General Electric

An organization of large scale and scope, that can bring considerable resources to bear when it is serious about going after any one market or solving a particular problem.

When the organization gets behind an idea and solution, it is able to be very innovative.

Generally offers a good work-life balance. Also offers opportunities to really learn and develop your leadership abilities.

At times, it is not agile enough, taking too long to make basic decisions, especially by management. Management can be risk-averse to the point of undermining itself and future growth and opportunities. The organization also can behave like a relic of the past and be too top-down driven, which negatively affects individual initiative/ownership and the common sense of employees. There is sometimes too much focus on growing margins/profitability through bottom-line growth/cost-cutting at the expense of sacrificing top-line growth. There is a need to better understand the law of diminishing returns in the organization in regards to cost-cutting measures, and more focus needs to be put on customer satisfaction.

The levels of management have grown too fat, and it seems the solution to many problems is to add more management. The reverse is needed: more resources need to be allocated to getting best-in-class contributors for marketing and engineering.