GE was a company facing an uncertain future with competitors that could become stronger. Welch knew that he and his team would have to act fast, decisively, and .
consistently in ways that would send a clear and simple message to the organization. Welch understood the eight errors common to transformation efforts as shown below:.
Allowing too much Compliancy.
Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition.
Underestimating the power of vision.
Under communicating the vision by a factor of 10.
Permitting obstacles to block the new vision.
Failing to create short-term wins.
Declaring victory too soon.
Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture.
GE's strategic planning was to show how one achieves goals and how the strategic process is applied to not only to the creation of plans, but also to the tracking, and adaptation or change of those plans, as they are implemented and even afterwards to assess results and impact. Their strategic plan was separate and apart from any specific objective or results of the process. They used their strategy as a skill of continuous improvement and effective corporate leadership. GE's strategic objective was not to create an elaborate plan of a central strategy, but a central idea. .
#1 or #2, Fix, Close, or Sell.
Shortly after succeeding the statesmanlike Reginald Jones, Welch stared into a sea of scornful faces. They could not fathom why a stable and highly profitable company should ditch businesses and one out of four worker to comply with Welch's dictum that GE be No. 1 or No. 2 in every business. .
Some executives like to conceive their company's future through strategic-planning exercises. Not Jack Welch. For him, strategic planning is too safe, too theoretical. Instead, Welch had his business unit envision how the future could hurt them. He called the exercise Destroy your Business (DYB) and the end state of the concept of being No.
