SaaS Leadership Essentials: What SureSwift Looks for in a Great General Manager

At SureSwift, great leadership isn’t just about managing—it’s about inspiring, connecting, and driving innovation. Enter Amanda McKay, our dynamic VP of People & Operations. In her role, Amanda merges her expertise in talent acquisition with a deep understanding of operational strategy, shaping a leadership style that ensures every business unit thrives.  

Below, we dive into Amanda’s approach to identifying business needs, matching leadership candidates to SureSwift’s core values, and fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation across the company. From her insights into what makes a great general manager (GM) to how she helps businesses navigate challenges, Amanda exemplifies the thoughtful, people-first leadership that propels SureSwift forward.

Meet Amanda, Our VP of People & Operations

Amanda has been with SureSwift for almost two years, starting as Director of People. After about a year, she moved into an expanded executive role covering people and operations.

She says the people role involves working closely on the talent acquisition recruitment cycle—constantly speaking with many people, recruiting, and staying closely connected to SureSwift's leadership team. As that role expands into operations, it becomes about understanding the businesses and working with the teams on a deeper level. Doing so helps her understand the company's overall business operations and what each business unit needs from a leader to succeed. These needs translate into a leadership "persona" she seeks that matches each business unit.

How Amanda Identifies Business Needs

To get this understanding and create these personas, Amanda partners closely with SureSwift's COO, John Austin, as well as with current GMs to gain insight into business operations and overall needs. When the need arises for a GM, she'll look at the strategy in place for the business, identify the growth drivers, and align the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to drive business success.

Daily, Amanda works with each business to understand the challenges and areas of opportunity it faces and how SureSwift can support its leader and team to positively work through them. This, of course, looks different for every business and takes into consideration many factors such as the macroeconomic environment, competitive landscape, or business-specific initiatives and how they're being executed. Another key focus area is metrics, and how each business is tracking certain key performance indicators relevant to its goals.

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The Skills of a Great General Manager

Amanda explains that for every SureSwift leadership candidate, she looks for someone who's results-oriented with the ability to lead cross-functional teams and inspire others. "We view business as an ever-changing and evolving landscape—change is a constant," she adds. "So they must be comfortable and adaptable to work in that environment."

Alignment with SureSwift's core values is also a huge piece, and Amanda notes these values are the foundation for the company's overall operations: “Our values shape who we are, our culture, and how we define success, so ensuring that folks align with them is a key aspect of recruitment for the GM role—and any other role for that matter.”

She says the company tries to be as transparent as possible during the recruitment process, so there's a really clear understanding of the role and expectations. "In other words, as much as we are assessing if a candidate is right for the role, we aim to give candidates a thorough understanding of the opportunity to determine if the role is right for them.”

Matching GMs to SureSwift’s Core Values

When asked for an example of how SureSwift GMs demonstrate the company's core values each day, Amanda reflects: "I sometimes have a hard time turning off thinking about our businesses and the people in them and how we can best support them.”

While she says that all SureSwift businesses and business leaders are inspiring, an example of a newer leader, General Manager of MeetEdgar, Lacey Sheardown, exemplifies SureSwift's core values very well.

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Lacey came to us in 2024, keen to learn more about the General Manager role. She had a career in marketing, an understanding of the space in which MeetEdgar operates, and a true relatability to the product's users. She also really understood the type of organization SureSwift is and was able to clearly articulate why the role and the company presented an intriguing opportunity for her. 

Lacey went through the recruitment process demonstrating not only her knowledge, skill, experience, and business awareness but also in alignment with our core values. Specifically notable was how she demonstrated a Win Together attitude and a genuine desire to collaborate with others, share information, and celebrate team successes. In her time with MeetEdgar and SureSwift, she's stepped into the role in a way that I find both inspiring and validating that she was the right candidate.

For example, in advance of our last leadership meeting, we asked her to prepare a demo of MeetEdgar for the group. The purpose was to give GMs an understanding of what the other businesses do and the products they operate, which helps them have meaningful conversations, share suggestions, and offer feedback on different business challenges.

Lacey ran the demo in a Customer Centric way that made MeetEdgar so relatable to her audience. She showed what the business does and its product capabilities, while really tailoring her delivery to the people in the room. She answered questions in a meaningful way that showed the product's true value. In the demo, Lacey embraced MeetEdgar as if she was MeetEdgar, if that makes any sense. She harnessed the group and took feedback and questions. It was quite engaging! 

It's in these moments when I feel the most inspired, and I love hearing all the different ideas and innovations that come out of sharing and asking questions. 

What Amanda Has Learned About Leadership

When hiring GMs or leaders within SureSwift businesses, Amanda looks for a background tailored to the particular business and its objectives—whether that means someone with a background in sales, marketing, development, or data. This subject matter expertise complements the well-rounded, robust skillset many SureSwift GMs also bring to the table, which means other leaders can reach out to them to ask questions, bounce ideas off of, or take a look at something.

The other key item Amanda looks at when recruiting is diversity. She says there's diversity in leadership teams throughout SureSwift and this quality is top-of-mind when hiring for the entire group, stressing there are many ways to view it—from knowledge, skills, and experience to background, education, interests, education, and more.

"All of these different variables come together to form a really well-rounded group of people," she observes. "The outcome of that group is that there are so many opportunities to learn from and lean on one another. And that's really where the magic happens."

A really cool thing coming from this, Amanda says, is how much it drives creativity and innovation of ideas. A diverse team means being able to solve the same problem in a different, unexpected —probably even better—way because these leaders know their business better than anybody. Of course, it's not always going to be a big awe-inspiring moment or a dramatic change in business direction, but, "It's about trying new things and approaches. A spark of creativity."

Learn more about SureSwift's core values and the diversity throughout our teams.