Ge Leadership Quotes

GE’s Borch, for one, read the profit-and-loss statements of all his departments every year and told them to stop spending on paper clips. Budgeting and control were at least one part of leadership, but such immersion in detail has its obvious limitations.

If one wishes to be a great project manager, one needs to talk less and write more.

GE Beliefs.” A sample belief is the explicit recognition for the need to “Deliver results in an uncertain world,” further described by three key behavioral anchors: We act with urgency, and play to win. We have the courage to make bets others won’t. We use expertise and judgment to manage risk while always acting with integrity.8 Note

Krishnamoorthy believes that resetting culture is one of the most important skills the organization possesses, noting that GE has done it several times in the past, and will continue in the future.

Each major marketplace disruption calls for a reset of culture,” Raghu Krishnamoorthy, GE’s chief learning officer, explained. “Even though it is hard to re-create for the new context, if you don’t you will not have the ability to survive.

If you went to bed last night as an industrial company, you are going to wake up in the morning as a software and analytics company. The notion that there’s a huge separation between the industrial world and the world of digitalization, analytics, and software— those days are over…. It’s about transitions and pivots and change; these things never happen in a moment or a day or a month but they sneak up on you and they happen suddenly and there are three changes that we are investing in that are important for our future. The first one’s the merger of physics and analytics…. The second big transition is that every customer in the industrial world now knows how to measure and value outcomes…. And the last thing is that it’s not just about GE, it’s about the extended enterprise.

Welch and Conaty had implemented a 20-70-10 performance ranking system, where GE employees were sorted into three groups: the top 20 percent, the middle 70 percent, and the bottom 10 percent. The top workers were lionized and rewarded with choice assignments, leadership training programs, and stock options. The bottom 10 percent were fired. Under Immelt, the forced distribution was softened and the crisp labels of “top 20 percent,” “middle 70 percent,” and “bottom 10 percent” were replaced with euphemisms: “top talent,” “highly valued,” and “needs improvement.

General Electric was the largest company in the world in 2004, worth a third of a trillion dollars. It had either been first or second each year for the previous decade, capitalism’s shining example of corporate aristocracy. Then everything fell to pieces. The 2008 financial crisis sent GE’s financing division—which supplied more than half the company’s profits—into chaos. It was eventually sold for scrap. Subsequent bets in oil and energy were disasters, resulting in billions in writeoffs. GE stock fell from $40 in 2007 to $7 by 2018. Blame placed on CEO Jeff Immelt—who ran the company since 2001—was immediate and harsh. He was criticized for his leadership, his acquisitions, cutting the dividend, laying off workers and—of course—the plunging stock price. Rightly so: those rewarded with dynastic wealth when times are good hold the burden of responsibility when the tide goes out. He stepped down in 2017. But Immelt said something insightful on his way out. Responding to critics who said his actions were wrong and what he should have done was obvious, Immelt told his successor, “Every job looks easy when you’re not the one doing it.

Praise for HOT SEAT “Jeff has delivered the most insightful perspective on GE over a remarkable period of change and growth with the same intellectual energy, self-reflection, and bold leadership that he used in running the company for more than sixteen years.

By my logic, GE would have been much better off committing not $200 million, but $20 million divided by five to ten different teams, each with a hypothesis to prove about the future of digital at GE. Every several months, leadership would evaluate their progress, granting more funding to the teams whose work was proving their hypotheses about what customers needed from GE in their digital future. Some teams would get cut, or pivot to new hypotheses.

read Jack Welch’s books about General Electric and his management approach and never encounter the phrase “GE jerks.” Yet that is a term I first heard from a now-retired GE senior executive who reported directly to Mr. Welch.

You reveal your character by what you do with what you have.

EYou reveal your character by what you do with what you have.

The birthright consists of the material inheritance. The firstborn usually received a greater share from the father because he was expected to become the paterfamilias, having ultimate responsibility for all members of the extended family (e.g., mother, unwed sisters) as well as for the continuing care of the deceased. With this greater responsibility came greater resources. When Jacob negotiates to purchase the birthright in Ge 25:29–34, it is not clear whether the additional responsibilities come along with that or not. It is likely that this incident involves only the extra share of the inheritance, while leadership in the clan is given in Ge 27. ◆