GE boss on culture, coding and staff evaluations

Interesting from GE, a couple of statements just out :

" Which brings me to how we will get there - our culture. We may be a century-old company, but we need to move quickly, take risks, fail fast and behave like a startup to keep winning. I joined GE 34 years ago, and until recently our management could make every decision in the headquarters. Those days are over.  We have to embrace decentralization and use technology to help our people to stay connected and allow more automated decision-making so you can look at an app and see what’s going on inside the company.

But culture is not just apps. It's a combination of people and technology. If you are joining the company in your 20s, unlike when I joined, you’re going to learn to code. It doesn’t matter whether you are in sales, finance or operations. You may not end up being a programmer, but you will know how to code. We are also changing the plumbing inside the company to connect everyone and make the culture change possible. This is existential and we’re committed to this."

"We are also changing the way we evaluate our people. We’re trying to end anything that was annual or quarterly and make everything more real-time. We wanted to make the feedback process more like how we give each other advice in the real world. Instead of an annual review, we have an app PD @ GE where our people are getting continuous insights from their colleagues that they can use to get better every day."

GE is an interesting company, the few people that I know who have worked there, all rave about the culture, and what a great company to work for they, and that always amazes me for big companies to get that right.  They are also making a big push on digital, setting up a digital business unit, and it's interesting to see them continue to talk about culture, and I like the fact they are moving away from annual reviews (fast feedback is key), and that everyone will be trained to code.


full article here : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-ge-giving-up-employee-ratings-abandoning-annual-reviews-immelt