What a General Manager Does, Salary, and the English of Direttore Generale
The direttore generale is the most senior employee in an Italian company: the person who makes the organisation execute. In English the correct rendering is general manager, and in most mid-market companies the role pays between 100,000 and 300,000 euro.
What the job is, in one line
The general manager turns a decided strategy into an operating result. Where the managing director owns the mandate, the general manager owns the machine: the plan, the cadence, the numbers each function has to hit, and the escalation when they do not.
A typical week
- Weekly operating review with function heads, against a single set of numbers
- Unblocking the two or three decisions that are stuck between departments
- Customer or supplier escalation that needs someone with authority
- Preparing what the board or the managing director sees next
- One structural item that improves the company beyond this quarter
Salary by company size, Italy 2026
How to say direttore generale in English
General manager is the accurate translation. Managing director is not: in the United Kingdom a managing director is a board appointee equivalent to the Italian amministratore delegato, so using it on an English business card implies legal powers the direttore generale usually does not hold. For a foreign parent reading an org chart, that distinction is the one that causes confusion.
When companies bring one in from outside
Two situations dominate: a founder who still holds every decision and needs an operator between themselves and the organisation, and a foreign group that owns an Italian company and needs someone accountable on the ground. Both can be covered on an interim basis while the permanent search runs.
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