By: Maurice Gilbert, Managing Partner of Conselium Executive Search
Change is constant in your organization if the company is adapting and responding to the marketplace. I witnessed this in my tenure at GE. I would often respond to my boss at GE with trepidation and anxiety associated with yet another change. Little did I understand how Jack Welch was constantly looking for new opportunities to grow the company. After all, I was trained as an accountant, and I welcomed predictability and stability, not change.
I look back on my GE tenure and wonder how I survived, let alone grew in my profession. I see now that it was as a result of my boss; he would always counsel the team to focus on the opportunities and possibilities in a changing environment, not the downside. He was always optimistic that the GE executive C-suite was steering the ship in the right direction. He understood that his young team was unfamiliar with the concept of continuous change and the uncertainty associated with it. The optimism he provided kept our team morale high and enabled us to infuse energy and enthusiasm to the requested changes.
Maurice Gilbert is Managing Partner of Conselium Executive Search, which specializes in placing Compliance Officers and Legal Counsel for clients in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific. Maurice is also CEO of Corporate Compliance Insights, a worldwide publication devoted to governance, risk and compliance issues. Maurice can be reached at maurice@conselium.com or maurice@corporatecomplianceinsights.com.
