Customer Reviews

The New General Manager's Performance Cockpit

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Its a must to read for all aspiring to be a General Manager in their organization. The Performance Cockpit bring you back to the reality of the corporate world. It offers tremendous practical insights into management and leadership. Christo's experience and observation could save you many man hours of learning on the the job and understanding potential pitfalls of leading people and managing upwards.

This is an excellent, easy-to-read guide to excellence in management. The Performance Cockpit book should be a required reading for all new managers and also for senior managers who think that may need to freshen up their skills once in a while. The author, Mr. Christos Kartalis, is an old business pro, and he shows this in his book. It is profound, that everything in the book has been implemented, tested, and proven to work. Kartalis presents many of the proactive approaches of practicing General Managers, offering succinct and straightforward advice on each. Although he avoids the boredom of theory, his advice is well grounded in it. This serves the new manager quite well by not complicating his quest for knowledge with unnecessary complications. Therefore, the book can be easily used as a reference by busy people and this will be greatly appreciated.

I personally recommend this book for any new manager or anyone interested in pursuing a career in management.

Athens, October 13, 2007

Basil N. Tsaras,
President and Managing Director,
Prothesis Business Consultants SA

"The New General Manager's Performance Cockpit" is a terrific distillation of Christos Kartalis' insights into successful management.

Even though he's still relatively young, the author has had an enormously successful career. What has allowed him to stand out, in part, is his ability to see the big picture.

"The Performance Cockpit" share this insight. New general managers often come into their jobs with wonderful preparation but not always with a lot of experience in putting their preparation into practice. This book provides that last piece of the puzzle, showing how new general managers can apply their skills, talents, and knowledge in the systems-based stucture of many large corporations.

Many of the areas Kartalis highlights are critical to successful management in the 21st Century. Understanding benchmarks and corporate expectations, navigating and managing change, controling the pace of change, setting appropriate targets, responding to feedback, allocating resources and investments...Kartalis shows how to manage all these areas in the larger context in which a general manager must function.

This is an excellent book. New general managers will come away from reading it with confidence that they can do the job. Experienced managers will benefit from the reminders of what is really important in the jobs.

In "Performance Cockpit", Christos Kartalis has assembled a powerful & practical toolkit for general managers. Many general management books elaborate on business theory, really few can advise on the executional aspect. If, once in your business life you didn't hit your annual targets, read Chapter 17 : "7 systems to Beat your Targets ...", and you will have the perfect roadmap, not to miss any target again.
Christos Kartalis has a unique way to combine concept, strategy & execution. The outcome is not a pile of thoughts & documents, but, with his "systems & principles" based approach, creates a framework that drives to sustainable success (see the "pressure mapping" system in Chapter 12 as a perfect example).
What is special to this book is that it comes from real life & an active general manager, not from a general manager theorist. Every system included has been torture-tested in real business life. I have witnessed that -since I had the opportunity to work with Christos in the past-, and believe me, this book can be read as a diary from Christos's colleagues.