The Two Sides of the GE Coin: Grunt Work and Creativity

Jeffrey Immelt is working hard to build the greatest business of all time, and I think he has a chance to make it happen. He's CEO of a little company called GE.

Under former CEO, Jack Welch, GE rose to unprecedented heights through a fanatical focus on generating sustainable, profitable growth by buying businesses and applying the same management approach over and over again. Over the years he was CEO (1981 - 2001), Welch developed concepts such as "boundarylessness organizations" where ideas flow between business units as effortlessly as messages flow through e-mail, "we'll be number one or number two in the industry or we'll get out," and Six Sigma, which is like quality improvement on steroids. From light bulbs to turbines to financial capital, The GE Way was to cut out waste, improve quality and increase sales. GE hit its goals with relentless consistency.

When Jeffrey Immelt became CEO he quickly realized that GE was too big to buy its way to significant growth. He understood that future profitable growth would have to happen organically. That is, he would have to grow the business internally rather than adding on significant revenue through acquisitions. It's not that he stopped buying. It's that he bought companies that would generate their growth like a new tree planted in your backyard grows over time. In one week he spent $14 Billion for Vivendi Universal and $10 Billion for British medical-imager Amersham. (Source: Fortune magazine April 5, 2004) Essentially, Jeffrey Immelt returned GE to its roots as in Thomas Edison, founder of the company that eventually became GE. These two acquisitions were different than most of the others before them. These were companies steeped in creativity and innovation.

As Jerry Useem wrote in the Fortune article, "The companies Immelt is buying are slowing down earnings growth meaning that Immelt isn't buying growth so much as he's buying the ability to grow." In other words, Immelt is creating a new GE, one built on creativity and grunt work.

An interesting new book called, The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida, talks about the rising percentage of people who earn their income through their creative abilities. He points out how the world has moved from the industrial age to the information age to the creative age.

Can people in your organization take a blank sheet of paper and begin to craft an idea that would add value to your target market? Can they implement that idea with relentless focus and constant improvement in a way that generates profitable, sustainable growth?

If they can, you are building the business of the future. It simply won't be enough to be able to out execute your competition or buy them out. Unless you're developing the creative capacity of your work force, you will be left behind. It's this duality of creating more value and executing the details of delivering the value that forms the foundation of great companies in the future.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

Accelerate Update This section is always current to the current month

I suppose every book changes an author's life to a certain degree. My first book, which was self-published in 1995, was called Inside Out: A Catalyst for Conscious Living. It's out of print now for a number of good reasons. The layout, which yours truly did, looks like something a first grader could do today. And the ideas are very theoretical, which doesn't fit my approach anymore. However, I read the book a few months ago, and I was pleased by how clearly I had explained my early thoughts on improving performance.

My second book, Corporate Catalysts: How to Make Your Company More Successful, Whatever Your Title, Income, or Authority was published in 2005 by Career Press. That book was a step forward in clarifying my ideas on improving performance and understanding how to write a whole book. It's one thing to dream about getting a book contract and another thing to write a 70,000 word manuscript.

My third book, ACCELERATE: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Momentum, which was published in May 2007 by Kaplan Publishing, has changed my business dramatically. Up until that book was published, I mostly did projects for four companies: McDonald's, Marriott, GSD&M, and Toyota. In the past 12 months, I've worked with business owners, executives, and managers within dozens of small, medium, and massive organizations in more than 20 industries ranging from boats to banks to software to financial services to trucking to lighting to home healthcare to hospitals to optometrists. It's been an exciting adventure.

If you want to see my speaking calendar for 2008, which we'll try to update every two weeks, please click here.

Currently, I have 66 speeches scheduled for 2008. If you would like for me to speak at one of your events in 2008 or 2009, feel free to contact me at dan@thecoughlincompany.com and I will be glad to see if we can make it work.

If you want to see my speaking topics and a video of footage from some of my keynote speeches, please click here.

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