Great coaches stress fundamentals—the basic skills and plays that make a team a consistent winner. Great general managers do the same thing. They know that sustained superior performance can’t be built on one-shot improvements like restructurings, massive cost reductions, or reorganizations. Sure, they’ll take such sweeping actions if they’re in a situation where that’s necessary or desirable. But their priority is avoiding that kind of situation. And they do that by focusing on the six key tasks that constitute the foundations of every general manager’s job: shaping the work environment, setting strategy, allocating resources, developing managers, building the organization, and overseeing operations.
A version of this article appeared in the July–August 1989 issue of Harvard Business Review.
