Why Nimbleness is so Important to Jack Welch
What's the answer to the question: What makes a big company? A little company. Every company starts off from the beginning and grows from there. What makes a little company able to compete with larger companies as a rule of thumb is that they can move into areas much quicker than their giant counterparts; that's how small companies become big companies.
The problem is that once you become a big company, there's a whole new set of problems that must be faced. The key one usually being the bureaucracy that stifles just about everything that a smaller company used to do to become the big company they now are.
Welch knew that if he didn't battle the bigness factor of General Electric (GE), they couldn't become the world-class company he envisioned. Another thing he knew is that money alone can never be the determing factor once a company scales to a certain size. At that point, any competitor will have money as well - that could never be the competitive edge.
So he fought as hard as he could to eliminate the layers and have big company resources with a small company mentality and quickness.
This was more important than simply quickness though, what it did was draw high-quality people to the company as they heard the way the company operated and it attracted them like magnets. People wanted to work for General Electric and Jack Welch.
What nimbleness did was more than simply allow the company to move fast, it also created an entrepreneurial atmosphere of a type that is rarely ever seen in a company of this size. The quickness of the company forced management to think like owners rather than bureaucrats. The results were that they were one of the most admired companies in the world, and people wanted to do business with them. Pushing for nimbleness within a company has all sorts of secondary benefits that just doing it triggers. Welch understood this and battled for it throughout his entire tenure at the company.
Other Jack Welch Resources:
Jack Welch's advice to MIT Sloan students
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