First thing, what every manager, every business leader has to have is the attitude, a mind set of profitable growth. It is the challenge for the leader and the leadership team to reconceptualise a landscape in businesses which have low or zero growth. It’s the imagination that makes the difference.
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KMB : Just to go back to the three goals that you set out for GE when you took over which you just talked about, give just one example of each.
JI: In the area of innovation, I would just pick that we were the early mover in the area of environmental solutions, what we call Ecoimagination. You know we started this before it was very popular, in 2004, and in a relatively short period of time our environmental technologies are above $15 billion of revenue, $16 billion this year. So, I think that was an innovation we drove across our platform, that really drives to ensure growth, some of it technical and some of it from the stand point of how we did our sales and marketing.
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Instead, when successful transformations have occurred, it has almost always been the result of leaders who offer inspiring visions and values, identify clear goals, and then provide the context and opportunity for those below them to participate in the design and implementation of the actual business of change. That’s why, in general, leaders of large corporations have moved away from top-down “planned change,” and, instead, adopted a values-based, decentralized approach to organizational transformation.
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