Jack Welch's five planning strategies for organizational leadership

General Electric Five Planning Strategies

Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric (GE) is known as one of the most intriguing, yet intelligent, corporate leaders of our time. During his reign at GE, his primary goal was to make the company "the world's most competitive enterprise." He believed that he needed a revolution to transform this dream into reality. For Welch, this revolution implied waging war on the GE's old ways of doing business and reinventing the firm from top to bottom. Based on Jack Welch's advice and others within the videos, this essay will discuss five planning strategies I would implement as the project manager of a diverse team selected to deliver a new technology initiative for the current organization. The paper will also reflect on how these strategies may align with the mission and goals of the organization.

In the video, Welch emphasizes the concept of motivation. He says, "as a leader, I should give people self-confidence as by far, it is the most vital thing that I can do." Such empowerment is predicted to make people act positively. According to Welch, a mixture of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators serves a perfect formula for motivation as a whole. In the videos, the approach has been described as a differentiation strategy (Suseno, 2010). Specifically, Welch brands it 20-70-10 in describing this people differentiation strategy, and he points out that at times, it might seem cut-throat. The 20-70-10 numbers represent percentages of the staff population categorized into three based on job performance. Here, 20 is the leading twenty percent, 70 is the group comprising of the middle seventy percent, and 10 is the group composed of the bottom ten percent performers (Moore, 2014). After this classification, Welch recommends that as a leader, I need to shower the top performers with increased gifts and compensation in the form of training, stock options, and praise. According to Welch, different individuals value different motivators; however, empowerment is the underlying concept of motivation.

The second strategy that the videos recommend is "do not manage, instead, lead the change" (Suseno, 2010). At GE, Jack Welch nurtured a culture of learning. He achieved this by setting forth a set of key assumptions, norms, values, understandings and encouraging all staff members to participate in his vision. As a group leader, Welch recommends that I should initiate this culture by knocking down communication boundaries and including all organizational levels in idea sharing. For instance, after making all associates part of the conversation at GE, Welch began to implement the best ideas, regardless of where they came from or who they are. Lastly, under this strategy, I need to follow up to ensure that the ideas are implemented properly and functioning as originally intended. While creating a learning culture, Welch says that I should make searching for new ideas a priority, hold idea-sharing meetings regularly and provide rewards to employees who shared their ideas in a candid manner. Besides, idea sharing, Welch believes that I need to respond to the questions raised by my followers. This is reflected in one of his quotes, "treasure and nourish the voice and dignity of every person" (Suseno, 2010). As a leader, having such an admiring attitude towards my followers will help to develop the culture of learning and respect that Welch was successful in creating. In combination, these things, according to Welch, would make employees feel responsible for the success of the organization.

Another strategy that Welch advocates for is to build a boundaryless behavior. At GE, Welch initiated a focus on "integrated diversity" (Suseno, 2010). By waging a war for a boundaryless company, Welch implied an open environment, free idea sharing and friendly towards seeking new ideas regardless of people's origins. By instituting such an environment, I would eliminate all barriers to customer services, sales, marketing, manufacturing and other departments. Such an environment would help eliminate group labels like "hourly," "management" or "salaried" that pose a great challenge for individuals working together in the company (Suseno, 2010). In the video, Welch tells a story about how we can leverage best practices by boundaryless behavior. While at GE, he insisted that the company only took individuals who are not boundaryless out of the job. Moreover, he dismissed people who are self-centered, turf-oriented and who were not searching for new ideas, as he believed they did not belong to the organization. One of the best ways to implement the change would be through the integration model. Welch suggests that this model would guide the actions of managers responsible for integrating the new technology. This would start from the control of the technology to realigning with the organizational vision and eliminating "blockers" to implementing the new program (Moore, 2014).

The fourth strategy as recommended by Jack Welch is innovative leadership style. He demonstrated the practices of enabling others, modeling the way and inspiring a shared vision by both his actions and words. He demonstrated these principles perfectly that it seem difficult to separate his actions by these principles because his actions properly fit into these principles. Welch argues that I should constantly try to model the way and inspire a vision of where the organization should go by challenging the status quo and enabling my followers. To enable others, I need to create an informal climate with a flatter hierarchy and less bureaucracy. Welch's belief in people and their diverse complexities, and his sincere desire to better and teach others is an outstanding leadership lesson for me as a leader.