Greg Wang answered by inquiry about Jack Welch's approach to performance
management by explaining the necessity of matching the system to the
culture.
"This approach will only work in certain corporate culture. For instance,
one of GE's cultural aspects is "boundarilessness"--good for Jack, came up
with such a long word :) another cultural aspect "strechness"--meaning
people setup strech goals, when the goal is achieved, the bar will be
raised, then all the results now is still under the bar and new efforts is
required to reach the new bar. Without these cultural aspect, the
so-called topgrading approach or ABC won't work and will even cause
disastrous results, which I don't want to discuss here."
Thank you, Greg, for helping me to see that Welch's approach of
eliminating the bottom ranked 10% managers might make sense in some
cultures. It is hard for me to imagine that this wouldn't create
unhealthy competition or even sabotage. It feels pretty ruthless. Am I
still missing something?
Roxanne Abbas
rabbas@usinternet.com
763-476-7643
"It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from
learning." - Claude Bernard
--"Roxanne Abbas" <rabbas@usinternet.com>
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