. Design and improve processes. Map workflows, remove bottlenecks, select tools, and implement SOPs and dashboards.
4. Build and lead teams. Hire, coach, set expectations, run performance cycles, and create a culture of accountability and learning.
5. Allocate resources. People, inventory, capital projects, vendor contracts, and schedules.
6. Manage risk and compliance. Safety, quality, data privacy, labor law, environmental and industry standards.
7. Delight customers. Protect on-time delivery, service levels, and net promoter score.
8. Communicate up, down, and across. Align leadership, cross-functional peers, frontline teams, and external partners.

Day-to-day rhythm

• Weekly: KPI reviews, 1:1s with direct reports, vendor or client check-ins, backlog and staffing forecast, improvement stand-up.
• Monthly: Close the books, budget variance analysis, capacity and headcount planning, corrective actions, and board or owner updates.
• Quarterly: Strategy review, pricing and supply decisions, capex planning, and talent succession.

Where GMs Work (and how the job changes)

• Manufacturing and supply chain. High focus on throughput, quality, safety, lean, and working capital.
• Hospitality, food service, and retail. People-heavy with tight labor models, service standards, shrink control, and multi-site ops.
• Software and technology services. Recurring revenue, customer success, usage and churn metrics, and cross-functional program delivery.
• Healthcare and professional services. Compliance and credentialing, utilization rates, case or project flow, and outcomes quality.
• Construction, field services, and logistics. Scheduling, permits, subcontractors, fleet, and weather or site risk.

The common denominator is disciplined execution and a bias for measurable results.

Entry Requirements

Education

• Common: Bachelor’s degree in Business, Operations, Engineering, Supply Chain, Finance, or a domain-specific field.
• Helpful but not required: MBA or specialized master’s for larger-company roles or competitive industries.
• Certifications (role dependent): Lean Six Sigma (Green/Black Belt), PMP or agile credentials, CPIM/CSCP (supply chain), CFM (facilities), ServSafe (food service), OSHA-10/30 (safety). For software and tech-enabled companies, familiarity with systems like Salesforce, NetSuite, or ERP is valuable.

Experience

• 3 to 7 years of increasing responsibility in the function you will oversee, plus evidence of team leadership and KPI ownership. Many GMs are promoted from plant manager, store/area manager, operations supervisor, program manager, or chief of staff roles.

Signals hiring managers look for

• You have owned hard numbers and improved them.
• You have hired, trained, and retained people.
• You have built or improved a process that scaled beyond yourself.
• You can communicate in a way that moves decisions forward.

Skills That Matter

Operator skills

• Planning and prioritization. Translate strategy into a realistic calendar and capacity plan.
• Process improvement. Map current state, define target state, run PDCA or DMAIC, and lock in standard work.
• Financial fluency. Read P&L, cash flow, and balance sheet. Know your unit economics, breakeven, and price-volume-cost dynamics.
• Data literacy. Build dashboards, define leading and lagging indicators, and make interventions early.
• Procurement and vendor management. Negotiate terms, manage SLAs, and maintain dual sourcing where sensible.
• Technology selection and adoption. CRMs, ERPs, WMS, scheduling, and analytics tools.

People and leadership skills

• Coaching and feedback. Clear expectations, timely coaching, and documented performance plans when needed.
• Change management. Stakeholder mapping, communications, training, and reinforcement.
• Conflict resolution. Keep standards high while protecting relationships.
• Culture and safety. Psychological safety for ideas and physical safety for work.
• Hiring for slope, not just intercept. Look for learning rate and values alignment.

Judgment under uncertainty

• Assess risk, choose reversible vs. irreversible decisions, create buffers, and escalate early.

Tools and Systems

• Planning: OKRs, Balanced Scorecard, or a simple one-page operating plan.
• Process: SOP library, RACI charts, swimlane diagrams, Gemba walks, and Kaizen events.
• Data: Business intelligence (Looker, Power BI, Tableau), spreadsheets with source-of-truth governance.
• Finance: Budgeting and forecasting in NetSuite, QuickBooks, or ERP.
• People: ATS and HRIS for hiring and performance; simple leadership rituals (weekly 1:1s, skip-levels, quarterly talent reviews).
• Communication: Clear written updates, meeting rhythms that start on time and end with owners and dates.

Earnings Potential

Compensation varies by industry, company size, and scope. A useful anchor for many markets is around $100,000 for established mid-market roles, with wide variance above or below this number. Typical structures include base salary plus bonus tied to EBITDA, revenue, safety, quality, or customer metrics.

Indicative ranges by context (not guarantees):

• Small business or single-site manager: upper five figures to low six figures, bonus modest but meaningful.
• Mid-market multi-site or plant GM: low to mid six figures with performance bonus and sometimes profit sharing.
• Enterprise division or regional ops leader: mid six figures total comp possible, with annual incentives and long-term incentives.
• Tech and high-growth services: higher upside if tied to ARR, net retention, or equity.

Drivers of higher pay: scope of P&L, number of direct and indirect reports, capital responsibility, regulated environment, and strong track record of turnarounds or scale-ups.

Growth Stages and Promotional Path

1. Operations Supervisor / Team Lead
   Runs a shift or a workstream. Learns scheduling, labor planning, and QA.
2. Operations Manager / Plant or Site Manager / Store Manager
   Owns daily operations, local P&L levers, hiring, and basic vendor relationships.
3. Senior Operations Manager / Multi-Site Manager / Program Manager
   Leads multiple teams or locations. Standardizes SOPs, introduces dashboards, and mentors managers.
4. General Manager / Director of Operations
   Full P&L, cross-functional leadership, strategic planning, and capex decisions.
5. Vice President of Operations / COO
   Portfolio of businesses or the entire company. Culture, long-range planning, M&A integration, and enterprise systems.

Lateral or adjacent moves

Product operations, revenue operations, supply chain, customer success leadership, project/program management, or chief of staff roles can be springboards to a larger P&L.

Employment Outlook and Trends

• Operational excellence is in demand across sectors that must do more with less.
• Digital operations. Companies need leaders who can pair process with data, automation, and AI-enabled workflows without breaking the human system.
• Customer experience pressure. Speed, reliability, and personalization make disciplined ops a competitive advantage.
• Compliance, ESG, and safety. More reporting and higher standards make structured operators valuable.
• Resilient supply chains. Nearshoring, dual sourcing, and inventory strategies require cross-functional operators.

The role remains durable because organizations always need accountable leaders who convert plans into results.

How to Break In or Level Up (90-Day Plan)

Days 1–30: Learn the business and baseline

• Collect three documents: current-year operating plan, org chart, and the P&L with definitions for key lines.
• Build a KPI tree. Define the five numbers that run the business and the six to ten drivers beneath them.
• Do a waste and constraint walk. Meet frontline staff. Ask “what gets in your way of doing a great job?”
• Document the current state with two pages of observations and a list of easy wins.

Days 31–60: Ship quick wins and the first SOPs

• Choose two bottlenecks and run contained experiments. Example: reduce order cycle time by 15 percent through better batching and cut one quality defect category by half.
• Write or update five SOPs that create consistency. Train supervisors and audit weekly.
• Stand up a simple dashboard with daily or weekly cadence. Make it visible.

Days 61–90: Institutionalize and coach

• Roll out a weekly operating rhythm: stand-up, KPI review, corrective actions, and a brief leadership retro.
• Coach each direct report on one behavior and one metric. Document agreements and review in 30 days.
• Present a six-month roadmap that includes two capex or technology proposals with ROI and risk mitigation.

This plan works whether you are new to operations or stepping up to a larger scope.

Common Mistakes and Better Moves

• Mistake: Managing by opinion rather than data.
  Better: Define clear KPIs, publish them, and make decisions with evidence.
• Mistake: Fixing symptoms instead of root causes.
  Better: Ask “why” five times, validate with data, design countermeasures, and standardize.
• Mistake: Overengineering dashboards.
  Better: Start with a handful of high-signal metrics. Add only when a decision needs it.
• Mistake: Doing everything yourself.
  Better: Delegate ownership with clarity. Coach and inspect rather than rescue.
• Mistake: Rolling out change without stakeholders.
  Better: Co-create with the people who will live with the process. Pilot, iterate, and then scale.
• Mistake: Ignoring culture and safety.
  Better: Make safety a headline metric. Reward behaviors that protect people and customers.

Key Performance Indicators for GMs

Tailor to your context, but these pillars are common:

• Revenue and margin: growth rate, gross margin, contribution margin, price-volume mix.
• Cost and efficiency: cost per unit or per transaction, labor utilization, overtime rate, scrap/rework.
• Quality and reliability: first-pass yield, defect rate, on-time and in-full, ticket resolution time.
• Customer: NPS/CSAT, repeat rate, churn or retention for subscriptions.
• People: retention in critical roles, time to fill, training completion, engagement scores, safety incidents.
• Cash and working capital: DSO, DPO, inventory turns, cash conversion cycle.

Tie projects to the KPIs you can move in 90 days and 12 months.

Practical Finance for Operators

• Unit economics. Know revenue per unit, variable cost per unit, and contribution margin.
• Breakeven. Fixed costs divided by contribution margin percentage equals breakeven revenue.
• Cash flow vs. profits. Profits do not guarantee cash. Watch receivables, payables, and inventory.
• Price and discount discipline. Model price elasticity and guard rails.
• Capex. Prioritize projects with clear ROI and fallback plans.

Is This Career a Good Fit for You? (MAPP Insight)

High-performing GMs typically show motivational patterns around order, responsibility, leadership, practical problem solving, and service to customers and teams. They enjoy designing systems, making tradeoffs, and coaching people toward a standard. If your motivational profile emphasizes solitary exploration, high novelty, or long unstructured research time with minimal deadlines, consider adjacent roles like analysis, product research, or specialist project work that feed operations without the constant cadence and people load of the GM seat.

Not sure where you fit on this spectrum? Take the free MAPP Career Assessment at www.assessment.com to see if the daily reality of operations leadership aligns with your intrinsic drivers.

Sample 30-60-90 for a GM Interview Leave-Behind

30 days: Baseline KPIs, waste walk, staffing gaps, two quick-win experiments, and an SOP refresh for the top three recurring failure modes.
60 days: Dashboard live, weekly operating rhythm in place, two improvements shipped with measured gains, vendor review with renegotiation targets.
90 days: Six-month roadmap with ROI, hiring plan for critical roles, and a risk register with mitigations for the next two quarters.

Bringing a plan like this to interviews signals readiness and separates you from candidates who speak in generalities.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need an MBA?
No. It can help for larger companies or specific industries, but a track record of results, people leadership, and sound judgment is more decisive.

How technical do I need to be?
Enough to make good decisions. In manufacturing that might mean lean and SPC basics, in software it might be product and data literacy. Depth comes from your domain.

What if I come from sales or finance?
Great. Many strong GMs start in revenue or finance and learn operations by taking on cross-functional projects and owning a budget plus a team.

How do I show readiness if I have never owned a full P&L?
Start with a partial P&L or a big cost center. Document how your decisions moved margin, quality, or throughput. Build a small portfolio of before-and-after metrics.

Is the role sustainable?
Yes, if you build systems, coach managers, and protect your calendar. Unsustainable GMs try to be the hero rather than the builder.

Bottom line: General and Operations Managers make organizations work. If you like clear goals, measurable outcomes, and helping teams win week after week, this path can be rewarding with strong earnings and durable demand. Use your next 90 days to gather data, fix two bottlenecks, and build a rhythm that makes performance repeatable. Then decide if this is your long-term lane using insight from the MAPP Career Assessment at www.assessment.com.

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