Talent Development in the News

Excerpt from Jack: Straight from the Gut by Jack Welch with John A. Byrne

(Pg 189-190)

Suddenly, "Finding a Better Way Every Day" wasn’t just a slogan. It was the essence of boundaryless behavior, and it defined our expectations. After years of working on hardware of GE—the restructuring, acquisitions, and dispositions—boundaryless was at the heart of developing what we would later call "social architecture" of the company.

These were the core values of GE that would set us apart.

We had to insist on excellence and be intolerant of bureaucracy. We had to search for and apply the best ideas regardless of their source. We had to prize global intellectual capital and the people who provided it. We had to be passionately focused on driving customer success. At the same time, over 5,000 employees worked at Crotonville over a three-year period to hammer out a value statement. We considered those values so important that we put them on laminated cards that we all carry.

GE Values

All of us... Always with unyielding integrity...

• Are passionately focused on driving customer success
• Live Six Sigma Quality . . . ensure that the customer is always its first beneficiary . . . and use it to accelerate growth
• Insist on excellence and are intolerant of bureaucracy
• Act in a boundaryless fashion . . . always search for and apply the best ideas regardless of their source
• Prize global intellectual capital and the people that provide it . . . build diverse teams to maximize it
• See change for the growth opportunities it brings . . . e.g, digitization
• Create a clear, simple, customer-centered vision . . . and continually renew and refresh its execution
• Create an environment of “stretch”, excitement, informality and trust . . . reward improvements . . . and celebrate results
• Demonstrate . . . always with infectious enthusiasm for the customer . . the "4-E's" of GE leadership: the personal Energy to welcome and deal with speed of change . . . the ability to create an atmosphere that Energizes others . . . the Edge to make difficult decisions . . . and the ability to consistently Execute.

In short, we wanted to create a learning culture that would make GE much more than the sum of its parts—so much more than a conglomerate. From my first day as CEO, I knew we were more than a portfolio of disconnect businesses. Early on, I came up with a term—"integrated diversity"—in an effort to communicate the advantage GE got from sharing ideas across businesses. That term didn't work. It was "businessese." It wasn’t special or human enough.

Amazing what a couple of words can or can't do.

Of course, a word or a phrase wasn't enough. We had to back it up with a system that would make it happen. Primarily, we had to change how we paid our best. The prior system made the annual bonus the big reward. It was based on how your individual business performed.

If you did well—even if the overall company did poorly—you got yours.

I couldn't stand the idea of the company sinking and some business making it to shore. The compensation system didn’t support the behavior I wanted. If we wanted every business to be a laboratory for ideas, we needed to pay people in a way that would reinforce the concept.