GE's Talent Machine: The Making of a CEO - Essay Example

GEs Talent Machine: The Making of a CEO GEs Talent Machine: The Making of a CEO With an impressive business vision, General Electric (GE) has often been ranked as the most respected company worldwide, partly due to its internal policies focused on investing in the employees’ professional development (Bartlett & McLean, 2006). Over the years, GE has developed a meritocracy business system, for rewarding the employees who register performances. Nevertheless, it has been the company’s vision to teach individual employees to produce great results.

This philosophy was implemented through processes such as Session C, objective performance, position levels, meant to motivate, train and discover the leadership potential of GE managers prospects (Bartlett & McLean, 2006). The company’s surplus in quality candidates for top management succession is explained also by the constant concern for recruiting talented individuals, who can generate excellent outcomes by committing to GE’s values. A vivid example in this sense is Jeff Immelt, whom GE hunted after graduating from Harvard MBA.

After learning the hard way how to generate results, Immelt understood that only by adhering to the company’s values and finding their inner leadership could managers produce positive outcomes that would guarantee their career development within GE. Through constant guidance, counseling and mentorship, GE transmits the business vision to newly hired talents, who are later on challenged to produce original managerial thinking, while still focusing on forming new top managers. 2. The Session C program was developed for matching the company’s requirements with the right people and evaluating their level of expertise and preparedness for filling managerial roles at GE (Bartlett & McLean, 2006).

In the same time, this program allows an open discussion between department managers and subordinates, identifying career opportunities and agreeing on professional development plans, which includes on the job trainings (Bartlett & McLean, 2006). Creating the “boundaryless” organizational context, which promotes communication at departmental level and outside this level permits GE’s top management to get involved in new managers’ professional growth and development, by closely coordinating their evolution (Miller & Gordon, 2014).

With this approach, GE uses the human resources training and development component as a strategic tool in meeting its organizational goals. Immelt used the HR training and development processes for forming competitive IT professionals, aligned with the business need of developing the company’s technological leadership (Bartlett & McLean, 2006). Consistent with the different divisional needs, top managers within GE focus on prospect managers’ professional evolution, just as Immelt proceeded with Lucier and Wilson, guiding their careers and helping them to correct their weaknesses, while meeting the organizational objectives (Bartlett & McLean, 2006).3. GE provides a good practices lesson on what should be considered in determining the employees’ training and development.

As Bartlett and McLean (2006) indicate, GE’s training and development process is justified by the market’s dynamics and requirements. While the customer focus is permanently a mandatory requirement that guides the training and development within GE, other components, such as technology or research and development are generated as a result of the market evolution, shaping the organization’s training and development needs. As Saks and Haccoun (2010) indicate, the employees’ training and development should be determined by the identification of a performance gap or an itch, which outlines certain unsatisfactory levels within organizations.

In this sense, aware of its unsatisfactory international management outcomes, GE started to invest in non U.S. managers, in order to strengthen the company’s international capacities.ReferencesBartlett, C.A. & McLean, A.N. (2006) GE’s talent machine: The making of a CEO. Harvard Business School.Miller, V.D. & Gordon, M.E. (2014) Meeting the challenge of human resource management: a communication perspective. New York: Routledge.Saks, A.M. and Haccoun, R.R. (2010) Managing performance through training and development.

Ontario: Nelson Education.