Your profile says you work at GE. What degrees does your CEO have, and from where?
It matters.
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UF MBA for Naval Aviators
- Thread starter EODDave
- Start date
Your profile says you work at GE. What degrees does your CEO have, and from where?
It matters.
Is GE still worshiping at the altar of the Six Sigma Über-Master Ninja Black Belt? That might have something to do with it.
Edit: Oh, and Jeff Immelt is a Hahvahd MBA FWIW . . .
Well, did he recently complete it to switch to another job? No, an SDET doesn't need an MBA, but based on the job listings I've seen out of Microsoft, Expedia, et al, the Project or Program Manager over him probably has one.
Ultimately, a credential is basically instant credibility for gatekeepers who don't know you. It's like rank in the military; if you know someone is an OSCS, you may not know them personally, but you have a rough idea of their expertise. Sure, you can get enough experience to be CEO without an MBA, but don't go showing up hat in hand to the HR recruiters looking for a senior management job without the proper credentials or a persuasive alternative. And in the case of Door #2, it's probably still better to know the hiring manager or get your resume in his/her hands.
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deep snack knowledges
Skating...
To elaborate upon that, if you want to specialize in a certain discipline, then a few other schools start appearing in the top. For example in International Business (graduate), the University of South Carolina's Moore School of Business rises to the top according to US News and World Report. Likewise, if you want to go specifically into marketing, supply chain, etc you might want to take a look at the rankings to make sure you do not overlook a school.
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools
Thankfully Lean-Six Sigma has been put back in the bottle and contained to use in hard core manufacturing only. It really has fallen out of favor - as has most everything to do with Jack W.
We have completely abandoned performance reviews and "agile" and "minimally viable product" are the order of the day.
The 6 sigma nazis are mostly gone or have changed their tune.
St a certain level it does agree - but more for relationships and probably coming to GE via a postgraduate a session program at the respective school. But it has not been a barrier to myself or my many colleagues on my team who don't have one and are making in the 150 to 200 K range
My dad will be glad to hear. He's a retired mechanical engineer who spent his career designing systems for power plants. He worked for GE Power Systems in Schenectady for 10 years, mostly in the Welch era. I distinctly recall him getting driven totally bugshit by having to do Six Sigma projects for every damned little thing. I recently certified Yellow Belt myself, and I can see why. It's a good way of thinking for taking a process that's completely borked, and fixing it. But the law of diminishing returns will rear its ugly head. "Six Sigma" is a standard that needs to be applied judiciously, as opposed to the ass-pain achieving it will create. LSS has its uses outside manufacturing, much as a screwdriver isn't just used for driving screws. But much as you wouldn't use a screwdriver to pound a nail, it seems to me you have to be smart about where to apply LSS, and not force it on your people wholesale.
"Agile" is the buzzword everywhere now, it seems. As always, a good idea misapplied by consultants who don't know what the hell they're doing. It sets itself up in opposition to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, which is its own special breed of academic bullshit hell. I got my Certified Scrum Master training a couple years ago, and it's obvious Scrum was designed by an old RF-4 pilot. It's basically the Fallon mission planning cycle applied to business. Plan, fly, debrief, analyze, repeat. Agile has its place, but now people are trying to use it for things it wasn't designed for, watching it fail, and then declaring the whole thing "dead" because they're idiots. Go figure.
@nittany03 I am off to Schenectady in the morning - so will pay a brief homage to your dad. Like a lot of large technical organizations, there are many people who embrace the "activity" vs "progress" thing - e.g. look busy at all costs. It's actually a recognized leadership pattern (by well educated, smart people) at GE that they are trying to address over time. (e.g. not punishing failure).
Agile = OODA
thats how I explain it to people 
Your Scrum to PFDA is appropriate too in my book.
Agile = OODA
thats how I explain it to people Your Scrum to PFDA is appropriate too in my book.
On Lean Six Sigma:
It is alive and well at HQ USAF. They/we use it a ton for a particularly unpleasant form of enhanced interrogation technique called SDDP, per AFMAN 33-402, as part of AFSO-21. Basically, anyone who wants to acquire a defense business system (i.e. IT system not related to warfighting) that costs > $1M over FYDP has to go through SDDP, which requires LSS business process re-engineering. And, the USAF uses LSS way outside the traditional manufacturing sense.
SDDP is (possibly) coming to an OPNAV near you. Mr. Tillotson, who spawned SDDP while he was the SAF/US(M), is now at OSD.
Caveat: there are actually some decent reasons why SDDP (built on Lean Six Sigma) ain't all bad. ECSS is the glaring one: http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor...r-force-ecss-program-managements-incompetence
On OODA:
I once recommended this to a USAF O6 as a simple method for analyzing and getting ahead of rapid change. He didn't like OODA, and had never heard of it or John Boyd. Irony.
It is alive and well at HQ USAF. They/we use it a ton for a particularly unpleasant form of enhanced interrogation technique called SDDP, per AFMAN 33-402, as part of AFSO-21. Basically, anyone who wants to acquire a defense business system (i.e. IT system not related to warfighting) that costs > $1M over FYDP has to go through SDDP, which requires LSS business process re-engineering. And, the USAF uses LSS way outside the traditional manufacturing sense.
SDDP is (possibly) coming to an OPNAV near you. Mr. Tillotson, who spawned SDDP while he was the SAF/US(M), is now at OSD.
Caveat: there are actually some decent reasons why SDDP (built on Lean Six Sigma) ain't all bad. ECSS is the glaring one: http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor...r-force-ecss-program-managements-incompetence
On OODA:
I once recommended this to a USAF O6 as a simple method for analyzing and getting ahead of rapid change. He didn't like OODA, and had never heard of it or John Boyd. Irony.
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I'm leading a (so far) successful agile adoption effort for a small non-IT team. Using organizational change methods really does work - the catch is that the change agent has to put in a shit ton of effort and hand holding, esp. as stakeholders get more senior.