Thread regarding General Electric Co. layoffs

"Any customer who has ever seen GE rally to tackle a big problem and fix it has seen it in action."

Well, that's the problem with the current culture in my mind. Too many times there's some problem some where, people put on their thespian outfits, do a great act then bask in the glory.

After the fact you're left with the question "How did it get to that point?" Sometimes it's bad luck of course but too often it's due to a lack of efficient effort applied to the problem over time. Something that is very hard to judge. This is where I think GE management fails. That is, judgement to divide up the substantial vs. superficial.

It's very hard to manage one person whose smarter. It's much much harder to manage a dozen or more who are smarter. GE's culture does not do that well.

Jack had some real strengths and some weaknesses. He did some genuine good things in building a culture - workouts and real simplification with multilevel involvement and buy-in. He was very good at managing the analysts, which, honestly, is tough because most of them don't know sh*t about how any of the businesses really succeed or fail in general. Jack passed on at least one fatal flaw to Jeff and that is that he didn't really understand what was important to succeed at consistently driving technology, lost some of his best tech leaders after he targeted downsizing and globalizing engineering teams, stopped building understanding in core areas where we outsourced too much.

Jeff came in and liked Technology, but didn't have a great pack of tech leaders to draw on, didn't know how to find or keep many of the best - didn't understand that it takes a sustained investment to stay on top. that part of the culture was there with Reggie and halfway through Jack, but then started to erode. Tough to get a premium for tech differentiation when you don't make it a sustained priority. Jeff was more about buying and selling than building. so how many acquisitions did we make that we sold off again later? How much sustained development could we have bought instead? final proof for me was 1) hiring 500 software engineers for the new GE Digital in California without having really set the strategy on what they were supposed to be developing for a product, led by the sales guy Bill Ruh. by contrast, Siemens bought UG 10years ago and steadily built it into a juggernaut with a clear vision. and 2) Alstom acquisition - bought a whole company that was virtually bankrupt with huge debt after the EU imposed a bunch of divestitures and employment guarantees, Remember Top Gun? Your ego is cashing checks...etc etc

So my vote would blame = 30% Jack for picking the wrong successor, and leaving him with a company that had been backing away from technology, etc, 70% Jeff because it was still his to pick up and fix - no-one inherits a clean slate. and mostly 100% the Board. the day Jeff came in and said we ought to downplay stock price as the key measure of success, they should have said WHAAAAT? and started to get on his case.

Culp is encouraging - he doesn't seem as egotistical as either Jack or jeff, seems focused on getting the debt under control, seems to be listening to people like Joyce that have proven they understand the business, and has a track record of growing technology.... let's hope for the best

last thing on culture - there is a very real, very palpable core culture that is still there. Any customer who has ever seen GE rally to tackle a big problem and fix it has seen it in action. I still feel it can be recovered and re-invigorated - but it needs continued good leadership to be there

JW prided himself on leadership development and selection. More so than anything.

JW developed and selected JI. Simple.

JI failed because he was unable to figure out the right direction and unable to move quickly. Direction and speed are two things that separate leaders from followers.

JW failed to develop leadership qualities into JI. JW selected a follower for a leadership role. JW should have recognized that earlier and done something about it by, say, 2012.

Hind Sight is 20/20. JW did what was best for the company at that time. The same cannot be said for Jeff. Jeff took a $14 billion surplus from the pension and turn it into a $35 billion debt....that is losing almost the networth of the company. Furthermore, he signed a c-appy deal with Alstom to put the nail in the coffin. Bankruptcy will be on Jeff not Jack. Not to say Jack didn't do anything wrong, but bankruptcy is not on Jack's missteps. Jack's reign was too long ago to even affect the decisions that are made today. People need to wake up.

They know. They know that you know. They know there's no alternative. B--ch as much as you want but there's no alternative. Culp knows there's no alternative.

Perception is everything. Substance is nothing.

Fake it till you make it.

This year's academy award for leadership goes to GE management.

Ecomagination meaningless and an example of how low GE culture had dropped. Just make something up, intangible and hope it brings in the cash. Tangible things sell the rest is just nonsense.

Many employees, particularly those long-tenured, do agree that the company has changed dramatically over the years, for worse.

The fundamental issue is that of a complete and total leadership failure. On many levels. There have been some robust analyses put forth in the media concerning the failings at the very top, and many are valid and painfully true.

However, several comments point to another critically important, pervasive and insidious problem. Indeed, there was a time when the culture of this company was very much different from what it is today. In the past, the company’s culture drove its achievements and propelled it towards global greatness. Today, the company’s culture is one of key reasons behind its unfolding failure.

The company’s original storied culture rewarding talent, deep expertise, experience, focus on product, and enlightened, effective leadership has been altered somewhere along the way to have become a highly-politicized bureaucracy paying lip service to the formally-espoused concept of meritocracy. The ranks of senior management have been saturated over the years with people without true life and commercial experience, who move from a role to role on an accelerated timetable, failing to develop necessary competencies, and whose sole goal is upward progression. There are many home-grown senior managers, directors and VPs who have been installed into positions of rapidly-growing responsibility straight out of college, never delivered a real product, never ran a P&L, never developed an outside perspective allowing any sort of critical and honest introspection on the company’s culture and way of doing business. And, with many a so-called-leader having clearly no aptitude for, or even an ability or willingness to understand, true leadership. In addition, people’s work and achievements are now often rewarded for reasons mostly detached from their true contributions to the company. Institutionalized nepotism and centrally-driven activism prevail. The concept of merit and commensurate opportunity has been purposefully and fashionably contemporized.

Over time, those factors have steadily eroded the original culture, brought it to the breaking point, and created numerous systemic inefficiencies that used to hide behind abundant profits. Now, in tandem with depleted revenue streams, those cracks have fractured the company wide open and exposed the rot within.

There are many good, talented, dedicated, hard-working employees – and yes, including some managers and leaders – who have given up their health, life, time with family to perform up to par and above. The true pillars of this organization, those carrying the load, silent heroes. Their hearts are crying out in disbelief and agonizing pain for what they have seen as replacement of excellence with mediocrity and substance with appearances as self-perpetuating and reinforcing values of this modern and now deeply-entrenched culture. They view them as representing and facilitating a gross misappropriation by the entitled class of their sacrifice and deepest pride in working for this historically-storied company.

Unless these issues have been addressed systemically and resolved, the grossly impaired culture will have been one of chief factors behind the company’s resultant demise.

"merit"

No one defines that now. It's just an opinion.

Let me use the words of the great Mark Levin who said that no matter what people say about the competency, George W. Bush was the nicest man you could ever meet. Well, I can tell you that JI was too! And that was his job, to smile and shake hands with politicians and get GE nice and fat government contracts!

Culture under Welch was distinctly different than Immelt. Welch knew the leadership staff of each business and communicated regularly and frankly. He held people accountable for not delivering and he focused on operational discipline. Immelt assumed all this would continue and focused on making deals-almost none of which were successful. Bottom line as a 30+ yr employee-Culture was real, Immelt broke it.

well, since the whole concept of "meritocracy" was originally conceived as a joke, GE bought into it hook line and stinker.

Culture - the kick the lower 10% out of their job every year culture perhaps? - Neutron Jack's only claim to management philosophy fame - and it falls over as soon as any sort of cliques form.

Welch start the financial manipulations. The buck starts/stops with him. And the culture is all bs

The fact that Welch had 3 strong candidates to replace him, Immelt, Nardeli, McNerney - who had at least run several big segments and Immelts "best" choice was Flannery-who was a Corp Audit staff member with a short stint at Healthcare tells you all you need to know about GE's leadership culture. Under Immelt, it deteriorated and that is on him and the board not Welch.

The "culture" was lost due to two important factors in my opinion. No accountability and political correctness. If someone didn't do a good job, that person and their mistakes were either simply overlooked or the person was moved to another "job title". Once there, their incompetence could flourish anew. Top management was, and still is, under pressure to hire and promote individuals that are politically correct. Not so much for their expertise in their field. Then the person is shuffled around until, of course, the "Peter Principle" kicks in.

Ignorant to blame JW after 16 years of a Salesman running the company. I’d admit the one biggest mistake JW made was selecting Immelt but the rest is on him. His ego then and now was all about him... hopefully when the dust settles he and a few others will be held accountable...a term we throw around today but as yet have not seen anyone reap what they sowed.

Great question! Probably no right or wrong answer here. JW built a strong diversified conglomerate that was a Wall Street Juggernaut in the Bull Market days but also was somewhat impervious to market downturns because it was diversified. The bad culture JW is responsible for is the corporate executive country club entitlement mentality, that in his early days he never would have accepted and kept everyone accountable. I think in his later years as he realized he's days were number as a CEO, he fell prey to his own ego and sycophants and other s---ing up to him and telling him how wonderful and great he was (Jeff Immelt and his 3rd wife cases in point). He also bread the bad culture of hand picking "the chosen ones" and sending them through express lane learning at Crotonville and promoting them too fast (e.g. every 2 years) before they even got their feet wet or understood the business they were running, There are too numerous examples to name of these types running GE today, with the exception of Dave Joyce. Unfortunately Two-jets Jeff Immelt took this bad culture to new hyper-level when he set up his GE Fraternity and allowed all his cronies into the private country club! Now we have, for the most part leaders, with no deep knowledge of the business they are running and bevy of County Club Corporate Executives too afraid to hold each other accountable because it may be uncomfortable the next country club function or their spouses bridge games may be upset.