Process Innovation and Culture Change — GE Work-Out!
Culture & Process Change | GE Work-Out!
Sector: Manufacturing
Timeframe: 1989 to 1991
Affiliation: Peat Marwick Stevenson & Kellogg
Helped major business units effect culture change and improve productivity following significant management de-layering. As a member of the Work-Out! consulting team in Canada, facilitated at over 30 productivity action planning workshops with business units of General Electric Canada in the electrical products, electronics products, and heavy electrical equipment sectors—as well as business interface workshops with their distributors and retailers. Business units supported: GE Camco, GE Hydro, GE Nuclear, GE Drive Systems, GE Fanuc, GE Lighting, GE Plastics, and GE Silicones.
BACKGROUND
In the late 1980's General Electric CEO Jack Welch pruned GE's business portfolio to businesses at #1 or #2 in their respective sectors, and also significantly delayered management in those businesses.
Work-Out! was conceived by Welch and business school academics as a way to drive lean culture change by empowering employees to work on productivity improvements within the remaining business.
Work-Out! began with three-day workshops. Day 1 included information on paradigmatic shifts, opportunity generation, and voting on suggestions. Day 2 focused on solution development in teams working on opportunities, and preparing a "pitch" to management. Day 3 featured live presentations to the leadership team, and negotiation of solution directions recommended by each team.
Consulting teams generally worked with specific GE business units. The Canadian consulting team, led by Dr. Jeffrey Gandz of the Ivey School of Business, worked across the business units in Canada.
PAIN POINTS
- Early Work-Out! workshops in Canada were successful at identifying strategies for improvement — but follow-through was limited
- The gap between workshop and documentation often led to differential understanding of what had been agreed in the workshop
OUTCOMES
- Explicit common understanding was achieved in each workshop using the live system for action plan negotiation.
- Follow through on initiatives was facilitated and readily tracked using the action plans provided to all participants.
- Overall, General Electric achieved immense productivity and market benefits and continued to employ Work-Out! for productivity and quality improvement.
CONSULTING RESPONSE
A colleague on the Canadian Work-Out! Team invited Michael to the team to explore the opportunity of recording presentations in while they were being presented.
- Michael created and operated a real-time system to document action plans developed during Work-Out!, taking the role of "computer facilitator" at plenary sessions. Using templates, team problem definitions, benefit statements, proposed solution, and action plans were captured in MS Word as landscape slides. During presentations, edited the slides on the fly based on negotiation between the team and the leadership — often suggesting wording based on discussion. During the session wrap-up, ran a macro that reformatted all slides into portrait documents by resetting styles, and printed copies for each attendee at the workshop, including the leadership team.
- Michael's skill as the computer facilitator led to him facilitating action teams during the break-out sessions.
- Facilitated at follow-up workshops with specific busines units, tracking progress to agreed workplans and recording adjustments.
- As part of planned technology transfer from the consulting team to GE Canada, assisted with training GE Canada managers as facilitators, and documented and handed off the action plan recording and facilitation system.
On the recommendation of GE Canada, the Canadian Work-Out! Team was provided a similar consulting program to one of the customers of GE Canada, a major Canadian retailer.