Winning - Jack Welch [103]
“Success,” Jimmy says, “is so much about attitude.”
A positive attitude does not always come easy—and in cases like Jimmy Dunne’s after 9/11, it comes unimaginably hard.
If it’s natural for you, fantastic. If it isn’t, fight to find it and wear it all over yourself.
You can win without being upbeat—if every other star is aligned—but why would you want to try?
ONE LAST DON’T
The final don’t concerns setbacks.
Once or twice or more times than that, you will not get promoted. Don’t let it break your stride.
Of course, you will feel terrible, maybe even bitter and angry. But work like hell to let those feelings go.
First, and by all means, do not turn your career setback into the office cause célèbre. What a way to alienate everyone—your boss, coworkers, and subordinates. If you want to complain about your career, do it at home, at a bar across town, or wherever you go to worship. The people at work, while they know a lot about your case, should not be drawn into your emotional experience.
More important, even if you are thinking of leaving your company, try to accept your setback with as much grace as you can muster, and even see it as a challenge to prove yourself anew. Such an approach will serve you well whether you stay or go.
No one makes this point better than Mark Little.
Mark was the quiet, self-confident, and well-liked engineering vice president of GE’s Power Systems when, in 1995, the business ran into serious quality problems. As Mark puts it, “I had just gotten the job, and, basically, turbine blades were cracking all over the world. It was a mess.”
Mark worked hard to get the business back on track, but when Bob Nardelli was promoted to run the entire Power Systems group, he decided Mark had neither the sense of urgency nor the engineering expertise for the job. He split the business and gave Mark engineering responsibility for just steam turbines, the much smaller and less important piece. Suddenly, Mark was in charge of one-third as many people and a product considered to be old, dull, and slow-growth.
“It felt like the end of the world,” Mark said to me recently. “I thought it was unfair, and I was mad as hell. I felt like I hadn’t created the problem, and I had done everything I could to fix it. Then I was punched in the stomach. I was angry and hurt, and I had to believe it was the end of my GE career.”
But Mark did an amazing thing. He stuck his chin out and got back to work.
“I just figured I was going to prove everyone wrong,” he said. “I wanted to show the whole world what we could do.”
Over the next couple of years, Mark energized his team to revitalize the steam turbine product line. He introduced new technologies and put in process disciplines, driving costs down to new levels.
“I made up my mind that I was not going to show my people that I was mad and hurt. I was going to go in there every day and do what was best for me and my people and for GE. And that was to refocus the business.”
In 1997, Mark’s results were so terrific and his self-confidence was so restored that when the much-larger position of product manager for all turbines came open, he approached Bob Nardelli and asked for the job.
The answer was yes.
“I’d say the main reason I got the promotion was because I surprised everybody with my results, my attitude, and my perseverance. I just never gave up.”
Today, Mark is the product manager not only for the turbine business, but for GE’s hydro and wind businesses as well, a $14 billion enterprise.
To get ahead, you have to want to get ahead.
Some promotions come because of luck, but very few. The facts are, when it comes to careers, you mainly make your own luck. You will likely change companies, maybe even professions, more than a few times over the course of your working life. But there are some things you can do to keep moving ahead. Exceed expectations, broaden your job’s horizons, and never give your boss a reason to have to spend capital for you. Manage your subordinates carefully, sign up