Rotation Review: November 2011

You’ve asked for it, and we listened!  Over the past few months, we’ve received a lot of requests from prospective ECLPs for more information about what we actually do during our rotations. The result?  What we are calling “Rotation Review” – a new series of blog entries that will give every reader a preview into the direct experiences of life on-Program as an ECLP.

The ECLP Class of 2012 began our third (and final) rotation in the beginning of November. In an attempt to share a clearer picture of the projects, experiences, and learning opportunities offered throughout a rotation, I will be writing ECLPBlog.com entries throughout this final eight months.

A little background on myself: my name is Ryan and I joined the ECLP in July 2010 (so, I am a member of the ECLP Class of 2012). I was brought into the ECLP after attending The Thunderbird School of Global Management; my professional life before b-school was spent with Wells Fargo as a Private Banker. My first rotation on-Program was with the Corporate Finance: Government Finance group in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. I then transferred in March 2011 to Atlanta, Georgia to work with the Sponsor Finance: Telecom, Media and Technology group (and to flee the lengthy MN winter). This final rotation has taken me back to the Midwest, working with the Corporate Finance: Food, Beverage, and Agribusiness (FB&A) group in Chicago, Illinois. These three experiences are allowing me to gain great exposure within different GE Capital businesses in different, valuable capacities. This blog series will help to explain how things are going in my current position…

Week 1
Over the past few weeks, in the midst of wrapping up the second rotation and prepping for the third, I’ve had the pleasure of moving back to the Midwest portion of the U.S., which can be both hectic and exciting! Personally, I really enjoyed rotating through different businesses and to new locations, as I get deep exposure within businesses I am interested in, as well as live in great cities that I’ve never resided in before. The physical moving part is tiring, but the opportunity to live in Chicago is definitely a highlight of ECLP (and yes, I realize moving to Chicago in November is the worst time to be here, as most people I’ve met in the City make sure I’m aware of that fact).

My first week of the new rotation was atypical – as I look back at my Outlook calendar, within the last week of October and first week of November I traveled twice to Chicago from Atlanta: once for a house-hunting trip and then again to physically move to Illinois. During that time, I also had a Chicago to NYC trip, where I attended a GE Digital Marketing Summit in NYC, which offered great exposure to a way of thinking and doing business that is probably as much of a 180 degree revolution from the way GE typically approaches business. I’ll keep my insights into the Summit at that as Kris Kaneta has written a great blog about it, so be sure to catch up on what we experienced!

Week 2
During this second week of the rotation, I found myself getting up to speed on the FB&A business, meeting more people than names I can remember, ensuring my laptop connects to the right printer, as well as sitting with my Assignment Leader to outline some of the main projects that I will take ownership of over the next eight months.

As the FB&A business expands on a national basis, the group’s leadership team recently found their home in the same downtown Chicago office I am now working in. This translates into a great opportunity for an interesting rotation within the business, as well as a lot of work waiting for me when I arrived this first week. For example, one of the larger projects I am working on with the FB&A team is to understand how GE representatives from multiple business units can work together to offer middle market companies a full suite of services. The way I envision this initiative is that if a GE Capital leasing rep has a relationship with a large beverage company and uncovers needs that another GE business (i.e. GE Power & Water, GE Energy, etc.) can fulfill, then that sales rep can collaborate across GE businesses to provide solutions for these various needs. There are really no other companies like GE that have the power to leverage great industrial businesses in order to add value to our customers and prospects outside of just financing. Within the FB&A space, we will be trying to forge forward to create a compelling value proposition to this effect and deliver on it.

At this point of the rotation, it feels like I am drinking water from a fire hose, trying to learn what the FB&A group is doing and where I fit into the puzzle. As I try to hit the ground running and add value as soon as possible, I also have to maintain the additional ECLP projects and committees I am a part of. Being my final rotation, this is not my first dance at the ‘quickly understand your environment and acclimate’ game whilst moving locations and businesses, so I am confident that I’ve somewhat grasped the secret sauce of spinning so many ELCP plates at once!

This week has flown by, and I am very excited to have landed in Chicago with a great team.

Week 3
Last week was very busy with some great first experiences within my rotation. This week I have really gotten underway in terms of adding value to the team and contributing in a meaningful way. There are many items I am responsible for within the group, but there are 3 projects I want to highlight:

1) East Region Sales Rep Deployment: Rob Seltzer, a Managing Director of the East Region of the FB&A team, is a new addition to the business, and he is currently assessing how to deploy sales originators within the region. My role in helping him do this is to gather sales and market potential data for the entire nation and to work with Rob to understand the various ways in which FB&A originators may be deployed across the East region. This week I’ve pulled together the appropriate data, created a map overlay of the nation that highlights how the West and Central region sales forces were rolled out, and then laid out multiple scenarios of what the deployment for the east could look like. I find it very interesting to work on this project; it is valuable to understand how a business leader thinks about the different options around rolling out a team, what information he utilizes to understand the market potential, and at the end of the day, how he will make a decision to hire and fulfill the sale force within his region. There is a definite mix of both art and science in the rationale of this exercise.

2) GE Capital & Industrial Business Cross-Sell: This is the larger project I explained in Week 1, and it will be one of my main focuses on this rotation. I am working closely with the GE Enterprise team, specifically with fellow ECLP Sarah Cartmell, to  drive a cross-sell initiative within the FB&A group and the GE Energy businesses (as described above). In Sarah’s role, she is working closely with the industrial businesses, and I am the representative for Capital, so we will work together to help to execute on this project.

3) FB&A Value Proposition Creation: This initiative piggy-backs on #2, as I will play a role in developing the FB&A group’s value proposition for the broader GE Capital/GE industrial initiative, which will be communicated to our customers, intermediaries, and competitors. The goal is to tell the GE story in such a way that it is compelling, easy to understand, and impactful. We want the marketplace to know exactly what the FB&A group at GE Capital is capable of and to be able to brand ourselves effectively.

Week 4
As we wrap up the month of November, this last week was a great week in terms of finalizing project milestones within the Sales Rep Deployment project and the GE Capital & Industrial Business Cross-sell initiatives. The respective teams have made great headway in terms of moving the needle on these projects, which, in my opinion, is a great win considering the last working days of November straddled the Thanksgiving holiday.

As the month wraps up, it becomes more and more clear that there is no shortage of activities within the FB&A group! Each time I sit with my Assignment Leader, the conversations reveal to me more insights into the projects and initiatives of the group. I always leave his office with a notepad filled with illegible thoughts and recaps, but once I review my notes, I realize I’ve been given yet another 3-5 initiatives that will support the developments of the group at large. Pairing these projects with the larger three main rotation-specific initiatives provides for an exciting and busy work week. It’s only been 4 weeks that I have been in this rotation, but I can already see exactly what I can do to have the most impact on this rotation.

More to come soon…

Posted by Ryan