Laurie Zalman:          Hi my name is Laurie Zalman and I am a Human Resources professional in New York City.  There is a lot of data and research out there about the cultural differences in the workplace.  From your perspective, as the CEO of Japanese Company in the United States, what would you say are the striking differences between American and Japanese workers? Are there any similarities that surprised you?

 

Sir Howard Stringer:             There is quite a lot of both.  If you went into our management conference in May; which has about 1000 executives; you would see about dozen women which is behind anything here.

 

                                    Like America in the 1960s and when I first came in the 1970s, the women are very well educated and there are more than enough brilliant women to go around.  Essentially that's an electronics culture; and that would not be true at the movie studio, television studio, or the music company.  It’s striking how many dark-suited people stretch as far as the eye can see. That's something that we have to change.

 

                                    On the flip side, there is much less obsession with money. You can't entice senior executives with a pay raise.   That's not what drives them.  If you say pay for performance which always resonates in American and European companies, it doesn't resonate in Japan.

 

                                    They don't turn down money but it isn't part of the cultural motivation.  It's a socialist democracy, social democracy, whatever you want to call it.  In some ways I find that rather like CBS in the 60s, we didn't have contracts in the 60s because you said I want to work for CBS News the home of Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite.  It's the best place to work, I don't care what you pay me, and I don't need a contract. There was an end to that particular era some years later but in that sense that's differences is reassuring and rather engaging.

 

 Ginny Champney:   Hi my name is Ginny Champney and I am the director of Human Resources at SUSS Micro Tech.  My question is that GE has a reputation for highly valuing their human resources function and the value that they add to the bottom-line. In fact I understand that the senior executive human resources professional at GE attends the board of directors meetings. For those human resources professionals who are not currently engaged at that level of the business, what would be your advice for them to be able to build stronger partnerships with their CEOs and board of directors?

 

Jeffrey R. Immelt:     I think it’s time to find another job, you know. In other words, if I was in HR and the CEO of the company relegated me to not to be a direct report or not to have access to the people in meetings, you are working for the wrong company. I think HR people need to work for the companies where people are valued and in our case when you run a multi-business company like GE, people have to be our core competency.

 

                                    I spend probably third of my time on people. Bill Connelly and John lynch who are retiring now… I always look at businesses when I evaluate our own businesses.  I look at the triangle of the CEO, CFO and senior HR leader.  I look for complementary skills among those three people as being absolutely essential to how that business is led.  If the CEO is a hard-nosed operations person, I make the HR leader to be a little softer. If the CEO is more visionary than and not as edgy as they need to be, I make the HR leader be an SOB.  I call it the triangle of a business is in those three people, but there is not a day that goes by that I don't talk to our senior HR leader.  I was with the NBC people yesterday in California, and I get on the phone and say “you know this person… we got to do this. I am just beside myself; we got to find something to do here.

 

                                    There is not a day that goes by that it's not about people.  I think there is an old school that gets taught of the manipulative HR leader. When I took organizational behavior when I was in business school it was plotting darkness; gain theory of who is going to do what, puppeteers and all that. I always said, when I joined GE, the HR leaders went two groups; people who like people and people who liked to do bad things to people. All you can afford to have today is to like people.  If you want to be in HR, you are going to like the people you want to lead the company. If you are student here, you know, liking people and want to see the best in them is actually everything you ought to be learning about an organizational behavior. That's about what's it about.

Attachments:

• 1506615067-W1-Video-Importance of HR Management Transcript.pdf
• 1506615079-W1-Video-HR and Industrial Relations Transcript.pdf