What we are experiencing are symptoms of poor management and lack of customer focus.

I have worked for GE for quite some time. Most GE businesses have such short term focus on the quarterly number and never accept the actual sales cycle required. For example: "Hey Jane Saleswoman, concentrate on new customers this year and let the channel handle all existing business. Oh, by the way, your budget is 2MM. I am sorry that it is Q2 and giving this to you now." The issue with this is that it can take years to develop one account. GE does not have the tolerance for this. They need to learn and understand this NOW. Investment now = rewards in the future as the market dictates. To make this work, the company needs to be well positioned with competitive market driven products and a clear path to innovative products to foster relationships that align with market NEEDS for the future. Meanwhile, you have SPB managers getting pressured by finance to roll up the quarterly number. Well, if the reset button was pushed earlier and more gradually that is now being forced to be pushed, the quarterly number is "ZERO" Mrs. Finance. Oh and next quarter is "ZERO." This doesn't fly within GE. So numbers that get rolled up start getting manipulated and are completely twisted by the time they reach the top. Then we miss. Then we get caught. This lacks integrity.

It doesn't help when we develop products and put our eggs in one basket and expect the market to adapt to it and write PO's . You cannot sell a 1K cell phone with no apps. Most would go back to the flip.

If GE is to survive, the company needs to become sales focused an lose the metric focus NOW. Understand, own, react to and grow the partnerships with our customers. MBA finance people, YOU DON'T KNOW SALES. Get out of the process and support the team. LISTEN TO SALES. NON EXISTENT MARKETING (I don't know where most of you went to school), YOU NEED TO ALIGN WITH SALES AS WELL. We cannot wait for the bottom to fall out and point fingers and say stuff like: "Well, we are in line with our competitors that are facing the same headwind (paraphrased)." We could have pivoted. And we need to be better than them.

We are in a crazy spot right now. GE is not the company that I joined. However, I would like to see her turn around. However, in order to do this, we must focus and execute on the stuff that matters to our customer. NOT PRETTY POWER POINTS and OUT OF TOUCH HIGHER LEVEL NON-VALUE ADD time being spent at the top doing the soft shoe shuffle.

Thanks

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GE has never had a concern for the customer. It is only focused on money without a mission

Very well stated. Integrity Integrity and Integrity is missing.

Extremely poor culture forced upon by EB's on SPB's.

Everyone have to find a way to fudge numbers.

This is a serious issue.

HR is worst of kind that encourages this EB culture.

HR and EB's and SPB must go.

There isn't enough global demand for energy products and industrial equipment to sustain GE's current sales volume and margin. That's why GE is scrambling to restructure its costs by laying off older more expensive employees.

This was pretty well summed up today in Gary Cohn's briefing today with a bunch of CEOs:

At a Wall Street Journal CEO Council forum on Tuesday, John Bussey, a WSJ associate editor, asked the gathered top executives to raise their hands if they planned to use the huge corporate tax cut hurtling through Congress to increase capital investment, a key selling point for the tax bills from the White House and congressional Republicans. Almost no hands went up. "Why aren't the other hands up?" asked President Trump's top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, sitting on stage. Gerard Baker, WSJ editor-in-chief, echoed the question.

“Why aren’t the other hands up?” he asked, making a joke out of the spectacle.

In a survey of more than 300 executives at large U.S. corporations over the summer, most said they would use a tax windfall to pay down debt, buy back stock, or merge, with capital investment low on this list.

Well said. Unfortunatily this is the way of most companies now days.

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What we are experiencing are symptoms of poor management and lack of customer focus.

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