Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will
The following is a highlighted summary of the book, A Stake in the Outcome, published by Doubleday & Company. The statements below are key points of the book as determined by James Altfeld and have been made available at no charge to the user.
Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will
(p.4) Workers who share their employer’s goals don’t need much supervision. • • • • • • Control your destiny, or someone else will. Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it were. Be candid with everyone. Don’t manage, lead. Change before you have to. If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
“facing reality is crucial in life, not just in business. You have to see the world in the purest, clearest way possible, or you can’t make decisions on a rotational basis. “If you weren’t already in business, would you enter it today? The need to boost innovation and productivity is the imperative behind the GE revolution and the main challenge confronting any business that competes in world markets. Efforts to improve productivity such as “just-in-time” inventory controls are pushing corporations into an unprecedented dependence on their suppliers. The old organization was built on control, but the world has changed. The world is moving at such a pace that control has become a limitation. It slows you down, you’ve got to balance freedom with some control, but you’ve got to have more freedom that you’ve ever dreamed of. Until employees accept personal responsibility for their work, they need supervision, which Welch regards as a waste of time. GE tries to eliminate supervisory positions, giving more people to control their own work. I see the process of corporate transformation as a three-act drama. These three acts usually overlap, but each depends on the one before. In Act I, the organization awakens to the need for change; this is a time when tyrannical behavior can serve a useful purpose, since the awakening requires a frontal assault on the status quo.
Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will
(p.4) Workers who share their employer’s goals don’t need much supervision. • • • • • • Control your destiny, or someone else will. Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it were. Be candid with everyone. Don’t manage, lead. Change before you have to. If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
“facing reality is crucial in life, not just in business. You have to see the world in the purest, clearest way possible, or you can’t make decisions on a rotational basis. “If you weren’t already in business, would you enter it today? The need to boost innovation and productivity is the imperative behind the GE revolution and the main challenge confronting any business that competes in world markets. Efforts to improve productivity such as “just-in-time” inventory controls are pushing corporations into an unprecedented dependence on their suppliers. The old organization was built on control, but the world has changed. The world is moving at such a pace that control has become a limitation. It slows you down, you’ve got to balance freedom with some control, but you’ve got to have more freedom that you’ve ever dreamed of. Until employees accept personal responsibility for their work, they need supervision, which Welch regards as a waste of time. GE tries to eliminate supervisory positions, giving more people to control their own work. I see the process of corporate transformation as a three-act drama. These three acts usually overlap, but each depends on the one before. In Act I, the organization awakens to the need for change; this is a time when tyrannical behavior can serve a useful purpose, since the awakening requires a frontal assault on the status quo.