Technology Rewriting the Rules of Business

theStorminMormon writes "Fortune magazine is running a story describing the overthrow of Jack Welch's old rules of business. (Welch responds here.) Although the article lists Google and Apple as two paragons of the new rules of business, it fails to note that the old rules of business originated from straight manufacturing firms while the new rules of business are coming from the (more service-oriented) tech sector." From the article: "Steve Jobs has emphasized that Apple hires only people who are passionate about what they do (something that, to be fair, Welch also talked about). At Genentech, CEO Art Levinson says he actually screens out job applicants who ask too many questions about titles and options, because he wants only people who are driven to make drugs that help patients fight cancer."

Comments

Crazy Ideas

[mrxak]

It's always the crazy ideas that change the world. Of course not every crazy idea is a good one, and there are thousands of business that have gone under for thinking a little too outside the box. If you look around, there's really only one Amazon, only one Google, only one Apple. Companies that operate in more traditional ways seem to last longer on average, but nowadays they're often not leading things.

The Secret of Jack Welch's Success

[Tackhead]

Jack Welch started at GE in 1960 as a junior engineer, worked his way up to CEO by 1981, and grew the business by $400 billion during his tenure from 1981-2001.

From his rebuttal:

> When has there ever been a divergence between shareholders and customers? No one is out saying, "Let's screw this customer today, and if we do, our share price might go up 20 cents." They're just not doing it.

25 years later, the secret of his success slips out: he has never owned a wireless phone.

Hire passionate people

[PCM2]

"Hire passionate people." Well, if that isn't touchy-feely management at its best.

Welch's rule was to grade your players and go with the A's. Some of us might call that a meritocracy. To the B or C graded employee, of course, it looks like an unbalanced, unfair gold-key system driven by self interest on the part of senior managers.

What's the alternative? "Hire passionate people."

Am I the only one who imagines the following conversation: "Look, Bob, I know you're working hard. Your code is better than everyone else's on the team, and that's great! You did a good job getting everybody working together on that one project, too, and you were right about cutting out those side jobs -- if we were still eating those expenditures this project would have crashed and burned months ago. But Dave's the right guy to get this promotion, even though we only brought him in from that middle-manager position at Nabisco three weeks ago, and I'll tell you why. Frankly Bob, you just don't have Dave's passion."

Re:Maybe look of another line of work

[TopShelf]

I think the great majority fall under option C - work is what pays the bills, paving the way for the higher priorities in life, like family, hobbies, etc. There's a lotta days I really don't enjoy my job, but it provides an opportunity for us to have a nice home, and allows my wife to stay at home with our 3 kids. For me to pursue a "dream job" like sports writing or academia, we'd take major hits in other areas that just aren't worth it.

As regards these management philosophies, this translates to selecting employees for whom their career is the end-all-be-all. As a manager, that makes a lot of sense, as long as the people are somewhat balanced and won't burn out too soon.