Others may be more proactive seeking to anticipate events and shape outcomes. Skilled labour is a scarce and complex commodity. People are not machines - they have their own strengths and frailities, ambitions and insecurities. At the level of the firm these become lost. Senior managers may be too removed from the mass of employees.
Employees become head count.
Some of the know-how is general and a good general manager can develop these abilities. The sourcing, placement, support and adaptation of employees at work is interpersonally and administratively demanding. Employees join a firm, they leave a firm. Some may be dismissed. Some may be made redundancy as the jobs for which they are employed have ceased to exist in whole or in part.