LEADERS WHO MAKE A DIFFERENCE 221morning in the bathtub, and have it implemented in the evening. ’ Speed
would also take an essential place in Barnevik ’ s management philosophy.
In his policy bible, was recorded that ‘ It is better to be roughly right
than exactly right with respect to speed. ’ He made it very clear that it
was permissible to make mistakes due to speed. He did expect his execu-
tives to have an 80% betting average. Not taking action and losing
opportunities because of a reluctance to make decisions would be the
only non - acceptable behavior in ABB.
All Change
An important component of Virgin, General Electric, and ABB ’ s cor-
porate cultures would be continuous change. Nurturance of a positive
attitude toward change was going to be critical because of the danger
of complacency in the face of external danger signs. As the saying goes,
‘ Nothing kills like success. ’ Employees of these companies needed to
realize that change would be a permanent aspect of their organizations,
not a temporary state.
The three executives were very cognizant of the fact that successful
change and adaptation to uncertainty in the highly competitive business
world would be more likely to occur when there was a suffi cient and
appropriate learning culture in an organization. All three executives
have therefore created organizations that would provide world - class
learning opportunities for employees at all levels. It would be the respon-
sibility of the employees, however, to use these opportunities to their
maximum advantage. To observe this notion of employability in action
one only has to look at the number of executives that have been poached
by competitors. A graduate of General Electric or ABB has an undeni-
able attraction to headhunters.
Creating Good Corporate Citizens
These three executives have also recognized that there are two kinds of
glue that work in loosely structured organizations, one being sophisti-
cated information systems as discussed earlier, and the other kind being
provided by the way in which Branson, Welch, and Barnevik manage
their corporate cultures. Sharing common values goes a long way
towards ensuring cohesiveness. These three CEOs (implicitly or explic-
itly) wanted each organizational participant to share certain values spe-
cifi c to their respective corporations. In General Electric and ABB, these