Organization

Transformation

Breakthrough

 

GE

Jack Welch Creates an Extraordinary Organization

 

Vadim Kotelnikov, founder of 1000ventures - personal logo Vadim Kotelnikov

Founder

   

   

Jack Welch advice business quotes

The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited.

All you have to do is tap into that well.

Jack Welch

GE

 

7 Point Program for Transformational Leaderfship Jack Welch - case study Articulate Your Vision Let Values Rule Eliminate Bureaucracy Work-Out Six Sigma at GE Eliminate Boundaries 25 Lessons from Jack Welch GE (case study) Behave like a small company Case Studies Strategies of World-Changing Firms Jack Welch, GE achievements transformational leadership program  

The revolutionary massive changes introduced by Jack Welch worked.

By the mid-1990s GE had become the strongest company in the United States and the most valuable company in the world, as measured in market capitalization.

 

 

 

 

 

Redefining Relationships
between Management and Employees

 The Four Key Goals of GE's Work-Out Meetings

❶ Encourage employees to share their views in a collaborative culture

❷ Vest greater responsibility, power, and accountability with front-line employees

❸ Eliminate wasteful, irrational, and repetitive steps in the work process (which would come to light through employee feedback)

❹ Dismantle the boundaries that prevent the cross-pollination of ideas and efforts.

 

Employee Empowerment

Under Welch's leadership, managers had wide latitude in building their GE units in entrepreneurial fashion.

Determined to harness the collective power of GE employees, Jack Welch redefined also relationships between boss and subordinates. He wrote: "The individual is the fountainhead of creativity and innovation, and we are struggling to get all of our people to accept the countercultural truth that often the best way to manage people is just to get out of their way. Only by releasing the energy and fire of our employees can we achieve the decisive, continuous productivity advantages that will give us the freedom to compete and win in any business anywhere on the globe."

 

   

25 Lessons from Jack Welch

Articulate Your Vision    See Change as an Opportunity

Harness Your People for Competitive Advantage

Make Everybody a Team Player

Simplify    Get Less Formal    Eliminate Bureaucracy

Behave Like a Small Company  >>  Live Speed

GE Work-Out

Goals    5 Targeted Dimensions of Growth    2 Types of Problems

7 Steps    5 Sessions    Success Stories

Keys to Success

Leading Organizational Transformation at GE

What It Takes To Be a Great Corporate Leader  >>  The Role

6 Rules for Successful Leadership

3Ss of Winning    GE Values Guide

7-Point Change Program for Corporate Leadership

Top Management Team    GE Leadership Effectiveness Survey

Integrated Diversity

Create Change  >>  Jack Welch Fires an Ineffective CEO

GE Digital X-Ray Project    GE Equity – Investing in External Ventures

Six Sigma Implementation at GE

Using the Best Practice at GE: The Trotter Scorecard 

   

The Need for Change

Today, GE succeeds in dozens of diverse businesses, and is continuously at the vanguard of change. Some years ago however, in locations throughout GE, local managers were operating in an insulated environment with walls separating them, both horizontally and vertically, from other departments and their workforce. Employee questions, initiatives, and feedback were discouraged.

9 Signs of a Losing Organization

In the new knowledge-driven economy, Jack Welch, the then CEO, General Electric, "viewed this as anathema. He believed in creating an open collaborative workplace where everyone's opinion was welcome."1 He wrote in a letter to shareholders: "If you want to get the benefit of everything employees have, you've got to free them – make everybody a participant. Everybody has to know everything, so they can make the right decisions by themselves."1

The Revolution that Began from the Top

25 Lessons from Jack Welch  Download PowerPoint presentation, pdf e-book

Jack Welch planned to launch a revolution at GE from the day he took over the company and wasted no time in executing his plan. No one in American business had the vision to transform a basically healthy major company, to fix something that wasn't broken.

Welch's revolution began from the top. He made GE leaner, tougher, faster more competitive – with fewer people, fewer business units, few managers, and more leaders. Though to many GE had been an icon, a sacred institution that could not be tampered with, Welch applied a kind of "survival of the fittest" rule of thumb to GE businesses and to GE personnel; those who survived were the ones who were needed.5 For twenty years he led a series of revolutions at GE, seeking to recast a highly bureaucratic, labor-intensive and slow corporate giant into a highly productive entrepreneurial organization that would function with speed, simplicity and passion of a small company. Given GE's size and complexity, it was a heroic task, but Welch knew that to make GE the world's competitive enterprise, transformational change was essential.

Entrepreneurial Leader: 4 Attributes  Download PowerPoint presentation, pdf e-book

 

Change Acceleration Program (CAP)

CAP was implemented by Jack Welch to help drive change throughout the organization. The program started with senior managers, but other managers were also provided with the tools and training they needed to engineer and drive change throughout the company.

GE Values

GE's values are so important to the company, that Jack Welch had them inscribed and distributed to all GE employees, at every level of the company. But before the cards were furnished to the staff, GE had come to consensus on which core values it wanted to cultivate in its employees. Many hours were spent at GE's Leadership Institute and elsewhere deciding on exactly what those values should be.

Integrity

In 1987 GE issued companywide guidelines. It was an 80-page booklet called Integrity: The Spirit and the Letter of Our Commitment. Every employee was required to read the booklet and sign a card that they had read it.

In that booklet, Jack Welch wrote in his Statement of Integrity:

Integrity is a rock upon which we build our business success – and our quality products and services, our forthright relations with customers and suppliers, and ultimately, our winning competitive record. GE's quest for competitive excellence begins and ends with our commitments to ethical conduct.

GE Values Statement says:

While GE has always performed with integrity and values, each business generation expresses those values according to the circumstances of the times. Now more than ever the expression and adherence to values is vital... Moe

Improving Connectivity

Creating a Seamless Link between Strategy, Management, and Employees

Determined to harness the collective power of GE employees, create a free flow of ideas, and redefine relationships between boss and subordinates, Welch developed Work-Out: a series of town hall meetings conducted by GE management and designed to encourage employee feedback, cross-pollination of ideas, and employee empowerment.

"In the Welch-led GE culture, traditional barriers dividing employees, co-workers, and management give way to tethers of interdisciplinary and interdepartmental cooperation."1

Reassessing Performance and Benchmarking Employees Continuously

Jack Welch does a good job of illustrating the need for proactive change management and constant reassessment when he says, "If the rate of change inside an organization is less that the rate of change outside... their end is in sight".

One of the tools used by Welch to ensure constant reassessment and benchmarking is the annual review undertaken by every GE executive and staff member. Once a year, every employee's performance evaluated and awarded a numerical ranking of between 1 and 5. "The implicit understanding is that both the individual and his or her score are moving up or it's time to leave the company."2

 

 

References:

1. Venture Catalyst, Donald L. Laurie

2. It's not the BIG and eats the SMALL... it's the FAST that eats the SLOW, J. Jennings and L.Haughton

3. The GE Work-Out, Dave Ulrich, Steve Kerr, Ron Ashkenas

4. The Welch Way, Jeffrey A. Krames

5. Jack Welch and the GE Way, Robert Slater

6. Winning, Jack Welch and Suzy Welch

7. Jack Welch on Leadership, Robert Slater

 

Redesigning Organization