allowed to make their own decisions, began to work harder, confident that they themselves had found a way to a solution. assigned tasks".

The number of layers of management was reduced from 29 to 6. Those who were hit the hardest were mid-level performers, pawns in suits. Как писал Tom Peters, «менеджеры среднего уровня - это рождественские гуси». Welch "cooked" a lot of them.

It worked. In 1987, the release of the company from bureaucracy was celebrated. «Джеку Уэлчу удалось очистить одну из главных американских компаний от бюрократических излишеств прошлого и создать свою собственную культуру, которая сделала вклад в победу GE над многими крупными концернами, - говорилось в Business Week. - По этой причине или нет, но стиль управления большинства американских компаний стремится походить на стиль компании GE».

Summary: Destroy the bureaucracy

Welch was right. Large, but not cluttered with hierarchies, GE represents a new organizational model. This model characterize:

• Speed. Large organizations of the traditional type have always been slow. GE is organized to move fast and make quick decisions. "Speed ​​is everything." This is an important component of competitiveness. Speed ​​keeps businesses and people young. You get used to this very quickly. Это соответствует вкусу американцев, и мы должны это внедрять», - говорит Уэлч.

• Informality. McKinsey consultants were once required to wear hats. Now it's gone. Pointless formalities make people uncomfortable and interfere with their real work. Welch says, “GE's value is in its informality. I think it was a valuable idea."

• Lack of hierarchy. «Герой - тот, у кого есть идеи», - говорит Jack Welch. Business is driven by ideas, not by additional layers of administrators.

• Information exchange. «Деятельность без жестких границ - это стиль жизни компании. Люди обмениваются идеями постоянно, - говорит Уэлч. - Если вы подхватили идею и поделились ею с другими, вас наградят. Прежде было не так - если у вас возникала идея, вы должны были ее держать при себе. It would be foolish to pitch an idea to anyone, as the bureaucratic model would make the hero not of you, but of the one with whom you shared the idea.” Когда люди делятся информацией - внутри компании, с поставщиками, с клиентами - ценность информации не уменьшается, а растет.

Chapter 9 Corporate Man

“Now is the time for unification. Individualism is a thing of the past and will never return.”
John D. Rockefeller

The corporate man is still alive

One of William White's famous management books, The Organization Man, which became a classic in 1956, contains a reference description of corporate life. “The fundamental premise of the new leadership model is that the main goals of the individual and the organization are the same. В отношении к «системе» у молодых людей нет цинизма и скептицизма - они не рассматривают ее как что-то, чему они должны противостоять, но как то, с чем следует кооперироваться… они безусловно верят в то, что все их лучшие качества принесут пользу organizations and they will benefit from it. Thus, young people can calmly and coolly trust their fate in this organization. The average young person cherishes the dream that his association with the organization will become getting stronger and stronger." White described a business world in which the organization stifled inspiration under the slogan of improving performance. The individual was subordinated to the bureaucratic machine.

The post-war corporate worker described by White was prepared to spend his entire life in one company. Успешность такой карьеры была понятна - лояльность и серьезное отношение гарантировали надежную работу. It was mutually beneficial. The worker received a good salary and a high degree of social protection. The company received a faithful, hardworking performer. This unspoken agreement became known as the psychological contract. The term was first used by the social psychologist Ed Schein of MIT. Shine became interested in the problem of employer-employee relations in the late 1950s. He drew parallels between the Korean War brainwashing program for American prisoners of war and the corporate identity processing that was carried out in GE's Crotonville.

Если предположение Шайна о связи с «промыванием мозгов» верно, то психологический контракт - это нечто большее, чем просто взаимовыгодная сделка. It is rather a value system that an incoming employee must accept.

First, the psychological contract is based on the principle of loyalty. «Самое главное и единственное, что требовалось от работника с универсальной квалификацией, это личная лояльность (преданность) организации», - заметил Честер Барнард в своей работе «The Functions of the Executive» (1938). Loyalty can easily become a dangerous quality for an employee. What if the corporate strategy is bad or the company is engaged in illegal or immoral business? Thus, the question arises: devotion to whom or what? Thirty years ago, corporate values ​​were taken for granted and not questioned.

The next question raised under the psychological contract was about perspectives. The well-planned careers of workers did not allow them to “look outside” and look for broader opportunities. The corporation became an autonomous and at the same time infinite world, based on a combination of many links of control, systems and hierarchy. Clients and buyers who existed somewhere in the vacuum of space beyond outside of it, were considered something of secondary importance. In the fifties, sixties, and seventies, no one lost a job because of low productivity or indifferent service. One job for life was the norm, and for the vast majority of managers it was a reality.

It is clear that in such an environment there was no place for individualists. Faithful, obedient, hardworking privates were valued. It is hardly surprising that when Rosabeth Moss Kanter first began researching corporate life, she found that the number one quality expected of a manager was "reliability." She writes about this in the book Men and Women of the Corporation (1977).

The reality was that the psychological contract favored those who showed loyalty over those who had the ability and skill. Thus, many bad workers found shelter in corporations. Also important was the fact that the psychological contract was intended to preserve management: the "pawns" of the hierarchy, without value, were easily hired and fired.

In recent years, we have witnessed a radical change in the psychological contract between management and employees. In the 1980-1990s. the rampant downsizing of enterprises marked the end of a psychological contract that had lasted for several decades.

The manager's values ​​have lost their former linearity. Reliability in what? Loyalty to whom? Gary Hamel, co-author of Competing for the Future, says: “In the old days, if you didn’t get caught stealing from your workplace, or if you didn’t slander your line manager, you could count on a secure job at any company in the world. all of my life. Loyalty was valued more than ability, so it was always possible to find a quiet corner where a mediocre and mediocre worker could settle down. A variety of benefits also did not contribute to the emergence of a good workforce, but increased the dependence of a person on the firm. It was before, but now it's different."

As one would expect, both one and the other side underwent changes. Employers are no longer willing to take on any obligations (even implicit ones) when hiring an employee for a long-term job. On the other hand, modern employees are more proactive, they are ready to learn and take on take responsibility for the development of your career.

As a result, the new psychological contract is more likely to be built on professional growth opportunities than on blind loyalty. And naturally, if a company invests in the development and growth of its employees, then the employees become more committed to the company. But the trouble is that competing companies are beginning to be interested in trained workers. Now there are no unified methods for retaining staff, each company has its own.

There is another reason why working on the principle of "life in one company" is no longer popular. Perhaps the company is ready to give the employee the opportunity to build a long-term career, but what happens if it falls apart? Ongoing research shows that companies now do not exist for very long. According to one analyst, firms in Japan and Europe have an average corporate life of 12.5 years. Арье де Геус из Лондонской бизнес-школы считает, что средняя продолжительность существования мультинациональных корпораций - от 40 до 50 лет.

The ebb and flow of corporate life means that the traditional psychological contract is probably not coming back. However, some kind of psychological contract between the employer and the employee will always exist. In any working relationship, each of the parties has its own thoughts about the plans and aspirations of the other side (whether they are right or wrong). A new phenomenon for the two parties may be the transformation of an unspoken psychological contract into a written agreement.

Jack Welch: корпоративный человек

Now, in an era of rewarding personal initiative and managing one's career, corporate loyalty is clearly out of fashion. When you hear about someone who has been with the company for many decades, you get the feeling that this person was just a prisoner of the corporation. You want to ask what might happen if he were free from the shackles of the firm. За таким интересом скрывается истина, ставшая теперь общим местом: стать корпоративным человеком - неудачная идея. Считается, что непоколебимая преданность компании - это скорее плохо, чем хорошо. And here we are wrong. Jack Welch - человек одной компании. For Welch and many thousands of others, loyalty is not an empty phrase. But, remaining in the service of his corporation, he still remains an inquisitive and searching person.

Arie de Geus, who has studied the relationship between the company and its employees, writes about this in his work "The Living Company". It defines a new relationship: a modern