GE’s Immelt: We Actually Hire People

Here is an interview of GE CEO Immelt at a conference held by Wired.com in June 2009. He talks about the challenge of driving continuous growth and innovation in a company of GE's size as well as the impact of the financial crisis.

Organizational Behavior

No need to explain anything.
Saw this on the blog http://socialbusinesssa.blogspot.com/

Strategic Planning

Despite the challenging times, this year’s strategic-planning process need not be an exercise in anxiety or futility. Developing scenarios in greater depth, monitoring strategies more rigorously, and remaining focused on the long term will all help strategists boost the odds of creating plans that can lead their companies through the turbulence.

Three tips for 2009

Be realistic about scenario planning
It’s necessary to develop plans on the assumption that several different futures are possible and to focus attention on the underlying drivers of uncertainty.

Intensify monitoring
Since the effectiveness of such a strategy depends on an organization’s ability to adjust rapidly as the fog starts to lift, managers must identify and intensively monitor key indicators suggesting which scenario might unfold.

Look beyond the crisis

Strategic planning: Three tips for 2009
Even in these tumultuous times, strategic planning doesn’t have to be an exercise in anxiety—or futility.

Read the entire article on Strategic planning: Three tips for 2009 by Renée Dye, Olivier Sibony, and S. Patrick Viguerie in the The McKinsey Quarterly, the business journal of McKinsey & Company.

Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world

The son of a Mexico City shopkeeper has built a staggering $59 billion fortune. Fortune's Stephanie Mehta tells the inside story of how he made it to the top.

Click here to read the story

The craft of effective management

It is over 25 years since I graduated from B-school and many things may have changed since then. At the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, I learned how to use the tools, not how to be a craftsman.

However, like any other craft, management is best learnt at the feet of several master craftsmen. Over the years, I have distilled three basic abilities required to build a business or even lead any aspect of a business - the ability to envision, to strategise, and to execute.

The ability to envision: Vision is at the center of any creation. Being able to envision the end state of a business or initiative is the key to making it happen. When groups of people are involved, explaining and enrolling people to a common vision help in converting groups into teams.

The ability to strategise: If vision comes from the heart, strategy is a product of the mind. It involves finding alternative routes to make things happen and selecting the optimal route. It is about making the best use of available resources and coming up with a game plan to deploy these resources to achieve victory.

The ability to execute: Execution is at the physical level. It is about ensuring that teams understand the plans, the processes and their roles, and have the necessary training and equipment to perform their roles effectively. It is also about ensuring progress is tracked, mid-course corrections are made and there is good communication flow across the entire chain.

While at a craft level, the master painter or the music virtuoso are able to bring all these abilities to bear in his creation, I have found that in mid-sized and large organizations, no individual has all these three qualities to the required degree. To ensure that the organization grows over the long run, people with these different abilities must learn to collaborate and synergise.

For those aspiring to be super-managers, the journey is exciting and rewarding. The purpose of management is to lead and organize people to achieve results that they would not have been able to achieve as individuals, leading to prosperity for the whole team. What could be more fulfilling?

Sudhakar Ram graduated from IIM-Calcutta in 1982