A career at GE – 15 observations

1. Permanent and temporary are interchangeable. Years ago, my first management award was for helping to build a new assembly line. My second management award, a few months later, was for removing that line in record time. You have to stay flexible.
2. Making a good decision quickly is better than a perfect one after all the meetings. We spend a lot of time discussing whether one path is better than the other. All the good ones will work fine. Select one and move forward.
3. The brand matters. We’re GE and almost every other name is a distraction. When asked what they bought or own, our customers always say GE. We should listen to them.
4. ‘If you build it they will come’ is not true. Sorry Ray Kinsella. If no one knows about it, it doesn’t exist. The key to our business is simple: Develop great stuff and tell people about it.
5. Practice, Practice, Practice. Rehearsals and training are not just for actors and athletes. Everything we do needs a warm-up and practice. All those great performers we have observed have worked hard to make it look easy.
6. Languages are an undervalued skill. So much additional insight can be learned when being able to speak with your customers or suppliers in their own language.
7. Media is not linear. Don’t spread your money too thin. You need high frequency, whatever the ‘reach’, to make sure your messages break through.
8. Use logic to challenge logic. Use emotion to challenge emotion. If someone is passionate about something, don’t fight with numbers – get better passion. For the others, get better numbers.
9. Pay attention to the details. During the last 10 years there was a push to remove many processes that were thought bureaucratic. I’m glad we seem to be coming back around to doing the hard work.
10. Urgent shouldn’t beat Important. There are always requests, interruptions, and IMs that need an answer right away – at the expense of doing the things that will really make a difference.
11. The best way to challenge an opinion is with the voice of a customer. When faced with a strong opinion from a business leader, it is rarely effective to argue. Listen to what a customer has to say.
12. A great product with a lousy name will succeed. A lousy product with a great name won’t succeed. It’s all about the product. Not the name. And I’m the brand guy.
13. Sometimes good ideas sound better when they come from an outsider. Especially when it involves major change. When you pay for an expert, people tend to show up for the report out.
14. A complicated chart is not a good thing. Work backwards. First write down your whole script, then add visuals to magnify the story. Start with the story not the slide.
15. Do great work, whatever it takes. If you need extra resources to do it, get the money and people you need. No one ever raves about lousy work that came in under budget.

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