GE s valuation has grow from 10 billion to 150 billion during Jack s tenure as CEO.
Only 5% of GE executives are nudged out of the company in a typical year. Although, the lower 10% are usually re-deployed.
Jack pioneered 360 degree feedback into GE’s leadership programs which included attaching the findings into the coaching methodology and are directed towards achieving results against the core company objectives.
Jack has effectively raised the bar at GE each year. The grading of people into As, Bs, and Cs was a relentless yearly process. Chopping the bottom 10% each year - The 'poor leader' elimination process is the GE bell curve, called the vitality curve. An annual process with the aim of eliminating or re-deploying people through formulated personnel evaluation each and every year.
Jack helped set up the network of over 5000 people world-wide to improve opportunities and mentoring. Jack understood and acted upon the need for corporations to manage their talent by helping employees to balance work and life.
Rationale:
Jack is one of the greatest recruiters of all time. Jack has personally recruited the top 300 executives of the most valuable corporation in the world. Jack spent 50% of his working time recruiting. Planned the recruitment strategy for a successor 10 years in advance of retirement.
The thing that thrilled Jack was to discover a rising star, to place him in stretch jobs that forced him to grow, to hug him and reward him and sometimes to kick him, to mentor and teach him, to cause him to work harder and achieve more and to have more fun in doing so
GE has maintained their position as a Fortune 1 company longer than any other corporation. In the late 1980 s, GE was considered the single best organization around recruitment and assessment for personnel. GE and Jack did not rest on their success. Jack entrusted an executive in their HR group to seek out an interviewing expert to train GE s top HR professionals to throughly and accurately assess GE officers. GE s program reviewed key acomplishments, Brad Smart, the interviewing expert they retained added several components to the process. Today, the process includes scrutinizing failure and mistakes to a much greater extent. Brad felt that a complete program required the use of a 360 degree interview with subordinates, peers and bosses, both past and present. At GE interviewing subordinates was not part of the program. At first it was considered taboo. Brad convinced them and the 360-degree process brought GE much better insight and the development of executives improved. Further, jack agreed to expand the use of the data and spend one-half day coaching the executive against this rich pot of data.
GE is the poster company of TopGrading. The use of the A , B , and C assessment of talent, coaching and the use of redeployment or firing people who cannot or will not perform at the highest level at their respective job.
Quotations:
'Choosing my successor occupies a considerable amount of thought almost each day' - 10 years before his planned retirement.
'All we can do is bet on the people whom we pick, so my job is picking the right people'
'My job is to get the right players in the field and call the big plays'.
'We cannot promise you employment for life but we will 'make you employable for life'.
About Jack Welch:
And there was a formal and complex matrix for measuring the leaders. A leader could have his head chopped for not delivering on his promise to the bottom line. But that was not the only test. If he would not listen to new ideas or freely exchange new ideas he might find himself in the C class. Driving his people instead of inspiring and leading them placed him in danger. If he could not create a team or empower a team, his bottom line did help him. If he was an autocrat or a dictator, he could kiss himself good-bye. Nor dare he concentrate solely on his next promotion, or think solely in terms of his own plant or company as opposed to GE.
Jack gets personally involved in the selection of the top 300 executives in the company. He says he does it because he is entrusting all or a valuable part of the GE business to those individuals and expecting they will aggressively grow and develop it.
John Frances Welch Jr. was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1935. A 1957 University of Massachusetts graduate, with a B.S. in chemical engineering, Welch continued to pursue his education at the University of Illinois, with M.S. and Ph.D degrees in chemical engineering.
