Jack Welch On Corporate Values
by
Charlie Bess
I attended a FranklinCovey business seminar the other day and the keynote speaker was Jack Welch. One of the areas he talked quite a bit about was an organization's value system.
He was candid in his views. He thinks ethics are a waste of space in a corporate value statement. His view is that if you are not ethical you shouldn't be in business so why waste the space of a succinct value statement that you want everyone to remember when it should be ubiquitous.
Areas he thought important to include in a corporate value statement were:
- Candor - Everyone should know where he stands and be able to express his perspective (appropriately) for the organization to function effectively.
- Borderlessness - People need to work together and have visibility into what is going on in order to address the corporate needs. We asked him what would have the greatest impact on the offshore movement and he said it was networking (virtual communities). Companies have many resources they do not draw upon today (retirees, vendors, clients, other interested parties) that could do (and want to do) many of the higher level functions that are starting to move offshore. If you read this blog much, you know my perspective is that it will be automated workflow (taking people out of normal operations), but I understand this perspective as well.
He also mentioned later in his discussion how innovation is everyone's role to play. It is not the function of the elite, but in order to take advantage of it, new types of technical and business support structures will be required.
- Speed - He said he has rarely heard a company say they wished they had gone slower implementing an initiative. I've mentioned a few times in this blog the fact that change is taking place more rapidly and organizations need to set themselves up for continuous change.
- Hate bureaucracy - This was an unusual perspective (at least in my mind) for a large conglomerate CEO to have. His view is that bureaucracy normally crops up and that we need to hack away at it continuously just to keep it in check. It's a job for everyone, all the time.
