Tomorrow’s leaders
by. Anthony Demangone
Organizations are funny things. Employees come in and move out, yet the organization remains. This applies to all employees, including the organization’s leadership.
How do you develop and nurture the next generation of leaders? If you’re looking for ideas, here’s a wonderful article from Slate, which highlights GE’s leadership program.
So in 1956 GE bought a parcel of leafy land about an hour north of New York City and established its Crotonville management training center. GE claims it is the oldest corporate university in the country. The first seminar Crotonville offered was 13 weeks long, which sounds absurd today—no modern manager could spend a full quarter of the year solely on professional development. But that initial course paid dividends: Among its students was Reginald Jones, a future GE CEO.
I recently visited Crotonville’s 59-acre campus and sat in with a group of about 80 midlevel GE executives who were beginning a two-week session. The class included both men and women, of widely varying ethnicities and ages. They’d been sent here—on the recommendation of their superiors—from GE units all over the world. The only thing that united them was that the company felt they possessed superb managerial potential. Or, more simply put, as one Crotonviller said to me: “This is where you go to get promoted.”