All these failures combined to create a general sense that big corporations were secretive institutions that couldn’t be trusted. It was around this time that the word “transparency” started cropping up in conversations about corporate America, and not in a good way.
At the time Jeff Immelt took over, GE was a disparate and complex conglomerate that included a giant television and movie company; America’s seventh largest bank; a large insurance business (for humans and pets); portfolios in transportation, health care, and energy; and traditional industrial components like appliances and plastics. Growth at GE had slowed; doubts were being raised about the long-term viability of the insurance business and the dominance of GE Capital. Some economists questioned how GE had so consistently generated double-digit profit growth for nearly a decade.
Jeff believed GE had relied too much on buying other companies to support top- and bottom-line growth. His mandate was to grow from our base of technical strength. Jeff sought what investors call organic growth, meaning you don’t buy your revenues, you grow them. He wanted to put the company on a course to invest record amounts in technology but also to be more connected to the world’s global markets, especially those in developing countries where suddenly much of the world’s entrepreneurial energy (and growth) was being generated.
That would require a new kind of leadership, one that expects judgment calls to be made in the face of incomplete data, that encourages original thinking, that values speed over perfection, that embraces change. That this would take over a decade to seed wasn’t clear at the time. We knew we had to expand on the “all-in” zero-defects managerial doctrine of Six Sigma. There is a lot of good in Six Sigma, because it focuses people on quality and reduced distraction. But Six Sigma created a culture that venerated process, and along the way, our people lost some of their capacity to take smart risks and use personal judgment when making decisions.
The new GE would have to be as much about opportunity as efficiency.
The task was monumental: maintain all the expertise that made us who we are and at the same time learn how to think and act differently to ensure we are able to grow into something new. But how do you teach a company imagination that looks to create a future few can see?
I describe it as “optimize today and build tomorrow.” Companies have to learn how to do both if they expect to be around for future generations. Good leaders know it is their job to manage the tension from this hard balancing act.
To become an ambidextrous organization, we needed to become better explorers. We needed to engage the world as a classroom from which we could learn and extract the ideas that would create our future. It was something that I would eventually codify in our workflow and come to call discovery.
It’s hard to convey just how absurd, and even threatening, these ideas sounded to so many of GE’s leaders at the time. The story we told of ourselves and celebrated then was almost exclusively a story of optimizers—our language centered on efficiency, defect removal, and process rigor, while our Six Sigma “black belts” were GE’s ninja forces, guiding teams forward through continuous process improvement. How many times had I heard, “That’s not who GE is.” I knew the primary source of resistance to the changes we were seeking would be our own identity.
GE’s Caped Crusader
As I began to assess who we were as a company and where we needed to go, it occurred to me to hire a consulting company like McKinsey to offer recommendations. But something about taking such a comfortable and predictable route during a moment of intense chaos seemed like a cop-out. I had another idea.
In May 2001, I had attended a conference with a speaker brought by Procter & Gamble named Clotaire Rapaille. Dr. Rapaille is the kind of guy who sticks in your memory, an unorthodox Frenchman prone to wearing black velvet capes and offering meandering discourses about the vitality of cheese.
A one-time child psychiatrist who founded the research and branding firm Archetype Discoveries Worldwide, Rapaille helps companies articulate their identities—and plan how to modify them for the future. And that’s what GE desperately needed after 9/11. What do we value? What is sacred and what needs to change? Why?
Realizing what our brand or business is really about is critically important—especially in the face of turbulence. If a company thinks of itself only as a bank, it behaves one way. But if it begins to think of itself as a financial advisor, or as a service provider, then it starts to behave differently.
Rapaille’s philosophy is driven by a belief that every culture imprints on its members a unique and distinct logic of emotion—an affective identity. According to Rapaille, the first time we understand what a word represents—coffee, mother, love—we imprint its meaning, and in so doing create a mental connection that lasts the rest of our lives. “Every word has a mental highway,” Rapaille likes to say. Dr. Rapaille calls this the “Culture Code.”
That’s where the cheese comes in. “In America,” Rapaille tells people, “the Code for cheese is: ‘Dead.’ ” That’s because in America, all cheese is pasteurized, which means it is scientifically dead. In France, cheese is filled with microbes that give it a taste and a smell. In France, you never put cheese in the refrigerator because it’s alive. The priority is different; the logic of emotion is different. The French like taste before safety; the Americans want safety before taste. “Here, the cheese is safe, and to make that really clear I wrap it up in plastic. That plastic is like a body bag and the fridge is like the morgue.”
At the heart of Rapaille’s work is a theory based on a three-part concept (or “triune,” as he calls it) of how the brain works. The Cortex is the seat of logic and reason, abstract thought and language; the Limbic is the brain’s emotional center; and the Reptilian is the area controlled by our basic human needs: eating, breathing, reproducing, surviving. All three sides of the brain exert powerful influences. But in Rapaille’s world, “the reptilian always wins.”
I had some reservations about hiring Rapaille—he was weird and his “science” dubious, and I could imagine Jeff’s less-than-positive reaction to the velvet cape. But I felt on a gut level the need to try something new at GE, and his theories gelled with my love of neuroscience. Plus, his contract with P&G seemed to be enough of an imprimatur of respectability to justify a meeting with Jeff.
When the meeting took place in our executive conference room in Fairfield, though, it went downhill fast. It was Rapaille, me, Jeff, Bob Wright (by now also a GE vice chair), and Rapaille’s assistant, who took notes and said little. Bob occasionally spoke up, but this was definitely a dance between Rapaille and Jeff. Unfortunately, the two men had no shared language. It was like Six Sigma meets the New Age, Captain America meets Inspector Clouseau. Seemingly incognizant of (or indifferent to) their lack of connection, Rapaille told the stinky cheese anecdote in its gratuitous entirety. It was excruciating.
Eventually Jeff, his frustration in full plumage, went to the whiteboard and began outlining his business strategy.
“We will invest in technology,” he said, writing the words in a bright red marker. “We’ll get closer to the customer. And we’ll grow the company from within.”
Despite being irritated, Immelt was articulate, clear, affable. He started writing numbers on the board to represent rates of organic growth within the company and revenue growth for shareholders. He drew a circle around his growth target. “This is where it has to be,” he said, putting down the marker.
And then Rapaille jumped up and, with a green marker, wrote in large letters: Cortex. Limbic. Reptilian.
Here we go, I thought, trying to contain myself. He outlined his triune theory and the principle of the culture code. “It’s all about our unconscious minds,” he said. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say with all those numbers.”
“Well, that’s my business plan,” Jeff replied matter-of-factly.
“And I’m telling you, it’
s not in the numbers,” Rapaille replied. “The reptilian always wins.”
I felt sick. I could see the thought bubble over Jeff’s head: I just told you what I’m going to do, what the hell does that have to do with reptiles?
I am so fired, I thought.
But Rapaille then said something that changed the entire tenor of the meeting. “Well, all those numbers you wrote on the board: What do people have to believe in for all those things to happen? People don’t get out of bed to work for ‘the numbers’…for ten percent.” That was a question that resonated deeply with Jeff after the upheaval we had just been through. Rapaille was searching for the soul, the raison d’être, of GE.
Jeff began talking about the corporation as if it were a living thing. “We are this giant entity,” he explained, “comprised of many different businesses—great businesses with terrific customers. But we cannot just keep going out and buying new businesses. That has to change. We have an important mission now. We have many great businesses to grow from,” he said. “We have everything you could want: global reach, technology, diversity, fantastic people, and we have all this history. We perform.”
Rapaille’s eyes grew wide, and his mischievous smile returned to his lips. “That performance, that longevity,” he said. “That’s where we will find the essential truth, the Code, that drives this company.”
Now he had Jeff’s attention. Soon they were writing on the whiteboard together. Jeff would explain things he was trying to do with his strategy, and Rapaille would press him for the emotional needs that would make them possible. I knew it was a good meeting because it went on for at least ninety minutes. Jeff was a stickler for keeping to a schedule—he doesn’t let things run over. And we definitely did this time.
Afterward, as Rapaille’s elevator descended, I asked Jeff what he thought.
“Well,” he said with a wry smile. “Those first few minutes were horrible, Beth. You were almost fired.” It was clear that he was only half-joking. “But yes, I think it’s worth it. We should try things like this, whatever it is.” It was a very common utterance for Jeff: “Give it a try, Beth.”
Having survived the bringing together of oil and water, I threw myself into organizing Rapaille’s visits. It was not going to be easy. Rapaille’s process is not a one-off focus group, but a six-month marathon. Making it harder was pushback from the people whose involvement we most needed: the discovery team I put together to investigate and lead the project.
The goal of the Rapaille process was not just to uncover GE’s identity, but to find a way to present it to clients and our own employees in a way that aligned with Jeff’s new growth strategy. That meant that everything was up for evaluation—we might have to go as far as changing our slogan, “We Bring Good Things to Life.”
Rapaille’s methodology is unique, to put it mildly. He organizes teams of employees and customers, and puts them through a three-step process of “imprinting” or “sensing” sessions. Each lasts one hour and draws on a different part of the brain, moving from the outside (logical) to the inside (reptilian). In all, the process would involve about four hundred GE employees and customers in Connecticut, New York, Atlanta, and Cleveland.
Rapaille’s great value was as a catalyst, a spark, via his selection of questions. A spark is a person, usually an outsider, whose unique perspective—the more different, the better—challenges the team to think differently. Asking us to describe our tribe to an alien forced us to be our own cultural anthropologists. Posing good and discomforting questions creates distance and makes you observe yourself. This process—discovery—is in dialogue with the environment. And the more vital and “weird” the environment is, the more likely you are to grow.
Bring in a Spark
Early on, I was nervous about bringing in sparks, because I thought I was supposed to have the answers. Or that their difference or the fact that they made my colleagues uncomfortable would reflect poorly on me. But what I came to realize is that while their difference can cause discomfort, it is often necessary. Because they don’t work in the company, sparks aren’t afraid of challenging the boss or office politics. And surprisingly, people pay attention to sparks, especially when they make them think or say the unexpected.
At our first session in Atlanta, my discovery team members (there were six of them, and they represented marketing, communications, human resources, a business unit, and BBDO) bordered on hostile. The most agitated was Richard, a Brit who’d run the ad department under Jack and overseen the “Good Things” campaign for over a decade.
To Richard, I was a lightweight, and he challenged most everything I said. Now I was bringing in a crazy man to GE. Richard’s body language—withdrawn, arms folded across his chest—told me all I needed to know about what he thought of this search for our code.
When Rapaille asked what the letters GE meant to our tribe, Richard mumbled, “Hmm, let’s see, maybe General Electric? Or could it be Giant Eggplant?” But it was when Rapaille launched into his cheese story, which we had heard several times already, that Richard blew up. “Yes, we know the bloody cheese is alive in France!”he said.
The second-step “sensing” sessions were designed to take us back from our logical to our “limbic” brains. Rapaille pushed us for our emotional impressions of GE. Some staffers depicted GE as a place that was “brutal” and “kill or be killed.” The notion of Sacrifice—reflected in comments like “I don’t know my neighbors,” “I live on the edge,” “Stress, stress, stress,” “Constant state of conflict”—was listed next to Reward: “It’s the thrill of the kill.”
After getting the people in the Atlanta group to give their brief impressions of GE, Rapaille asked them to turn those impressions into a description of the company. He had us write these on our own, to avoid groupthink. Of all the stories that came out of this first session, the one that stuck in my mind was about our toughness:
…the best of the best. Tend to be successful at what they do, they are committed, extreme groups, they know how to survive, nimble enough to get it done, tough to get into.
As raw as those stories were, it was the third, “reptilian,” part of the process that proved the most intense. Here, people were instructed to lie on mats on the floor and allow their minds to float back to the first imprint of GE. It was a bizarre sight: grown men and women in business suits lying on their backs in a conference room, doing “relaxation” to access their innermost feelings about the corporation. After the emotional storytelling, people were like new skin under picked scabs, so much so that I was not really surprised that, at the Atlanta event and several others, I heard sniffles in the dark.
Afterward, one young GE accountant told the group of how his fear of flying was tempered by the GE logo he spotted on the plane that was carrying him to Kansas City to see his girlfriend (“wondrous and remarkable”). Later, a consumer said, “GE protects me from certain death” every time she screwed in a lightbulb.
As we got further into the discovery sessions, something began to change in us and in our relationship to GE. We became more emotional and more reflective. We spoke of Edison and GE’s rich heritage with great pride. Even Richard appeared genuinely touched by the personal stories of our fellow employees. He eventually engaged in the process and added a great deal to our final conclusions. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that later, after he left GE, Richard started his own consultancy, modeled on doing triune discovery and helping brands find their code.
At the end of the process, Dr. Rapaille came to Fairfield to deliver The Code we had been working so hard to decipher. Rapaille swept into the room where the discovery team was gathered. We were desperate for the big reveal; after months of work, the oracle would speak.
Without notes, he summarized the word associations, the stories, the motivating and demoralizing factors. “You are the lions, standing on a rock, looking over the plains, you can eat anything
. A Great White Shark. You never stand still. GE means Get Everything. Winning is everything. You lose, you get shot. Fear is part of the drive to excel. You all have the same values: make your numbers. People have to find their own way. Do you know that no one would even give me directions to find this conference room today,” he added. “Commitment. Excellence. Challenging. Thrilling. Committed. Take the hill at any cost. Work with the best. Best of the best. Perform. Win. “
We were on the edge of our seats when he finally said, “So what does all of this add up to? What is THE Code for GE?”
The room fell totally silent, as if we were about to receive the eleventh commandment from Moses himself. Dr. Rapaille smiled, clearly reveling in the attention.
“It is,” he said, “the Marines,” drawing the word out in his Frenchiest accent.
The room grew very quiet.
The Marines? That’s it?
Personally, I felt deflated; I had expected something actionable, something I would instinctively connect with, something, well, deeper. Part of me felt he had taken the easy way out, that we had been snookered. It was what we already knew: Big. Process-driven. American. What did that add up to? The military, of course.
“The Marines?” I asked him, not in an overwhelmingly friendly tone. “Anything else to add? Something we might be able to use.”
“Well, that…” he said. “That is your Code. Right there.”
It was the first time I’d seen Dr. Rapaille lose confidence. I think his clients tended to humor the flamboyant Frenchman. But I—and all of the discovery team—had been expecting something mind-bending, something that would create an immediate before and after.
Imagine It Forward Page 8
