Ge’s Talent Machine: the Making of a Ceo

In his analysis of companies that are able to achieve greatness, James Collins identifies the role of a “Level 5” leader as instrumental in the transformation. Collins identifies this type of leader as an individual “who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will” (21). While they are willful and fearless, these leaders are also modest and humble. The leader is less interested in personal glorification and is more interested in the performance of the company. They are intensely driven towards building a successful company that is capable of continuing its success in their absence. In his analysis of companies, he identified that all good companies that became great had Level 5 leaders at the help when they transformed. The leaders are interested in building up their successors such that the company continues on a successful path. This is in contrast with leaders who are interested in the short-term success of a company during their tenure. Level 5 leaders are not concerned “with their own reputation for personal greatness” (Collins 26). Rather, they are willing to share credit for their success with colleagues and successors. Under egocentric leaders, Collins noted that companies would achieve particularly strong growth but they would fall apart immediately after the leader’s exit. However, Level 5 leaders seek to obtain consistent results by finding the best people and creating a

Analyzing GE’s corporate-level strategy from 2001 – present with Jeff Immelt as CEO, GE focuses on the growth and development platforms. Technology is the key driving force for GE’s future and growth. Advancements in industries such as energy, health and aviation fueled demand for cleaner and more efficient energy production. GE identified new markets with potential high-growth that offered attractive returns through strategic mergers and acquisitions. As CEO, Jeff Immelt established a process for identifying projects that offered attractive growth potential which were then nurtured and treated as special projects or initiatives that were not subject to strict budget constraints. Immelt introduced GE’s three strategic imperatives as: (1) sustaining its strong business model, (2) strengthening the business portfolio, and (3) driving its growth initiatives. www.ge.com

Contemporary globalization of businesses and growing global market competition has made effective human resource planning as one of the major strategies to forge ahead and remain proactive. It can be said that an organization 's success lies to a great extent to the knowledge, skills, creativity, and dedication of its workforce. Every aspect of an organization needs human capital to drive its activities or operations to achieve individual strategic goals and objectives towards its purpose of existence, growth, and competitive status. Companies can compete at all levels of the marketplace through improved commitment not only through creativity, innovation, and research, but also human resource development (Truong, Heijden, & Rowley, 2010). In this regard, the human resource planning is needed to ensure a systematic analysis of human resource needs so that the right quantity and quality of employees are always available when required. Fundamentally, organizations are looking for the best people that would help drive them to their desired destination of achieving their missions. Therefore, it is important to develop human resource strategies to support organizational strategies, through measures such as forecasting human resource requirements, and effective strategic staffing. Technically, an organization 's mission, goals, and objectives drive its strategy and human resource (HR) and staffing strategy in an interactive manner. The purpose of this

For an organization to continually grow, innovation must be embedded in its culture. Innovation is a behavior that is required to be a part of every employee’s job. This necessitates an organization to present its employees with platforms wherein they can express their ideas such as the LIG program, as in the case of General Electric, to deliberate organic growth day in and day out. Innovation is effectively advertized in an organization where managers individually and collectively lead by example by way of their behavior, their

The theories applied to Steve Jobs have opened my mind to realise how important effective leadership styles are to organisations. A lesson learnt from Steve’s leadership qualities is that a leader can adapt different style of leadership and this makes a leader more effective and efficient. The late Apple boss was a master of employing various strategies to adapt to differing scenarios and situations. Steve Jobs did not exhibit a single rhetorical style, but rather altered it depending on the situation and yet still managed to deliver a constant message to support his company’s

* Technical Leadership – Immelt identified technology as a key driver of GE’s future growth and emphasized the need to speed up the diffusion of new technologies within GE and turn the corporate R&D into an intellectual house.

Detailed examination of the impact Jack Welch has had as CEO over the past twenty years reveals a leadership style that is the driving force behind a

People are the key to business success. However nowadays of business this is often neglected and people are seen to be a necessary expense. A successful business does not just rely on a person’s power instead it involves continuous effective teamwork and communication. Storey (1995) defines that human resource management is an individual approach to employment management which seeks to achieve competitive advantage through the strategic deployment of a highly committed and capable workforce, using an integrated array of cultural, structural and personnel techniques.

Jack Welch joined General Electric in 1971 where he created a new organization based on increased efficiency and less bureaucracy increasing the value of the organization during his term 4,000% (Bloom, 2013). His leadership led to the creation of GE Workout that consisted of a system of meetings or steps, a problem can be solved and decisions made rapidly, eliminating bureaucracy (Bloom, 2013). The five steps included Step 1: Problem identification, Step 2: Team development, Step 3: Town meeting, Step 4: Upper management decision, and Step 5: Sponsorship. As shown in Figure 1, Work-out was the

Human Resources constitute as one of the most imperative components of any organization, be it small scale business or a large conglomerate. Some of the key functions of the Human

A rapidly changing business environment due to technological changes and the impacts of globalization has resulted in shift of human resources paradigms (Khan, 1997). In every organization

     When Jack Welch was named CEO of General Electric, Welch saw a company in trouble even though the business world saw GE as an intrinsically healthy corporation, secure in its position as a world industrial leader. Welch knew that the company was too large to fail yet GE was too unwieldy to adapt for further growth. The changes he instituted restructured and revolutionized GE and made Welch the most respected CEO in business today. After reading the book there were three parts that really stood out for me.

GE was entering a new generational era, one where technology is at the forefront of growth and adaptation. Immelt identified Technology as one of GE’s major drivers for future growth which was signaled by his expansion of GE’s R&D budgets. He shifted the importance of Technology within GE by focusing on the R&D projects that offered large scale market potential, reffered to as “Imagination breakthroughs”.

Jack Welch’s vision of what GE was possible of gave the company a vision for twenty years while he was the CEO and chairman. He states, “leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.” (Winning, pg 67) He not only allowed for employees to stretch, but demanded it. In teaching workers to stretch Welch knew that workers “may fail. In fact, they probably will fail. But stretching, and stretching the business, is going to improve performance results.” (Jack Welch on Leadership, pg 105) He also states that “only by setting the performance bar high did it become possible to discover people’s capabilities.” Jack Welch’s emphasis on candor and breaking the bureaucracy of modern business separated him from his contemporaries. He excited others of the possibility of being the biggest and best company in the world and rewarding his best employees that shared the values of GE. According to FORTUNE Editorial Director Geoffrey Colvin In "The Ultimate Manager, Welch leads the annals of management history not for anticipating the new world's changes ahead, but for acting on them: "His great achievement is that having seen it, he faced up to the huge, painful changes it demanded, and made them faster and more emphatically than anyone else in business. He led managers into this new world, which we still inhabit, and just as important, he showed business

• Immelt hoped to adjust organizational structure of GE from the cold, results-oriented focus of Jack Welch, to a more open and less hard-edged architecture. He believed that the major changes that he would initiate at GE would be a result of the changing environment that GE faced and the shifting priorities that it faced.