General Electric

GE always cares for their employees, even in hard times. They offer flexible working hours.

Companies believe that culture and values represent digital transformation. They have built a framework for working style which they call Fastworks, based on lean startup principles. There is a lot of focus on simplification and a customer-first mindset.

Following are the company's beliefs:

• Customers determine our success (Customer-focused priorities, urgent customer needs).
• Stay Lean to go fast (Lean Start-up/Fastworks/MVP/Build Measure Learn, service of speed and teamwork, flexible and responsive to the market, help streamline a process and remove waste).
• Learn and adapt to win (Open to learning and relentless improvement, fail fast to learn, remain competitive).
• Empower and inspire each other (Everyone is a leader, encourages everyone to share his/her opinion or viewpoint to improve the process).
• Deliver results in an uncertain world (Act with urgency and play to win, handle changing priorities and deliver results faster).

GE is going through hard times financially, so there aren't many opportunities to grow. We have many restrictions on anything that costs money, i.e., travel for business and training. There are too many processes and required approvals to get something done.

As a leader, we have a responsibility to coach people around GE beliefs and values, which are missing in day-to-day work. I still see bureaucracy and people working in silos, only caring about their function. We talk a lot about DT transformation, but is it really happening?

We can do a lot more to align our people, processes, and policies with new GE beliefs.