GE president reveals who in his organisation will or won't make it
General Electric president for Asean Stuart L Dean says the most important trait he looks for in hiring or promoting staff, is "inclusiveness".
As the multinational conglomerate gears up to become the "Apple for infrastructure", Dean told The Nation in an exclusive interview that "imagination" or innovation is without doubt an important qualification for GE employees.
"But if I have to hire people, if everything else is the same, I think inclusiveness is the most important thing because people can change regardless of who they are. However, if you are a hierarchical person, you won't change," he said.
Inclusiveness and imagination are two of the five "growth traits" that GE, famous for its outstanding leadership development efforts, has set as its core values. The other three traits are: external focus, expertise, and clear thinking.
Dean said "inclusive" people are those who can work in cross-cultural situations, with all styles, people, nationalities, religions, are open to inputs from around the world, sharing their information, and are not bashful about their own ideas when hearing better ideas from other people. "It's where you check your ego at the door", he said.
Hence, when asked what is the most difficult people-management issue he has had to deal with during his 18 years in Southeast Asia, Dean said it has always been handling the people who cannot move up in the organisation, because they are not sharing the organisational values, in particularly, inclusiveness.
"It's emotionally challenging, to tell people - some of them have worked for more than 10 years - their dream is not going to happen," he said.
Dean said these people are often very good at marketing themselves to their bosses, also have strong work ethics and good track records, but they are the kind of people who have a sabotage behaviour, "kick it up, kick it down", and have pissed off other people in the organisation,
"It's like cancer in the organisation, unless you cut it out," he said.
During its annual performance review every year, every GE staff ends up with a pretty simple chart that shows the individual's performance in one axis and his or her "values" in the other axis. It is one of very few companies which gives the same 50:50 weight to performance and values, he said.
"Because we think if you want to predict long-term success: How they lead is a better prediction," Dean said.
Besides implementing a 360-degree performance appraisal, and other tools, Dean said he conducts the "skip-the-level" meeting once a year to meet with staff in the absence of their direct reports, to be able to get real feedback.
"Thai society is pretty hierarchic. They're not comfortable with skip-the-level meeting. And conversely, we have leaders who don't want to go down to meet staff," he said.
Dean said GE had gone through a transition in Thailand where it transferred more than 2,000 people who had previously been with GE Capital to Bank of Ayudhya, after the recent acquisition.
Its headcount now stands at about 1,000, of whom more than 500 are full-time staff. Following the recent financial crisis, GE has consolidated its financial service business worldwide and is shifting to be highly focused on infrastructure.
"We want to become the Apple for infrastructure," he said.
"I don't think Steve Jobs beat people up. I think he inspired people," said Dean, speaking of the Apple CEO's values.