GE’s head of HR says he and CEO Jack Welch knew their top 600 managers intimately — and I believe them
By Dave Crisp
Among the growing group of us who battle away at changing how HR is approached in organizations, David Creelman is a staunch thinker who scouts up some of the most thought-provoking pieces. His latest reported interview is with Bill Conaty (former top HR person at GE) about his latest book (with another GE grad, Ram Charan) called The Talent Masters.
Former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch, speaks during the World Business Forum in New York in October. Bill Conaty, former top HR person at GE, says he and Welch knew their top 600 managers intimately. (Photo: Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
Creelman has an unerring way of zeroing in on the most interesting or controversial points, in this case Conaty’s assertion that he and CEO, Jack Welch, knew their top 600 managers “intimately.” That last word means know considerably more than their names when you see them. In a work sense, it certainly includes knowing their career aspirations, strengths and developmental needs. It should include having enough of a relationship to understand their growth trajectory, not just enough to pigeon-hole them in a convenient category like “will never make senior management” as many top teams tend to do.
Creelman challenges Conaty about 600 being a very large number, to the point of being almost unbelievable, and Conaty grumps that’s what everyone says — but it’s absolutely true. I believe him, and so does Creelman.
What do we make of this? I can’t make the same claim from my days at the Hudson’s Bay Co. My excuse could be there was substantial turnover. I might have tried for that number in the 17 years I was there (Welch was at GE for 20), but I’d have been starting over with about 20 per cent to 30 per cent of them annually versus GE’s reported turnover at the time of well under 10 per cent. As it was, I have to admit I didn’t try hard for a large number in part because I believed I’d never manage. I probably settled at 150 or so.
We can all make excuses. GE’s territory is far-flung geographically, so distance is a poor excuse. They operate quite decentralized, so their need to know people at each is greater, so perhaps they’re more motivated, but surely there were at least 600 critical people mostly centralized at HBC if one considers who should have been in the grooming lineup for senior jobs. But 600 is certainly a number to make you review your own situation.
I suspect several key supports at GE were so taken for granted they fall below the radar. It surely helps if top team members routinely share information about people and solicit input from their reports and key contacts. And if they take those discussions seriously when promoting people, so the best are selected after assessment by several people rather than what many companies depend on — the CEO making the choices from among a cadre so small you’d almost call them cronies. If the CEO tries to know more, the team will, too. If the CEO makes all decisions on thin information, in an offhand “time-saving” way, among people she happens to know, the team won’t bother with more. But if the CEO regularly wants to hear to others’ opinions, they will bring them forward. Discussions will be on-going and growing in depth and detail.
Of course the overriding protest is usually “takes too much time.” But really, if the business depends more on people than anything else and the four pillars of success are understanding your people, your customers, your financials and your process/products/services, shouldn’t we spend one-quarter of our time — more than one day per week just on the people proposition? Of course, many bosses find it easier to give all their time to technical and financial questions. Customers to some degree and people to a much larger one tend to get only whatever time is left over, which is usually none since “work expands to fill the time allotted” and if you prefer other work, there’s definitely plenty to expand.
A CEO who claims no time for people assessment and ‘intimacy’ is really saying he or she doesn’t have time to be CEO, which is why some smart owners hire a CEO as soon as they can so they can concentrate on the parts of the business they enjoy. None of this helps HR, though, unless we convince the business community of these facts and get more willing participation from more CEOs.
Dave Crisp is a Toronto-based consultant with a wealth of experience, including 14 years leading HR at Hudson Bay Co. where he took the 70,000-employee retailer to “best company to work for” status. For more information, visit www.crispstrategies.com.
I can’t help but feel Jack Welch and Bill Conaty are very loosely defining the term “intimately,” when describing how well they knew 600 GE managers. Studies are estimating a person can really only maintain 150 people in their close network. Even if Welch and Conaty are much above average the claim still raises eyebrows. I can believe they had 600 managers they knew by name and for whom they had career paths developed, but “intimate?” I’ll believe that they meet the dictionary definition of the word if they can recite the names of the spouses and children of those 600 managers.