Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, likes to slap people around, metaphorically speaking.
Welch was the keynote speaker at the Massachusetts Conference for Women. (I know an odd choice to have a man as the headline act, but he did have his wife there.)
The women in the audience really responded to Welch, and I think many of them felt motivated by him.
“If you want to get ahead, it isn’t about saying ‘hi’ to your boss, it’s about over-delivering,” he says. “That is the game. When you learn that game that will do more for you than anything else you can do.”
It’s about going above and beyond what you’re asked to do. That’s how Welch sees it, and I suppose his ideas worked because GE’s growth exploded under his direction.
When asked about work life balance — Welch scoffed.
“This is about work life choices, not balance. Get rid of that word. You will make choices and the balance will change at any point in time. It is a choice that people make.”
Coming from a successful, charismatic man like Welch these words were easily digested by the women in the audience. (He could make paint drying seem interesting.) He was pretty much blowing out of the water all this bull about work life balance.
There’s been this growing tide among women that we can climb the ladder of success with flexible, or scaled-back schedules at work so we have time to make cookies for our kid’s kindergarten class. But that’s just not the way it typically works in the business world.
Welsh conveyed that pretty succinctly.
It’s all about the bottom line stupid.
Your employer will let you telecommute, job share, have flexible hours if you can still “over-deliver”.
All of you have to figure out if that’s indeed possible.
“If you can deliver in four hours because you’re so damn smart and efficient then god bless you,” Welch bellowed.
December 14th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
“Your employer will let you telecommute, job share, have flexible hours if you can still ‘over-deliver’”.
This is not always true. Some employers are still stuck in the model of working in the “face-time continuum” (I could not resist the Sci-Fi word play, sorry). While they might claim to reward performance (and they may do so in extremely visible examples), they are trapped in a model that equates productivity to time spent in the office, where the managers can see their little worker bees being “productive.” I find it quite a laugh when I have peers who do more online shopping in a day than I do in a year from home. Somehow, these old-school employers cannot believe we employees will give them a full day of work from home. My former position (a different department in the same company) did allow telework, and I found I was more productive from home than I was while in the office. The reason? I wanted to “over-perform” so that the validity of my work-from-home arrangement would never be questioned.
While I’m thankful for my current position, telework is the one thing I miss the most. Ninety-nine percent of my job duties can be done remotely, but my team lead and manager don’t see the position that way–they view the job through they way they did (or do) it: conducting face-to-face meetings at their desks, visiting customers to go over problems, and only sparingly using telephone and electronic communications methods. I’ve been here over a year, and have only had one customer meeting at my desk. All of my work is done using remote tools, and I regularly use our enterprise IM and collaboration tools.
I do have a plan of action in all this: I do keep track of what I do (for future proof of performance), and I do continue to recommend ways we can be untethered from our desks. In time, as my reputation and portfolio within this department grow, I hope to press more and more for telework options. I have a timeline in mind; if this department will not consider telework within that timeframe, I will seek other employment, inside or outside of the company, where performance matters more than presence alone.
December 15th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Mr. Welch is old school, as in totem pole, walk on the backs of the line-workers, and shit rolls downhill. I’m sure he would change his tune if he were trying to survive cancer, and realized that his prestigious oncologist shared the work-ethic that he espouses. He would not be too pleased if his doctor carried an above maximum case-load of patients, and had little time to contemplate the variety of approaches to take in returning to health. It is easy to be a cock-of-the-walk when you’re healthy. I hope your health holds out, Jack.
December 15th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
I didn’t quite take what Welch said to mean you take on too much work. I see what you mean J. Lawrence, that we can be pushed to take on too much and not do any job well. That is the fine balance, encouraging people to do their jobs well, but still allowing them a life. And yes, you can telecommute and do so many jobs. The mindset is still anti telework out there but it’s slowly changing…at least I hope it is.