My boss passed me a HBS case study on GE. It is called GE's Talent Machine-The Making of a CEO. Written by Christopher Bartlett (yes the same guy who co-authored a lot of stuff with Sumantra Ghoshal), this talks about the rise of Jeff Immelt from 25 year old fresh Harvard MBA to 44 year old CEO of GE.
Indeed surprising that Jeff was being actively watched by GE's top management team right from the time he entered GE. All his experiences from Plastics to Appliances to Medical Systems were actively orchestrated in order to give him the much-needed trials by fire.
Looking at most of my batchmates from INSEAD, I would be surprised if their employers had any clue what to do with them beyond 6 months leave alone 20 years! Well, not entirely true-I can think of one person who is being actively "groomed" for a CEO role at a Fortune 10 corporation.
So I suspect this case study is written in the same old "I told you so", Monday morning quarter-backing, 20-20 hindsight style that most case studies are written.
Or maybe it does happen and HBS MBAs are indeed treated differently from INSEAD MBAs :-)
Indeed surprising that Jeff was being actively watched by GE's top management team right from the time he entered GE. All his experiences from Plastics to Appliances to Medical Systems were actively orchestrated in order to give him the much-needed trials by fire.
Looking at most of my batchmates from INSEAD, I would be surprised if their employers had any clue what to do with them beyond 6 months leave alone 20 years! Well, not entirely true-I can think of one person who is being actively "groomed" for a CEO role at a Fortune 10 corporation.
So I suspect this case study is written in the same old "I told you so", Monday morning quarter-backing, 20-20 hindsight style that most case studies are written.
Or maybe it does happen and HBS MBAs are indeed treated differently from INSEAD MBAs :-)
1 comment:
As the great Salah once told Adner, strategy is all about gut feeling...
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