WorkOut, Speed, Simplicity & Self Confidence....Culture change drives the bottom line

	Repetition & Practice create Improvement

General Electric is famous for growth through acquisition and becoming one of the most successful businesses on the planet. The success resides with people like Jack Welch, former CEO, who started the ‘Quality & Change’ revolution within GE over twenty years ago.

With total revenues for the business easily topping $170 (circa) billion, and with double digit ROI for at least the last fifteen years, the robustness of the Business Culture has proven its worth.

I have been lucky enough to have worked in many GE businesses on initiatives using many of the GE tools, and have synthesised an approach that will work for organisations in a variety of contexts.

• How would you feel if you could build the same GE performance culture.  What would it do for your business?
• What is your core competitive differentiator, and how can we leverage it to start working for you?
• How can we use speed as your core competitive differentiator, focusing upon doing everything faster, better, more efficiently and effectively than your competition?
• When we kick-start and drive this approach so it becomes the dominant culture, what will it do for your results and your staff?
• Replace over-control and micromanagement with trust and empowerment.  Over control creates bureaucracy and slows down your speed of service delivery - so why not  turn the culture about?

Jack Welch argues that bureaucracy is the enemy of change.

• How many levels of management do you have in your business? More than 3 or 4 levels are too many - it slows down reaction time.
• How much management time is spent over-controlling and over-managing others, rather than developing profitable new business and winning new customers?
• How many signatures do you need to get even the most basic requisition agreed? 
• How long does it take from request to delivery and what has happended to your customer in the meantime?
  Would you prefer that managers invested their time in developing others to challenge and improve service delivery, or just keep up with the same tedious transactions that do little to add to performance?

What are the secrets of the GE approach to culture change?

I have worked in many GE businesses.  Here's a quick distillation.

• The approach has to be easy to understand, otherwise attention spans will wander. 
• Strategies can be adapted and applied to any business - however unique your circumstances, they can be made to work for you.
• Basic principles can be speedily implemented. A degree in Rocket science is not a pre-requisite to Work-Out. 
• Leaders of the business who want to improve ROI and results in the short and long-term, can do so through an enhanced variant of the original WorkOut methodology. 

Change is driven through Leadership and Behavioural Change

• Everyone can input their creativity,  talent and energy into the process.
• Focus on leading change through specially trained Facilitators that takes days not years. 
• The reason some facilitators don't become expert is that they are under utilised. 
• Change can take as long as you want it to take – if you want to drag out the process for a year, so be it! If you want results in six weeks, let me work with you to design the process to do that !

What are the critical Leadership Behaviours that lead to successful change?

Any good business person understands that without Leadership there is no change. It makes sense to develop Leaders, first of all to challenge how things are done – otherwise why employ them as leaders of your people?

Should Leaders & Managers Transform or Transact?

I have never liked the word 'manager' as it conjures up administrative efficiency, suggests a heavy dose of bureaucracy and is less than motivating.  Managers as leaders should fulfill a dynamic challenging role, otherwise why employ them?

Are your team leaders and managers in post just to manage and control others? What a waste of resources, when they could be living a transformational role, creating opportunities for doing things better, faster, cheaper.

Leaders need to be aligned and go further than merely espousing the values of real change. They have to live the values. The single most important thing a Leader does is  to inspire others to perform to their highest standards, and then use this as a benchmark to which others can aspire.

Behaviour promotes behaviour. If you have a lousy manager, chances are that your management style is not the best either.

Reverse the idea that Leaders are Born not Made

Leaders are made, not born – the Leadership fairy did not arrive by accident to bestow charisma and challenge – this has to be developed and can be done so quickly. Put simply, Work-Out is about promoting how we want people to start, stop and continue behaving to develop a strong competitive edge.

How can the the Work-Out approach be implemented to achieve results?

• It has to be led from the top. It must focus upon core processes that enhance profitability and customer satisfaction, thus delivering shareholder value.
• It can start small or large. It can start in a cross functional process throughout the whole business or in just one functional area.
• It can take as long as you want it to take. If you want results in six weeks from commitment to the process – then set your calendar today.
• If you are not interested in improving business results, or are more interested in “tree hugging” for its own sake, then commit to a less adventurous process.

If you want to find out more about the practical issues, the strategy for change and core implementation, please do contact me.

I have worked with GE on many projects in the UK, Europe and the USA since 1988, in GE Plastics, GE Motor Finance, GE Capital and GE Global Consumer Finance.