Foundations of GE Leadership (FOL) is a course a geared towards employees with 1-3 years of service and no direct reports (not managers). It is hosted at Crotonville in Tarrytown, NY. Crotonville is GE's corporate training center aka GE University. The campus feels like a college campus with two educational buildings, the Learning Exchange aka The Pit and the Learning Lab. The images below from left to right are the Cafe 56 at the White House, Green House bar, and the main residential building where the hotel style sleeping rooms are as well as the dining room.
Cafe 56 was like having a Starbucks at your fingertips! All the food and coffee was included in your tuition costs too! ... that was a good thing for my taste buds but not so good for the waist line!
FOL Day 1:
The first session was focused on Finance and Business Acumen. I learned the 5 business drivers: Cash, Profit, Assets, Growth, and People and how these are measured for the business (financial statements). It is imperative that a aspiring leader have a solid foundation in finance. In any and every role you will encounter finance, since every project and program has a budget it must abide by. It is also important to understand how your specific project or program impacts the business overall. It is eye opening to be able to point out where exactly your budget or the amount your project saved is in GE's overall financial health.
At the conclusion of the day we met with our coaching buddies for the week. My buddy was Chris, an FMP (Financial Management Program) at GE Corporate. This was such an awesome pairing! I came into FOL with a desire to deepen my financial understanding and I get paired with an FMP! We discussed the first day and I explained my goals of understanding finance more. Chris encouraged me to listen to the quarterly financial review calls. I have now placed that on my calendar! I will also be attending another training in the near future focusing specifically on finance.
That concludes FOL Day 1 ... Day 2 recap will be coming soon!
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