The GE Work-Out - Bookshelf: Books in Brief - Book Review

HR Magazine, Oct, 2002 by Mike Frost

By Dave Ulrich, Steve Kerr and Ron Ashkenas McGraw Hill, 2002 326 pages

List Price: $29.95

ISBN: 0-07-138416-2

AS CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch earned a stellar reputation for pruning the company's bureaucracy and involving employees at all levels in organizational planning. In The GE Work-Out, Dave Ulrich, Steve Kerr and Ron Ashkenas (consultants who helped Welch remake GE's corporate culture) describe how the company created a "deeply engrained and internalized process for addressing and solving its problem--quickly, simply and with the involvement of people who will ultimately carry out the decision."

The authors call the process GE undertook a "work-out" because "it gets work out of the system."

How is it done? "Small groups of managers and employees, cross-functional or cross-level or both, address critical business issues, develop recommendations and present them to a senior leader at a town meeting," the authors write. "They can address continuing bureaucratic irritations as readily as critical problems that require dramatic leaps of the imagination to resolve."

The executive decides on the spot whether to pursue the recommendation and assigns the task. "When the ideas of those people, irrespective of their functions and places in the hierarchy, are solicited and turned into action ... an unstoppable wave of energy, creativity and productivity is unleashed," the writers say.

The work-out method can help organizations grow along five key dimensions:

* Creating organizational challenges, establishing performance goals that exceed the company's capabilities.

* Developing "systems thinking," helping participants understand how the different organizational functions are related.

* Encouraging lateral thinking, coming up with ideas and quickly analyzing which are worth pursuing.

* Empowering both line employees and managers to suggest ideas to executives.

* Speeding decision-making and other processes, allowing participants to immediately see results.

The book includes worksheets and tools that companies can use to implement a work-out, which requires a willingness to think big, act small, fail fast and learn rapidly.

This book can be purchased through the SHRMStore online. Members receive a discount off the list price. Visit www.shrm.org/shrmstore and search for item number 48.36513.