Page 39 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

14 SOCIAL NETWORKING
AND TRANSMITTING
COMPANY VALUES

Regular meetings of key employees from different areas of
the company will increase learning, improve strategy, remove
boundaries, and increase group productivity. The improved
“transparency” that results will make it easier to identify crucial
areas of strength and weakness.

The idea

General Electric’s employees started to listen more attentively
to CEO Jack Welch’s simple speeches on the company’s values
following its unprecedented restructuring during the early 1980s,
which included divestments in over 200 GE subsidiaries and
massive layoffs of around 135,000 people. The resulting company
was considerably less bureaucratic, underlying the CEO’s message
of simplicity, candor, and transparent learning across boundaries.

To underline this, Jack Welch personally started a series of “work-
outs” or “town meetings”—which were simply gatherings of key
managers across functional and geographic boundaries—where
difficult issues were discussed openly and candid learning was
fostered around the CEO’s leadership. As a result, there were fewer
and fewer places to hide in GE’s global managerial ranks throughout
the 1980s.

Individuals who survived their CEO’s grinding communications
rituals were capable of passing on to others the simple message

32 • 100 GREAT BUSINESS IDEAS