Benchmark Pacific Gas & Electric Company (pg & E)

Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG & E)

After emerging from bankruptcy following California energy crisis in late 2000, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) had to face an uphill task to deal with rising industry standards and meeting customer expectations. There was little open, two-way communication between all hierarchies. Messages across departments and levels of management were not consistent. There were many attempts to inculcate the philosophies of open communication between all the channels but internal research showed that every such effort was viewed as temporary fixes. In addition, many employees were suspicious of companyЎ¦s transformational program and perceived it as synonymous with downsizing. PG&EЎ¦s desire to overcome this pitfall leads to massive communication and cultural transformation within PG&E (Stephan, 2006).

The newly formed internal communications department introduced a concept of Ў§Extended Leadership Team (ELT)ЎЁ (Stephan, 2006) that would include the entire senior as well as the supervisory staff across the organization. Elaborate training program was developed and implemented to educate the members of ELT. Necessary tools were provided to the members of ELT to fulfill their new responsibilities as leaders in the transformation. A new set of customer-focused and ethical values that would encourage integrity, accountability and culture of excellence along with supporting behaviors to promote these values were adopted.

In order to achieve the desired objectives, PG&E then set goals for itself and for the ELT. A separate program was established to monitor and measure the progress towards the desired result. Based on the feedback received through various channels that would include all levels of employee structure, the ELT designed a variety of programs such as formal and informal forums, company get-togethers with participation of senior staff, news flash/emails, website etc, which would encourage free communication flow and encourage participation across the organization. An elaborate measurement and evaluation system was established to assess the success in achieving the objectives.

The results of the organizational transformation program were measured by conducting variety of surveys targeted at every level of employee hierarchy and objectives. At the end of the first year, PG&E reported the following (Stephan, 2006),

„« 98% employees reported increasing or significantly increasing understanding of PG&EЎ¦s vision of the future

„« 94% employees reported increased or significantly increased confidence in the transformation efforts

„« 92% employees reported increase or significant increase in their commitment as a leader to making the transformation a success

General Motors

In the late 1990s, General Motors, the worldЎ¦s largest automobile manufacturer, had to pay dearly when a total communication breakdown between the management and employees lead to a 54 days production loss by taking 200,000 employees off the production lines and making GM poorer by whopping US$2.4 billons. GM also lost valuable two pointЎ¦s market share in North America. After the strike was over, GM recognized the need for improving and building relationship with employees as a single most essential thing if GM was to succeed (Gates, 2005).

Under the strong leadership of GMЎ¦s then chairman and chief executive, Rick Wagoner, GM