Re-designing General Manager Role in Nfp Sector

Summary/overview

This not-for-profit organisation had recently had the General Manager of one of their key divisions resign and saw this as an opportunity to explore and redesign the role to better align with industry and organisational needs. We assisted them with competency mapping, research, and stakeholder engagement to create a picture of what the role would need to be successful into the future and inform the redesign.

Situation & Challenges

The most recent General Manager who oversaw one of the key parts of this not-for-profit business had recently resigned, leaving a significant hole in the business. This particular division had been facing a lot of changes over recent years around staffing, ways of operating, and industry and regulatory changes, that had created some unique challenges and opportunities for the division more broadly.

In light of these changes and challenges, rather than immediate filling the vacancy left by the departing General Manager, the organisation wanted to take the opportunity to take a step back and re-evaluate what was needed from a leader to support this part of the business into the future. Some of the challenges associated with this came from other changes happening in the business more broadly and historically very different expectations about the General Manager role from different roles and parts of the business.

Since we had worked with this organisation previously and they wanted to bring in an outside, neutral perspective, we came in to facilitate this process.

Our Solution

We began by reviewing the current organisational structure and other existing material relevant to the role (e.g. job description) to get an understanding of the current state of play.

We then ran a series of interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders to the role, including the executive to whom they would be reporting, peers at the executive and general manager level who would work closely with this role, and the two direct reports of the role.

In these sessions, we explored three areas:

The work environment (including the purpose and objectives of the role, the recipients of their work, key stakeholders, barriers, challenges, and available resources)

The work (the key responsibilities of the role, the tasks and activities they would be required to carry out, and the decisions they make)

The worker (knowledge, experience, skills, competencies, personal attributes, and motivational fit)

Throughout these sessions, we examined both the current state as well as what each of these areas would look like in the next 5-10 years and how things were changing. We also carried out a competency card sort activity with each of the stakeholder groups using the Universal Competency Framework, to identify the six most critical competencies for the role.

We then pulled the information together into a summary report for the client. In this report, we provided our recommendations around the purpose and key tasks/responsibilities of the role, as well as the requirements for the next incumbent to be successful in the role (essential and desirable criteria). We also provided recommendations around how each of these individual requirements could be assessed as part of a selection process. Finally, we provided a summary of the stakeholder consultation that highlighted areas of alignment versus discrepancy between the different stakeholder groups, to help them identify where greater clarity might be needed moving forward.

Result

The whole process was wrapped up in four weeks, from project scoping to the final report being sent. The client has used the information to inform their next steps internally around redesigning the final job description and socialising this with the broader team before beginning a recruitment process.