GE2001 shareholders were held on April 25th in Atlanta, Georgia. This conference is the last report of Shandon Shareholders before retirement. Jack focused on the performance of GE's record: GE's income, the success of e-commerce and the company's consistent commitment to six Sigma quality standards.
English VESION I am Jack Wellch, the chairman of GE. And my senior vice president and Chief of Ge, Chief Senior Vice President, Chief Legal Consultant and Secret Note.
I have to welcome everyone to come to Atlanta, thank you for your arrival, especially thanked Atlanta shareholders. GE is currently 4,300 employees at Atlanta, 1,500 employees work in GE's largest business group -Ge Power System Group, the Group set headquarters to Atlanta in February this year.
GE's employees have been deeply rooted in the community and launched volunteer activities. Recently, 500 employees have participated in the "Atlanta Volunteer Day" activity, 150 employees in January participated in Mr. Martin Ludder Volunteer Service Summit.
Yesterday, John Rice, CEO of Jeff Yimert and Power System Group visited the South District Middle School and met Dr. Bill Xie Pionel. The volunteers of the GE Elfun Atlanta have begun to cooperate with South District in 1993. The cooperation content is mainly by helping students to prepare for "academic capacity test", guide and tutoring students to improve the overall level of academic overall. The efforts made in this respect have been achieved, and the number of people in the South District Middle School reached 800 points or more than 800 points in the "Academic Ability Test", and the number of students who have prepared college has increased by 32%.
For many years, in other cities where GE is located, we have been visiting schools like South District, because of the guidance of GE employees and the scholarships provided by GE, there have been thousands of students who may not get university, have entered the university. Learning, we are deeply proud of these volunteers and their well-imaged images in the community. Let us now transfer topics from community services to enterprise operations. 2000 is the best year in history. Sales revenue increased by 16%, reaching nearly 130 billion US dollars; net income increased by 19%, reaching $ 12.7 billion; the revenue per share increased by 19%. The company's cash flow reached 15 billion US dollars; business profit margins reached 19%. This level seems impossible at 5 years ago.
Due to this performance and our volunteers, GE was rated as "the most popular company" in the United States for four consecutive years, and I was "the Financial Times" as the "Financial Times" as the most respect for four consecutive years. s company". Our performance has been returned, in 2000, the year and 4 months of this year, our stock performance exceeds the standard Pocette index. But this is only one aspect of stocks, it is well known that the stock market has fallen, although our performance has more than the standard Poor's index from absolute, but since last year, GE has slightly declined.
However, there have been a 5-year-old person who holds GE stocks to date has received a 34% return on investment. Those who have been holding GE stocks since 1980 have received 23% of the total reward return rate per year.
I will talk about GE's values later, but the current economy has clearly showed one of the values - ie the company's love. GE people always think of changes as a chance. The current environment gives us a chance to show it, and we have done it. When many people issued a returned alert, we will issue a message of gain growth. The first quarter results in the first quarter have proven this, and our income has risen by 15%. We firmly believe that 2001 is a new year in which GE is a new high.
In the next report, I will introduce the company to the third century and tell you that GE has achieved results in the world's 340,000 employees.
In short, GE is a new company, a company in the market leading market - from using high-tech production power generation equipment, medical diagnostic equipment, aircraft engine, plastic to consumer products (radio, lighting, and electrical appliances), To 24 diverse financial services business. However, truly unique aspects in the convergence of these companies, they communicate, learn from each other, pursue common goals, and have a firm belief in common values. It is this mutual learning culture and these values to make GE more than just a simple combination of each part. This kind of culture and the working system it promote allow us to make us a measure - a great concept - like the seeds, pay attention to it, watching the employee of GE makes it prosperous and quickly promoted to the entire company . For example, "Globalization" is our earliest initiative, and the most started to seek new markets for our products and services, and later extended to include minimum costs and highest quality sources of finding finished products, parts and raw materials. Today, this initiative has become more rich, and it is concentrated in finding talent, because we know that companies who have found the best talents through any channels will win. "Six Sigma" is our second big measures. The initial initiative is to focus on reducing waste in the company, improving the quality of our products and production processes, which saves billions of dollars for GE. Today, six Sigma have further developed, from 5 years ago, a focus on internal activities to focus on external, improve customer business productivity and efficiency. "Six Sigma" strengthens the close relationship between GE and its customers, and now we are united with our customers under the six Sigma projects we call "Based on customers, service customers". For example, the Medical System Group has completed more than 1,000 projects, which created more than 100 million US dollars for their customers last year. The aircraft engine group completed more than 1,200 "Based Customers" projects in 2000, saving airlines $ 320 million. Enable customers to increase production capacity to help customers grow with us in this severe environment.
Today, "Six Sigma" roles played in GE. Its strict "process" discipline and paying attention to customers a best training program, which is a perfect tool that GE future leadership group can take advantage of it. Our best, the smarter employee has been assigned to "six Sigma" work, I believe that when the board of directors selected the next CEO after twenty years, the gentleman or lady will definitely be People flowing in the blood through the "six Sigma" spirit. "Six Sigma" has become the language of our company's leadership group and become an important part of the GE brand.
GE has developed from a product company into a service company that has both production products and services. Turing 20 years ago, only 15% of our revenue comes from the service industry, and now this ratio has reached 70%, and it will be higher and higher. The slogan of "product service" is relatively focused on traditional maintenance activities - such as increasing the repair cycle of the aircraft engine, or to send components, the goal is to improve our products in our customers.
Today, "product service" has become a high-tech. Many of our best and smartest engineers have focused on new products, such as design higher thrust engines, more effective turbine engines, better image diagnostic equipment, and now they have joined the company's scope High-tech improvement GE has been installed in the activities of the equipment. People have always believed that the service industry is just twisting wrenches, but now it involves high-tech and software products, which allows our customers - hospitals worldwide, airlines, utilities and railways.
Our fourth initiative "digitized" is our latest slogan, which only has run three cycles throughout the GE operating system, but has changed our business.
As with other initiatives, it is just a conceptualized small seed at the beginning - mainly .com works in - and now digital has already surpassed our initial concept.
Like the network giants in the world, we started from "Electronic Sales", that is, mainly to sell our products through the Internet, transfer our traditional customers to the Internet to make more effective transactions. This is very successful. In 2000, we sold $ 8 billion in products and services online. This number will increase to 20 billion this year. This will make our 123-year-old company a largest, or the largest. One e-commerce company. In the aspect of "Electronic Purchase", we have taken the same way, and many. C company ideas have been used in the auction, with a global six Sigma supplier network. The concept of reverse auction is the most effective advantage of GE. We spread this new technology to our various business groups with the fastest speed. Now we have a global auction every day, last year's $ 6 billion, this year's $ 12 billion, this is saved $ 600 million in 2001.
But the biggest breakthrough is what we call it "Electronics Manufacturing", its origin is not .com, .com, the foundation equipment of .com is too small, there are not many channels. "Electronic Manufacturing" is derived from what to do for the Internet, and see the huge advantage that digitizes to truly manufacturing products, and let "six Sigma" deep plants in the blood. . Through the digitization of customer service, the travel process, this year, our operating cost will save $ 1 billion. In 2001, the digitization would at least increase 10 cents per share, and it is only zero three years ago, which once again shows the speed of the energization gas transmission.
Last year, I told you that "e-commerce" is neither "old economy" is not a "new economy", but it is just a new technology. Today, I firmly believe this. If we still need to have proven to say that this technology is born for us, then we have evidence. Last year, GE was rated as "the best e-commerce company" by the Internet Weekly "magazine, and last week was" value "magazine to be awarded.
For GE, the digitization is actually a game change. At present, the economic reasons have brought a decrease in competition, which is just GE broadens the digital gap and further enhances the timing of competitive status. Despite the economic economy, we will still increase the cost of information technology from 10% to 15% this year to achieve the above objectives.
The grand, prosperous initiatives I have just mentioned are exciting is that they are all in relative young age. GE people work in this mutual learning culture is that they will continue to update and expand this initiative, and put forward new initiatives, they will let you believe that the company is always greater than those of them. Simple and accumulated. Below I will go to these time-limited slogans to the values of the dysfunction, those who have been connected together, so that this company is going to work in a different way in any other company in the world.
The first is integrity. This is always the most important value. Honest means that obeying the law, not only literally, but also spiritual. But it is more than just a direct law, it exists in the core of every relationship we have, with integrity-based trust, our employees can develop performance goals and believe that we don't mean that it will be punished "Promise of.
When we deal with the trade unions and the government, we can freely represent our position in a constructive way: whether it is "agree" or "disagree", we know our integrity is unquestionable. During the period in the transition, some of our values will be adjusted in order to adapt to the future challenge, but there is no, that is our commitment to integrity, which means we don't just do everything correctly. Everything is going to do everything.
Other values, I have already talked about it, love change, grabbing the opportunities, realizing that everything we do is only conducive to our customers, will truly contribute to our own success. If GE is destined to become the greatest company in the 21st century, then we must be the world's most payable customers. If we don't look for, challenge and develop the best talents in the world, we will not end the goal. The development of excellent talents is ultimately the true "competitive core" of GE. Unless we can always have the best talents (those who always strive to become better talents), they will rely on our technology, our scale, our operations, our resources are impossible to make us the world's best enterprise of. This requires strict discipline when assessing each employee of the company, is completely honest when dealing with them.
We divide employees into three major categories in every evaluation and incentive mechanism, with a good performance of 70% and 10% of the underlying. GE's leaders know that it is necessary to encourage and reward the top 20% of the top 20%, and ensure that 70% of the staff with good performance can be more upstairs, but the leaders also have a determination to change every year. 10% of the bottom layer. This is the way to create elite talents and make it prosperous.
We have been talking about the quality of these winners, which is also the quality we must cultivate in all employees, that is, magic and essential self-confidence. The real company always gives it a big challenge to our employees, so that the employee is full of confidence, this self-confidence can only be obtained from success. We saw this self-confidence in Terg Woods. At that time, the golf tournament was near the end. He moved in the movie, surrounded by his opponent, all of which were excellent players, but it was sluggish. Confident is definitely a key, favorable elements when you participate in competition.
A group of confident people also communicate with their own simple and people with clear, exciting words to motivate others to seize every opportunity with rapid and decisive behavior. The speed is very important, we have improved faster every day. I believe that the authority will write articles to tell the steps of today's GE, how is it slower than the Thunder of Tomorrow's GE. It is the love of change and desire to grasp the change of the change, so that the GE is like today, vitality, unique, we can never lose this kind of love.
GE is very large, it will become bigger later. The people who lead it know that there is no value in the scale, nothing more than the ability to let a company develop new products once again, set up a joint venture company, to make mergers and acquisitions, leaders are very clear, there is no certain success, some will fail, but this There is no relationship, because size and resources have enabled us to come from step, try again and again. The values we share are almost all inspiring, and people have a positive meaningful. But there is an unusless thing to have a deep-rooted hazard from the bureaucratic, the spirit of mental harm caused by any company, agency and its personnel, and its weakening of other values we firmly believe. Bureaucratic hate change, don't care about customers, like complex, afraid of high speed and do not reach high speed, it will not motivate anyone. GE is committed to do not have bureaucrats as other as any major institution.
In the past two decades, we have continued to organize bureaucracy and overall success, we have created a behavior we call it "boundless".
"Borderless" behavior is that we have been very eager to have the characteristics of a small company. It refers to breaking or ignoring all artificial barriers (functions, official races, geographies, races, gender or other obstacles), go straight to the best ideas. "Borderless behavior" will only be prosperous when it is full of confidence, just like it is Today, and it will be more prosperous in tomorrow. "Borderless behavior" and "non-conflict" are accompanied, in GE, "non-conflictive" meaning far, not just refer to the name of direct call, or the manager does not wear a suit, does not hit, or cancel the reservation The parking space and other apparel of official position. "Unknown form" refers to anyone of the company's department, as long as he has a good idea, a new point of view, he has the right (in fact, we look forward to him) telling other people and knows others will listen carefully and listen Pay attention to his point of view. Regardless of which occasion, the best idea is always winning, and the whole company will be different. This "non-conflict" and the "boundless" behavior it bringsge to become a company that is constantly learning, a morale, a curious business. GE is searching for the world, cultivating the best talents, and cultivating them a wishes that will never satisfy, expand their desires, and look for better ideas every day. As far as I said, one of the best ideas I have been looking for for ten years is who will take over the company's next chairman. I am here to believe that the best idea I have found in the past 20 years is that the active agreement of your directors will make Jeff Yelte as the next chairman and CEO. I believe that Jeff and his excellent team will bring GE to a level and excellent level that we can only dream today. I completely believe this great company's future is more beautiful. Thank you for your enthusiasm for our enthusiasm.
ENGLISH VESION
I'm Jack Welch, Chairman of The Board of Ge. Here With Me Are Keith Sherin, Senior Vice President and Ge's Chief Financial Office President, General Counsel, And Secretary.
Once again, I'd like to welcome you all to our Atlanta meeting. Thanks for coming and thanks in particular to our Atlanta share owners for their hospitality. GE now has 4,300 employees in Atlanta, 1,500 of whom work for GE Power Systems, the Largest Single Business Unit in Ge, Which Established Its Headquarters Here in Atlanta in February of this year.
GE employees have already sunk their roots into the community and begun volunteer efforts. Five hundred of them participated in "Hands on Atlanta Day" recently and 150 participated in the Dr. Martin Luther King Service Summit in January.
Yesterday, Jeff Immelt and John Rice, CEO of our Power Systems business, visited Southside High School and met Dr. Bill Shepherd, its principal. In 1993 volunteers from the Atlanta chapter of Elfun _ GE's global community service organization _ began a partnership with Southside High. The partnership focused on raising the overall level of academic achievement by preparing students for SATs, mentoring, and tutoring. These efforts are working. The number of students scoring over 800 or better on the SATs has tripled and there's been a 32% increase in students from Southside going to college.We've been visiting schools like Southside in other cities of GE for years and seen thousands going to college who never would have been able, because of GE mentoring and GE scholarships. We are so proud of our Volunteers and the Bright Face of Your Company That The present to the community.
Moving from Community Service to Business Operations ...
2000 WAS Our Best Year Ever. Revenues WERE UP 16% To NEARLY $ 130 Billion. Net INCOME WAS UP 19% To $ 12.7 Billion. Earnings Per Share Up 19%. And The Company Generated Over $ 15 BILLION IN CASH FLOW. OPERATING Margin Reached 19% A Level Many of US Would Have Described As Impossible Only Five Years Ago.
This performance and the work of our volunteers both contributed to GE being named by Fortune magazine _ for the fourth year in a row _ the "Most Admired Corporation in America", and by The Financial Times as the "Most Admired Company in the World, "also for the fourth consecutive year. Our performance has been rewarded, our stock outperformed the S & P in 2000 and also in the first four months of this year. Now that's the glass half-full look. Because the equity markets, as we all know , have been down significantly and while we outperform the S & P indexes on an absolute basis, GE is down modestly since last year.However, those of you who've held our stock for five years, including up to now, have seen a 34% Annual Return In Your Investment. And Those Who Have Held Ge Since 1980 Have Seen A Total Compounded Annual Return Of 23%.
I'll talk about our GE values later, but the current economy is clearly demonstrating one of them - the company's love of change GE people always see change as an opportunity This environment gives us a chance to demonstrate it And we are.... We'll deliver earnings growth at a time when many are delivering earnings warnings. Our first quarter results just two weeks ago demonstrated this with earnings up 15%. We're confident GE will have another record year in 2001.
Now, for the rest of this Report, I'd Like to Provide a Picture of this Company As It Begins Its Third Century and Tell You What 340,000 Ge People Around The World Have Created.
GE is, in a phrase, a new kind of Company, a Company with market-leading positions in businesses ranging from high technology manufacturing of power generation equipment, medical diagnostics, jet engines, plastics - to consumer products - broadcasting, lighting, and appliances . - to 24 widely diverse financial services businesses However, the truly unique aspect is the integration of these businesses in GE: their sharing with one another, learning from one another, their pursuit of common initiatives and their intense belief in common values.It is this learning culture and these values that make GE so much more than the sum of its parts. This culture and the GE operating system it drives, lets us take an initiative _ a big idea _ plant it like a seed, emphasize it, and watch The People of GE Flourish and make it it staff Rapidly Across the Company.
Globalization, for example, our oldest initiative, began as a search for new markets for our products and services. That search quickly expanded to include finding the lowest cost, highest quality sources of finished products, components, and raw materials. Today the initiative is So Much Richer and is Focused on Talent, Searching The World for Intellectual Capital, Driven by The Knowledge That The Team That Fields The Best Talent from Any Source Wins.
Six Sigma is our second big initiative. Originally focused on reducing waste and elevating the quality of our products and processes within the company, it has delivered billions of dollars to GE's bottom line in savings. Today, Six Sigma has grown though, from an internally focused activity of five years ago to an outside focus, improving the productivity and efficiency of our customers' operations. Six Sigma has increased the intimacy between GE and its customer base and today we and our customers are entwined in what we call "At the Customer , for the Customer "Six Sigma projects. for example, Medical Systems completed more than a thousand of these projects, generating more than $ 100 million in benefits for their customer hospitals and health providers last year. Aircraft Engines completed more than 1,200" at the customer "Projects in 2000, Saving More Than $ 320 MILON for the Airlines. Making Customers More Productive Helps Both Them and US Grow Through this Tough Environment.today , Though, Six Sigma has evolved to an even larger role in GE. Its rigorous process discipline and relentless customer focus has made it the perfect training ground, a perfect vehicle for the future leadership of GE. Our very best and brightest are moving into Six Sigma assignments and I'm confident when the Board picks the next CEO 20 years from now, the man or woman chosen will be someone with Six Sigma blood in his or her veins. Six Sigma has become the language of leadership in our Company, a Big Part of what we call the ge braand.
GE has evolved from a product company to a services company that also makes great products. Today, 70% of our revenue comes from services. Increasingly, product services. Twenty years ago only 15% of our revenues came from services. The Product Service initiative started out increasing the focus on traditional maintenance activities - things like turnaround times in engine shops or better delivery of spare parts across all our equipment businesses The objective was improving the reliability of our products in our customer operations -. the more traditional what we call " oil can and overalls "activity.Today, product service is as high technology as anything we do. Many of the best and brightest of our engineers who traditionally gravitated to new product design, higher thrust engines, more efficient turbines, better diagnostic images have now Joined this Company-Wide Drive To Deliver High Technology Upgrades To Ge's ENORMOSTALL BASE. Product Services, Which Used To Be Thought of As AS Little More Than Wrench-Turning, IS Today All About High Tech and Software Products That Allow Our Customers - The World's Hospitals, Airlines, Utilities, And Railroads - To Be More Productive.
OUR 10 ITIATIVE, DIGITIZATION, IS OFITI, ITS THIRD OPERATIONAL THROUGH THE GE OPERATING SYSTETY THROUGH THE GE OPERATION SYSTEM BUT ALREADY TRANSFORMING The WAY We do Business.
Like Every Other Initiative, What Started Out As A Little Seed of An Idea in this case - Basical What The the dot.coms were doing - Digitization Today Has Expanded Far Beyondur Original Vision.
Like the Amazons of the world, we started out with what we call "e-Sell," primarily distributing our products on the Internet. Moving our traditional customers to the Web for much more efficient transactions has been very successful. And in 2000 we sold $ 8 billion in goods and services online, a number that'll grow to $ 20 billion this year, making this 123-year-old institution one of the biggest, if not the biggest, e-Business company in the world.On what we call the "e-Buy" side, we followed the same path, adopting many of the dot.com ideas on auctions, having a global network of Six Sigma suppliers. The concept of reverse auctions was right in the GE sweet spot and we wasted no Time In Spreading The New Technology Across Our Business, $ 6 Billion Worth Last Year, $ 12 BILLION THIS YEAR, GENERATING over $ 600 Million in Savings for the Company IN 2001.
But the biggest breakthrough of all was what we call "e-Make" and that did not come from the dot.coms. They had little infrastructure and few processes. E-Make came from learning what the Internet could do for internal processes and seeing the enormous advantage Digitization can give a big old company that actually makes things, particularly one with Six Sigma methodology already deeply entrenched in its veins. By digitizing our processes from customer service to travel and living, we'll take over a billion dollars of Cost Out of Our Operations This Year Alone. Digitization Will Give US AT Least Ten Cents a Share In 2001, from Zero Three Years Ago, Demonstrating Again The Speed with Which Good Ideas Areas Areas Areas Areas Areas Areas Areas Areas Areas Areas Areas Area.
Last year I told you I believed e-Business was neither "old economy" nor "new economy," but simply new technology. I'm more sure of that today. If we needed confirmation that this technology was made for us, we got it. GE was named last year "e-Business of the year" by InternetWeek magazine and awarded the same title last week by WORTH magazine.Digitization is, in fact, a game changer for GE. and, with competition cutting back because of the economy, this is the time for GE to widen the digital gap, to further improve our competitive position. We will do that by increasing our spending on information technology by 10% to 15% this year despite the weak economy.
The exciting thing about these big thriving initiatives I've just described is that they are still in their relative infancy. The wonderful thing about the way GE people work in this culture of learning is that they will continually refresh and expand these initiatives and the new Ons That Someday Will Follow, Always Assuring You, Our Share Owners, That The Sum of this Company Will Always Amount To Something Much Greater Than ITS Parts.
Now I'd Like to Move from these Timely ITIVES To Our Timeless Values, Values That Bind Us Together And Make this Company Work Unlike Any Institution in The World.
.. The first of these is integrity and it will always be the first and most important Integrity means always abiding by the law, both the letter and the spirit But it's not just about laws; it's at the core of every relationship we have With. Trust, Born of Integrity, Employees CAN Set Stretch Performance Goals and Believe US When We Promise That Falling Short is not a punishable offense.
In our external dealings with our unions and governments, we are free to represent our position vigorously in a constructive fashion to agree or disagree on the issues, knowing in our souls that our integrity is never at issue.A period of transition is a period of Change and some of our values Will Be modified to adapt to what the the future brings. ONE WILL NOT. OUR COMMITMENT TO INTEGRITY, Means Always doing the right thing.
Some of our other values I've alluded to already:. The love of change for the opportunity it brings and understanding that nothing we do will contribute to our success unless it contributes to that of our customers If GE's destiny is to become the greatest company of the 21st century, we must be the world's most customer focused company as well. We can do none of this if we do not find, challenge, and develop the world's best people. Doing so, developing great people, in the end is the True "Core Competence" of General Electric.
Our technology, our great businesses, our reach, our resources are not enough to make us the global best unless we always have the best people -. People who are always stretching to become better And this requires rigorous discipline in evaluating and total candor in DEALING WIVERYOINE IN THE Organization.
In every evaluation and reward system, we break our population down into three categories: the top 20%, the valuable high performance middle 70%, and the bottom 10% GE leaders understand the necessity to encourage, inspire, and reward that top 20. %, to be sure that high performance 70% is always energized to improve and move upward. But they also have the determination to change out, always humanely, that bottom 10% and do it every single year. that's how real meritocracies are created and thrive.For years we've been talking about something these winning people have, something we must help foster in all our people -. the magic and indispensable ingredient of self-confidence A Company that aspires to true greatness furnishes its people with big challenges which , when met, fill people with self-confidence that can only come from within and only from winning. You could see that confidence just a few weeks ago in Tiger Woods' face as he walked up the fairways near the end of the Masters, w Ith His Opponents, Every Of Them A Great Player, Wilting Around Him. What a critical, Powerful Advantage to Have When You Compete.
A Company of People Brimming with self-confidence also commysates with utt simplicity, energizing people, and moving with speted and decisiveness to seize eve than optinity.
Speed is so important and we are getting faster by the day. I'm confident future pundits will be writing articles describing how relatively slow and even plodding the GE of today is compared with the lightening pace of the GE of tomorrow. And that love of Change and That Desire To Seize It Is What Makes this Company SO Vital, So Dynamic, Ando Special and We'll Never Lose IT.
GE's big and it's going to become a lot bigger. And it's led by people who understand that size in itself has no value whatsoever other than the ability it gives a company to take swing after swing on new products, ventures, acquisitions, knowing full well that some will not make it - some will fail but that does not matter because size and the resources that come with it allow us to step up and swing again and again.Almost all of our shared values are inspiring, uplifting, positive. But one is not - our visceral hatred of bureaucracy stems from the evil and harm it wreaks on the spirit of a company, any institution, and its people, and its dilutive effect on every other value which we believe bureaucracy hates change, could care. less about the customer, loves complexity, is afraid of speed and incapable of it, and inspires no one. This Company is committed to keeping itself as bureaucracy-free as any big institution that has ever existed.
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Boundaryless behavior is one of the small company characteristics we've always coveted. It means simply the breaking or ignoring of artificial walls like functions, rank, geography, race, sex, and any other barrier in the way of a headlong rush toward the best ideas. Boundaryless behavior only flourishes when self-confidence reins, as it does in the GE of today and will even more in the GE of tomorrow. Boundaryless behavior and informality go hand-in-hand. informality in GE means so much more than calling people by their first names or the absence of managers' suits and ties or reserved parking spaces and other trappings of rank informality means that anyone anywhere in the company with a good idea, a new view, feels empowered -. and, in fact, expected - to deliver it to anyone else and know it'll be listened to and valued Regardless of the occasion, it's the best idea that wins and that makes all the difference in the way this company works.This informality and the boundaryless behav. ior it produces has made GE a Learning Company - a high spirited, endlessly curious enterprise that roams the globe finding and nurturing the best people and cultivating in them an insatiable appetite to learn, to stretch, and to find that better idea, that better way Every day.
In My Case, The Biggest Idea I've Been Searching for for for a Decade Is The Name of a Person WHO Would Succeed Me As Chairman of The Company.
I'm Convinced More and More Every Day That The Best Idea I've Had in The Past 20 Years Was To Choose with The Enthusiastic Concurrency of Your Directors Jeff Immelt As Your Next Chairman And CEO.
I'm sure that Jeff and his terrific team will take GE to levels of growth and excellence that we can only dream of today. And I'm utterly convinced for this great Company, its best days lie ahead.Thank you for your terrific support Over the years.
