Winning - Jack Welch [97]
While I never sorted these factors out while I was working, I have thought a lot more about them lately because audiences ask so many career questions. They come in every variety:
“I like my staff job at headquarters, but I want to move into operations. What do I need to do to convince my boss I can make the change?”
“I don’t have any chemistry with my mentor, but she’s really important at my company. How can I get ahead when I don’t have someone pulling for me?”
“I’m in manufacturing, but I want to move into marketing. Will I ever get out of the factory?”
Career concerns, incidentally, are not confined to any one country or type of industry. In China, with its nascent market economy and “egalitarian” culture, business people are fiercely curious when they ask: “What does it take to get ahead?” And the same question has come at me in Portugal, France, Denmark, and even Slovakia, where capitalism is less than fifteen years old.
I think the same answer applies everywhere.
Basically, getting promoted takes one do and one don’t.
Do deliver sensational performance, far beyond expectations, and at every opportunity expand your job beyond its official boundaries.
Don’t make your boss use political capital in order to champion you.
These imperatives are not everything, of course. There are four other dos and one other don’t, and we’ll look at them in turn, but first let’s focus on the two big ones.
THE POWER OF POSITIVE SURPRISE
When most people think about delivering sensational performance, they imagine beating agreed-upon performance goals. That’s all well and good.
But an even more effective way to get promoted is to expand your job’s horizons to include bold and unexpected activities. Come up with a new concept or process that doesn’t improve just your results, but your unit’s results and the company’s overall performance. Change your job in a way that makes the people around you work better and your boss look smarter. Don’t just do the predictable.
I learned this lesson for myself my first year at GE, while I was still working in the laboratory, developing a new plastic called PPO. A vice president was coming to town, and my boss asked me to give him an update on our progress. Eager to impress both of them, I stayed late at work for a week, analyzing not only the economics of PPO, but of all the other engineering plastics in the industry. My final report included a five-year outlook, comparing the costs of products made by DuPont, Celanese, and Monsanto, and outlined a clear route to a competitive advantage for GE.
My boss and the VP were surprised, to put it mildly, and their incredibly positive response showed me the impact of giving people more than they expect.
I would see this dynamic again and again over the next forty years.
Take the case of John Krenicki, who made everyone around and above him look better by expanding his job’s horizons.
GE sent John to Europe to manage its $100 million silicones business in 1997. It was by no means a plum assignment, but it gave John a chance to run his own show. The business, while No. 2 globally, was a weak No. 6 in the European market, mainly because its biggest cost—raw materials—had to be sourced from the United States. It just could not compete with the local players.
Back at headquarters, everyone would have been happy if John had grown silicones by 8 to 10 percent a year by pulling the usual levers: on-time delivery to existing customers, finding new ones, and developing new products. But John had bigger ideas. He proposed building a new plant in Europe to produce his key raw material.
The price tag was well over $100 million. We said, “No way.”
But John couldn’t accept that there wasn’t a solution to his cost bind. He tried a long-shot approach. Expanding his job’s horizons, he entered into talks with several of his European competitors in search of a partner who would bring local sourcing and technology expertise to the table in return for GE