General Manager Program

Overview

Enabling General Managers to navigate complexity and enhance their leadership capabilities

General management requires leaders to leave the comfort of their technical speciality and manage a variety of competing priorities to ensure the sustainable performance of their organisation.

Expanding on the extraordinary success of this program for over 20 years, the General Manager Program embodies international best practice in contemporary executive adult education.

The program focuses on the core business disciplines of strategy and management and takes participants through a transformational journey on how their leadership, decisions and behaviours impact overall wellbeing, employee engagement, organisational culture and performance.

Drawing on the systemic areas of politics, ethics, leadership and the need to establish a global mindset, the program’s emphasis is to develop a holistic leader who has self-reflective capabilities combined with strategic thinking. This type of leader believes in the Triple Bottom Line (3BL), pays attention to health and wellbeing and leads with presence and integrity. The overall aim is to provide senior managers with perspectives, practices and tools to manage competing priorities in an increasingly complex work environment.

Designed for

General and divisional managers responsible for complex areas, as well as senior managers being groomed for these roles.

Benefits

A critical appreciation of the most important business disciplines needed for general managers

A coherent understanding of the interplay of organisational dynamics –people and systems

An appreciation of the need to think globally and the implications for the future Learning from high calibre peers from a diversity of industries in a residential format

A practical insight to the importance of physical and mental wellbeing to maximise performance and tactics to combat stress and burnout
Strategies and frameworks for creating high performing teams

A conscious understanding of your personal development needs and career path

Program delivery and date

Sydney, 5½ day residential

29 April – 4 May 2012

26 - 31 August 2012

18 - 23 November 2012

Focus

Core business competencies including integrating corporate strategy, marketing, financial management, change management and technology

Competitive strategy and creating the strategic agenda

Your leadership style

Making better investment decisions in a volatile world

Running today and building tomorrow

Generating and tracking customer value

Building sustainable performance

Power, politics and performance culture

Personal performance, presentations and executive lifestyle enhancement

Management control systems

Benefits

New capabilities in core business disciplines

New skills and fresh insights to meet your current and future challenges

A sound appreciation of your operating landscape

Individual feedback on your leadership and presentation ability

An understanding of the bigger picture and your role as general manager

A network of colleagues and experts to draw upon in the future

The GMP Learning Journey

The central philosophy of teaching in this program is to provide perspectives on what our research shows to be the essential topics and issues facing a general manager and to support participants make meaning from a multiple of perspectives. This taking and making meaning approach to learning can be applied equally to strategy and finance as it can be to culture and leadership. The program curriculum is designed with international best practice to take perspectives of the big ticket common issues and also to surface the hidden issues that can derail many executives, as research shows.

Your Personal Development “Dialogue”

Through pre-program work, debriefings and discussions throughout the program, participants will form and frame a greater appreciation of their individual personal development objectives. What does this program discover and where to next and possibly thereafter going forward? Leaders must hold an evolving understanding of and take full responsibility for their developmental and learning journey. The process is termed a “dialogue” because it is supported within the program through discussions both formal and informal, as one-on-one and small group coaching conversations with faculty and peers. Participants are encouraged to document their insights and keep a development journal.

Integrated Program Sessions and the Faculty Team

Our team of faculty of facilitators are highly experienced at guiding participants in applying their learning to their specific individual context.

The General Manager Program team has been especially selected to combine the best of academic rigour, the latest in practical knowledge and experience and to provide a program learning experience that is worldwide best practice in learning and development programs.

Our Program Director

Errol Benvie

Errol Benvie had a 25 year general management career with 10 years in several CEO roles across a range of industries. He has a MBA and a Masters in Organisational Coaching from Sydney University and is a doctoral candidate at Middlesex University. He has a coached senior leaders and intact teams across all sectors.

As a Program Director, Errol will work with each participant to facilitate their learning journey and help make sense of the challenges and contexts that are relevant to each individual.

Themes and Presenters

A Global and Local Mindset

“Think Globally and Act Locally” has been a well known and profound quote in business literature for many decades, but its true value and importance is now proving absolutely essential to navigating the global confusion and the divergent and often contradictory interests in managing a team. This module demonstrates how people make meaning and why they act towards one another knowing they never have enough information to do so well. How do we lead decisively and confidently?

Power & Politics

Ignoring, avoiding or denying politics has proved to countless leaders to be a perilous option. Humans naturally form hierarchies and easily elect to be led and lead but only if they have a say in who has power. Organisations give power to and impose power upon their people; therefore, being successful in organisations requires leaders to be very aware and skilled in power and politics.

Wellbeing & Executive Performance

Research has shown that personal wellbeing, exercise and diet regime can radically lift an executive’s performance. Our in-house expert in this crucial area, Lex Dwyer will weave these aspects into the overall program experience and will transform your thinking about how looking after yourself can make a tangible difference to your professional and personal life.

Presence & Impact

Effective General Managers need to not only be fully aware of their presence and non-verbal impact, but how to better design and create variety in their impact and physical presence. A series of highly interactive sessions throughout the program takes participants on an exciting process of heightened awareness of the relationship between their verbal messages and their non-verbal communication. This congruency is essential to building trust.

Pre-program Preparation

This program is supported by the AGSM Executive Education e-learning platform, ‘’Moodle’. All pre-program readings and exercises will be delivered through Moodle, and each participant will receive a password to access the site within 5–6 weeks of program commencement. The pre-program work is designed for participants to develop a “learning-ready” mindset and substantially improve the effectiveness of the experience from the onset. It forms the basis for learning insights in the program and commences the participants’ personal development dialogue. Please allow 2–3 hours of dedicated time to effectively cover the pre-program requirements.

Sub courses
General Manager Program - agenda