Blog of Roger Greene, CEO

At my visit this week to the Supreme Court I was surprised and impressed by how interactive, direct and even blunt the justices were with their questions. They interrupted, cut to the point and dispensed with niceties. They seemed to want to get to the heart of the arguments.

I was struck by how informal and conversational their questions were, despite the potential for imperiousness that might be expected with the setting and the justices’ power. With all written arguments having been submitted in advance, the discussion did not follow a scripted path – no PowerPoint! Each side had just 30 minutes to make their case, yet at the end it seemed like they had enough time to present their core arguments.

If at the highest level of our judicial system we can have a productive discussion of fundamental issues, I think we should find ways to shorten business meetings.

I liked Kate Linebaugh’s article this Wednesday in the Wall St. Journal (“The New GE Way: Go Deep, Not Wide“), in which she explains that GE has shifted their approach to management development. GE used to move managers around a lot to give them wide exposure to different business units. In recent years, as their businesses have become more complex, they increasingly emphasize deeper experience in fewer business units.

I like having our product strategy and operations driven by product and market experts who know customer needs, experts who combine their product and market knowledge with creativity to come up with new solutions that delight customers. That kind of expertise doesn’t come quickly – it is developed over years.

This story in the article drove home the point:

Anders Wold came to GE as part of an acquisition of a Norwegian ultrasound business in 1998 and now runs that business at GE. The unit was a bit of stepchild in GE’s imaging business, which is dominated by expensive products such as magnetic-resonance-imaging machines and CT-scanners.

His strategy was to recruit talent with deep customer relationships and expertise in the field. Employees, he said, needed that depth to be able to listen effectively and translate needs into new technology.

“Customers won’t tell us exactly what they want,” he said. “If you are very generic, if you don’t have that domain understanding, you will develop products that will be average and not very successful.”

“GE as a company can’t just take a generic approach here,” he said. “We have to be viewed as the specialist.” The approach helped the group boost its sales to $2 billion last year from $200 million a decade ago. Now, ultrasound is the biggest division at GE’s health-care unit. Mr. Immelt took notice and has used ultrasound as an example at company meetings. “There has been very clear messaging to give priority and to develop domain knowledge,” said Mr. Wold.

I am proud that each of our three divisions – IT Management, Secure File Transfer and Messaging – has developed and continues to build its own deep expertise.

Jonah Lehrer tells us in his New Yorker article that brainstorming doesn’t work. Although it is common practice, if you gather a group and ask for ideas in an open format with no judgment allowed then you should expect inferior results. Who knew?

So what does work? Allow criticism and debate as ideas are being generated. To produce great innovations, create teams with a mix of people who know and have worked with each other with others they don’t know; teams that are too homogeneous/familiar with each produce less innovation. Nor do teams that don’t know each other at all. Organize the work environment so people have frequent opportunity for informal conversation. “The most creative spaces are those that hurl us together.”

This list from Inc. reminds me of  our many remarkable employees. In particular, these three resonate:

• From #7, “Education, intelligence, talent, and skill are important, but drive is critical. Remarkable employees are driven by something deeper and more personal than just the desire to do a good job.”
• From #6: “They speak when others won’t.”
• From #8: “Some people are rarely satisfied (I mean that in a good way) and are constantly tinkering with something: Reworking a timeline, adjusting a process, tweaking a workflow.”