In management roles, what are the challenges that you have faced?

For me particularly the greatest difficulty was in understanding what was going on, and how people's effort was contributing to the company's goals. There always seems to be a lot of activity on individual tasks, and project managers will take strong interest in making sure that their project is on track, but higher up the chain of management I have always had trouble seeing where all the pieces fit together.

I would love if it was possible to have attributed to everything that is done in a company an array with scores that will indicate how well that effort is a fit for the company's goals. Then it would be simply a matter of having sensible metrics and an easy way to get the information. I imagine that's what KPIs are supposed to be doing, but somehow there doesn't seem to exist an easy to implement strategy for making them effortlessly intuitive and useful.