Imagine It Forward Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change

Tahl Raz, Beth Comstock — 2018

"Beth Comstock, the former Vice Chair and Chief Marketing Officer at GE, and their long-time head of business innovation and change initiatives, tackles the one issue that keeps managers, executives and leaders up at night at every corporation in America and throughout the world -- how to stay nimble, adapt faster and constantly evolve in the faceof almost daily change and disruption. In Imagine It Forward, Beth Comstock, the former Vice Chair of GE, describes her twenty-five year efforts to be an instigator of change at every level of business. When she first moved from NBC to parent company GE in 1998, she was ignored as a woman in a man's world, treated as an outsider because she didn't have a business background, and ignored as a mere PR person. But CEO Jeff Immelt realized even then that the industrial giant, like so many businesses, had to change fast in order to stay relevant in a world where Google and later Facebook and an explosion of internet companies were transforming how goods and services were marketed, made, and sold. In a deeply personal journey filled with practical takeaways from two plus decades of initiating change at the top levels of corporate America -- from the Ecomagination initiative that transformed the way GE worked with their customers, to the company's famed FastWorks methodology designed to bring new products more quickly to market-- Comstock lays out the challenges, opportunities, tools and practices needed to embrace change, whatever industry you are in, and make it part of every management decision"--

Reviews

Nico J@niconicolj

Sep 8, 2021

I started taking notes as I took the winding road of Beth's journey and career, because frankly she said a lot of things that resonated with me, as a younger woman starting out with a crash course in difficult, old, and tired corporate structures. To someone my age, they're unfamiliar and baffling and in the kindest sense, frustrating. Beth has a great drive to tear it down, but she developed that over time. Creativity and managing the fickle nature of consumers is a job that needs some deft skill. Some musings: Page 16 - she discusses giving yourself permission. Wow, is this a difficult thing to channel and some thing that takes work to do, and it's tied in with a certain mettle and assertiveness that needs to be cultivated for a lot of people. Page 19 - discusses how we all get in our own heads about meeting new people, being vulnerable, and networking. page 49 - "As the essayist John Gardner once wrote, ' All too often, on the long road up, young leaders become servants of what is rather than shapers of what might be.'" page 100 - cool information about the 2007 GE Aisys Anesthesia Machine. Ties in personally to me as someone in the airline industry and the discussion of solving multiple issues as a system. Page 101 - STAR system: nurturing ideas. Shelter it, Tell it, Ask yourself, Repeat. It's a bit more of a memoir than a pure non-fiction spiel, but it's all relevant and interesting to me. I found it neat that Steve Jobs made an "appearance" in this book as Beth Comstock was mentioned in the context of while reading a book about him. Beth does things that I would be terrified to do in my own job even in a position of leadership. There are some big stakes and responsibilities highlighted throughout her career in some high-level positions. She discussed a lot about the tough dynamics and did touch a little on what that did to her family, which I may have liked to hear about a little more because women deal with the judgment and consequences of being career-oriented more, in my view, than men at the same achieving level. I think there's so much to gain by reading this, and to take your time doing so.

Christine Bower@cabower

Aug 26, 2023

Alexandra Sklar@alexandrasklar

Dec 17, 2022

Andy Sporring@andysporring

Nov 20, 2022

Gareth Kay@garethk

Aug 12, 2021