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Case Study

Re-imagining Crotonville: Epicenter of GE’s leadership culture (B)

By Shlomo Ben-Hur, David Gray and Bernard J. Jaworski

8 pages

October 2012

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Reference: IMD-3-2334

The case updates and supplements Case IMD-3-2313: Re-Imagining Crotonville: Epicenter of GE’s Leadership Culture. The first case examined the history and evolution of GE’s corporate university in Crotonville, NY from its founding in 1956 through 2010 and the start of an effort of “Re-Imagining Crotonville.” Drawing on Crotonville’s rich and successful history of developing GE leaders, CLO Susan Peters launched a transformation campaign to re-think the experience, content, and environment for executive leadership development and deliver Crotonville’s newly articulated vision to “inspire, develop, and connect the GE leaders of today and tomorrow.” The effort to update the company’s system of leadership development followed upon a wide-ranging exploration of the changing nature of leadership set in motion by CEO Jeffrey Immelt in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008-9. This case examines the decisions and actions taken by Peters and her team in the initial phase of the transformation (2010-2012) to contemporize the Crotonville brand experience, reform the executive leadership curriculum for GE’s top-level managers, and lead the first major upgrade to the physical learning facilities in over 30 years.

Learning Objective

Explore the change management challenges of managing a legacy of success – continuing to evolve while preserving the core ‘brand’. Examine leadership development through the lens of the “experience,” “content,” and “environment” for learning. Understand the particular choices made by GE’s learning leaders in re-inventing leadership development to meet the challenges of “21st century leadership”

Keywords

Organizational Learning, Learning Culture, Leadership Development, Responsible Leadership, Executive Education, Corporate University, Leading Change, Transformation, Vision, General Management, Strategy

Settings

United States of America
General Electric
2010 - 2012

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

Related material

Teaching note, Video

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