Last year, I spoke about developing “growth leaders.” Since every Company initiative begins with people and metrics, we recognized that our leadership development had to change. It had to match our growth aspirations.
We studied great growth businesses at GE and in the world to develop and train leaders with new, growth-oriented leadership traits. Our leaders are now trained and evaluated against five capabilities. They must:
- Create an external focus that defines success in market terms.
- Be clear thinkers who can simplify strategy into specific actions, make decisions and communicate priorities.
- Have imagination and courage to take risks on people and ideas.
- Energize teams through inclusiveness and connection with people, building both loyalty and commitment.
- Develop expertise in a function or domain, using depth as a source of confidence to drive change.
In addition, we are changing the GE culture by changing career expectations. We expect our people to spend more time in a business or on a job. Our teams are both excited and apprehensive about these changes.
Here’s how I see it. In a big company, people can be seduced by breadth. You can imagine a career where you could do, literally, everything. But then you end up accomplishing nothing.
We owe it to our talent to teach them how to lead and grow businesses. This requires knowledge and time. In each business, we are creating 20 to 30 “pillar” jobs. These are key customer-facing or change-oriented assignments where the duration should be at least four to five years. With this time horizon, a leader can make his or her own bets and live with the consequences.
We know that pillar jobs work. They have been critical in the development of our best growth businesses and leaders. If you want to run a business in GE in the future, you will have done a pillar job.
Dave Nissen, CEO of Consumer Finance, is at the top of the list of GE growth leaders. Dave took Consumer Finance global in 1993; today it has $151 billion in assets, $121 billion of them outside the U.S. Dave has strong external focus and is a step ahead of trends and the competition. He is a clear thinker, with simple priorities shared across a diverse global enterprise. He has imagination, and Consumer Finance is the Company’s leader in marketing. He is inclusive, with more than 70% of his employees outside the U.S. And Dave knows the domain. He has had the same job for 11 years, been promoted four times as the business has grown, and is still leading and having fun.
We also learned the value of growth traits from several newcomers to GE. With Amersham, we “acquired” Sir William Castell. We made Bill the leader of our healthcare business and he has had a massive impact. Bill hit our financial targets and adopted the process skills that are part of GE. But he has taught us about setting technical priorities and creating value in the healthcare industry. Because of Bill, we are creating a more customer-focused Company.
With Universal, we “acquired” Ron Meyer and Stacey Snider. This team knows how to make hard decisions on “soft” ideas. They are keeping the best of Universal’s culture and adding GE capability to make the entire NBC Universal team more effective. As a result, the synergies between Universal and NBC are broader and deeper than we had imagined.
I am proud of the GE team. They have courage, passion and determination. They embrace change. It is the honor of my life to lead them.
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