GE's sales rose from $25 billion to 1 100 billion, GE's profits soared from1500 million to 107 billion, and GE climbed the throne of "America's most admired company" again and again ... Welch is undoubtedly excellent, with his management methods and operations. However, when Excellence is deified and learning becomes worship, what can good expectations get?

"What is the greatest advantage of being the chairman and CEO of GE?"

I believe that many people want to ask Welch this question. However, Welch's answer was as unexpected as ever. His answer is only two words-"deep dive".

Welch's "deep dive" is to plunge into the grass-roots level and work with the grass-roots employees. He also proposed "rolling around and setting an example".

"I used to do this" and "I kept doing this until the last few days of my post" ... From the lines in my autobiography, Welch enjoyed "deep diving". From his later description, many people began to believe that this is a "game" that all CEOs should play, not only because it is what the greatest CEO of the 20th century likes to do, but also because "deep diving" has brought victory and great victory to enterprises.

Welch listed various successful cases of "deep diving" in his autobiography, which gradually made people feel that there seems to be a natural connection between "deep diving" and success:

The "deep dive" in the American consumer news and business channel "Business Center" program has brought great success to the program-the program beat the rival CNN's similar program "Money Line" in one fell swoop and won a significantly higher audience rating.

The "deep dive" in the ultrasonic imaging project has also achieved remarkable results-"We jumped from nothing in 1996 to the first in the industry in 2000, creating a highly profitable enterprise. Our annual income increased by 20% to 30%. Today, the company's annual income has exceeded 500 million US dollars. "

The successful effect of "deep diving" in the project of improving the quality of X-ray tube of ct equipment is even more shocking-"In five years, this team has increased the life of X-ray tube from 25,000 times to nearly 200,000 times. By 2000, they developed a new X-ray tube with an average life of 500,000 times by using Six Sigma technology, and set it as the industry standard. Due to the breakthrough of this key component, our CT scanner was snapped up by users at an unprecedented speed, and the sales speed almost caught up with the speed of GE Lighting Company.

……

The effect of "deep diving" is so remarkable that Welch confidently made a bet with everyone in his autobiography-"I absolutely bet that Jeff will make his own" deep diving "and get the same pleasure from these troubles as me."

What kind of sea do you have?

A friend who is a business owner once said to me, "I can't figure out why Welch has so much time to go deep diving, and it's' hundreds of times'." My business is only one-tenth the size of GE. I work every day except sleeping. Where there is time to' dive'! "

His words are very representative, but they also lead to a crucial question-what kind of "sea" does Welch have?

The CEO position of GE is a real strategic decision-maker, a direction setter and a leader of entrepreneurship. With the rigorous management system built by GE for a hundred years and the powerful elite team of GE, Welch, as CEO, doesn't need to get involved in specific business at all, and will never be busy among customers, R&D departments and production lines like most managers in China. However, being away from specific business makes him face the crisis of becoming a castle in the air. "Deep diving" is a good way to solve this crisis. It can let Welch know more about his business and employees, let Welch's information go deep into the grassroots of GE business, and provide accurate grassroots information for Welch to control this huge business empire.

In addition, in the process of deep diving, the sea of Ge is even dark blue, with no particularly shining lights and no islands surrounded by large areas of seawater.

Some employees of General Electric also said humorously: Mr. Welch is making trouble again. Welch called it "rolling" to discuss issues with subordinates on an equal footing in various occasions. One of his slogans is "Let's go in". For example, at GE, he found that there was something wrong with an open * * * relationship, environmental problems or something big happened, and he couldn't agree with it at this moment, so Welch went to a meeting to learn freely with everyone, even joking or swearing, sometimes even without paper and memos. In this unrestrained process, it is very likely that many good ideas and ideas will be born.

Welch's "indulgence" is actually an innovation of the traditional management communication meeting mode. Welch thinks this method is very good and is convinced of its effect. It is also a kind of practice for everyone to use their brains together and brainstorm.

In many perfect descriptions of "deep dive", there are many important words we see, such as "fairness" and "excesses", and this fairness is based on a flat and non-bureaucratic corporate structure. It can't be said that China enterprises with deep potential can't continue to operate. At least at present, according to the concept of Chinese people, the structure of domestic enterprises will not and cannot have such a foundation. Due to the immature internal and external environment, domestic enterprises need to think twice before they really use deep diving to solve many communication and information problems existing in the company.

On the other hand, the problems faced by most managers in China are just the opposite of those faced by Welch. Due to the imperfection of enterprise mechanism, the lack of enterprise talents and the limitation of traditional concepts in China, the role and orientation of managers in China are often unclear. Because of hands-on, there are a large number of "handyman" managers in China, who are salesmen, technicians and managers. They "dive" too deeply at the business level of the enterprise. What they need to do is not to continue diving, but to "surface" themselves from all kinds of chores. Think about the long-term development of enterprises from the overall situation and the whole.

Indulge-get rid of-dive deeply, which is a spiral rise of enterprise management concept that matches the development level of enterprises. While appreciating the "deep dive", we should also clearly see that the enterprise level of GE is two levels higher than that of most domestic enterprises. Without GE's "sea" environment, Welch's "deep diving" can only become a "death game" that destroys enterprises and CEO. It is true that if you can climb Mount Everest for three months and ensure the normal development of the enterprise, like Shi, chairman of Vanke, then you are really qualified and capable to "dive" with Welch.

Can you surface safely after "deep diving"?

"Deep dive" is such an unbalanced "death game". If you have to play with it, then you must understand where it may cause harm.

"Leave your place behind" is an additional sentence when Welch interprets "deep diving", and it is also an important prerequisite for the success of "deep diving". It is not difficult for a good manager to "leave his position". The key question is whether the employees in the business unit where you "dive" can also "put your position behind you" and treat you as an equal team member instead of a superior leader. The cognition of this role change is extremely difficult to complete, especially in the east where the concept of "three cardinal guides and five permanents" is deeply rooted.

If we can't realize this role change, the disastrous result is absolutely foreseeable. "Deep divers" often don't have as rich relevant knowledge as front-line employees, and even in some cases, they don't even have the basic qualifications to become a new member of a team. Some of their ideas and methods are often naive and infeasible. Under such circumstances, if the players dare not point out the mistakes of the "deep divers" and give up the "violation of the rules" proposal of "deep divers", the final result can be imagined.

"Many of my ideas have never been adopted," Welch wrote in his autobiography, referring to "deep diving". But can such a thing happen in your enterprise?

The people who may be affected by the destructive power of "deep dive" also include the direct managers of the division. When Welch was deeply involved in the business center program of American consumer news and business channel TV channel, we didn't know what Andy Lake, president of American consumer news and business channel, really thought. But let's make a hypothesis. If you are the president of NBC, when Welch came to your business center to "dive" with great interest, would you have the following thoughts:

"Big boss incredibly interfere in my business! ? It seems that he doesn't believe in my ability, I still ... "

"Since the big boss attaches so much importance to this program, I will do it at all costs!"

"Hang it all! Sue Herrera (the host of the program), that bastard went over the top and invited the big boss. She must have ignored me. Hum, I'll make that bastard feel better ... "

……

You must understand how this destruction happened. The role change of "deep diver" is not easy to be accepted by the team members of the division, nor by the direct boss of the division. Under the guidance of wrong cognition, the direct boss of this business unit will have some wrong behaviors-doubt his own ability, destroy the balance of resource input, and have aversion to subordinates. Once the situation develops to this point, I believe no one will think that the benefits of "deep diving" outweigh its costs.

Worse things are yet to come. After completing a "deep dive", the "deep diver" changed from an ordinary team member of a business department to the CEO who dominated everything. Of course, for a "deep diver", it is not difficult to complete the transformation of this role from self-cognition. However, it is definitely not an easy task for relevant people to understand this. In fact, this role change is really difficult to understand.

As a result, the "deep diver" began to find that it was not easy to let him "surface" again from the "deep dive" place:

Employees of business units who have been "diving" often form a very bad habit after working closely with "divers"-directly go over their immediate superiors and enthusiastically go to "divers" to report things, solicit opinions and ask for resources. At this time, "deep divers" often face a dilemma: refusing to continue listening to these reports will inevitably seriously hit the enthusiasm of employees in these business departments, and then the meaning of "deep diving" will disappear; However, if you accept their report and respond, it is undoubtedly "raising monkeys for subordinates", resulting in the adverse effects of ultra vires management.

The message handed down below also became "What does it like". Business reports often focus on the business that has been "deeply submerged", while other businesses just pass by in an understatement.

……

I accidentally picked up Welch's autobiography and turned to the chapter of "deep diving", but I accidentally found a sentence that was very inconsistent with Welch's confident "gambling oath"-"In the past many years, I have done hundreds of" deep diving ". Not all these "deep dives" are successful ... "This sentence is submerged in a lot of praise for" deep dives ",which almost makes readers feel the significance of its existence. In fact, it is a message that should alert us-if we really count the success rate of Welch's "deep diving", what will the result be? Baidu