GE WORK-OUT - Creating the Spirit of the Start-Up Firm in a Large, Complex One

Two Defining Aspects of the Work-Out

Employees have to be able to make suggestions to their bosses face-to-face.
Employees have to be able to get a response – on the spot, if possible.

Key Benefits of the Work-Out

Reduces bureaucracy
Empowers people
Continuously reinvents ever-more-effective ways of doing business

Work-Out's Four Major Goals

Build Trust. Encouraging employees to speak out critically inside the company about GE and the way they perform their jobs without negative consequences to their careers.
Empower Employees. Capitalizing on employees' knowledge and their unique perspective through granting them more power in exchange for expecting them to take more responsibility for their jobs.
Eliminate Unnecessary Work. Getting employees work smarter, not harder.
Create a New Paradigm for GE. Letting GE employees define and create a boundaryless organization in which the entire workforce works toward common goals. Encouraging employees to identify problems and come up with solutions.

Why Work-Out?

As Jack Welch began to recognize that employees were an important source of brainpower for new and creative ideas, he wanted to create an environment that pushes towards "a relentless, endless companywide search for a better way to do everything we do." The Work-Out program was a way to reduce bureaucracy and give every employee, from managers to factory workers, an opportunity to influence and improve GE's day-to-day operations.

Ultimately, the goal of the Work-Out program was to "clean up" GE, to make workers more productive and processes simpler and more clear-cut. "Work-Out was also designed to reduce, and ultimately eliminate. all of the waste hours and energy that organizations like GE typically expend in performing day-to-day operations."⁴

In Welch's words, Work-Out is meant to help people stop "wrestling with the boundaries, the absurdities that grow in large organizations. We're all familiar with those absurdities: too many approvals, duplication, pomposity, waste."

The Work-Out "in essence turned the company upside down, so that the workers told the bosses what to do. That forever changed the way people behaved at the company."³

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Choosing the Name

The program lacked the name at the start. Because Welch had talked about "working out" the nonsense of GE, and dealing with problems that had to be "worked out", the name Work-Out was chosen.

Making Change Really Happen

In most organizations, change efforts come and go – and rarely make a difference. But at GE, one of the largest companies in the world, one particular change process helped spark a complete transformation – Work-Out. With Work-Out as part of its DNA, GE has become one of the most innovative, profitable, and admired companies on earth.¹

The Work-Out Concept

At its core, Work-Out is a very simple concept based on the premise that those closest to the work know it best. When the ideas of those people, irrespective of their functions and job titles, are solicited and turned immediately into action, an unstoppable wave of creativity, energy, and productivity is unleashed throughout the organization. At GE, Work-Out "Town Meetings" gave the corporation access to an unlimited resource of imagination and energy of its talented employees.

Five Targeted Dimensions of Growth...

Five Sessions...

Briefing the Participants...

Brainstorming...

The Gallery of Ideas...

Generating Action Plans...

The Town Meeting...

Encouraging Lateral Thinking a GE Workout...

Seven Steps Required to Implement Work-Out...

Discover much more in this Smart & Fast Ten3 Mini-course

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