by Peter High, published on Forbes
1-25-2016
When Jim Fowler was promoted to become the Chief Information Officer of GE, it was a move that he was aware of well in advance. A hallmark of GE’s legendary talent management program is to have leaders identify people who could take their places in advance of the need for that transition. Jamie Miller, who had been CIO for two and a half years prior had identified Fowler – then CIO of GE Capital – as her possible successor. As Miller ascended to the role of President & CEO of GE Transportation, Fowler had been preparing for this move. In turn, in his first six months in his current role, he will be planning who might succeed him, even though he has no plans to leave the role any time soon.
In this interview, Fowler describes how he has organized himself in the early stages of his role. He already has developed audacious goals of driving $1 billion in productivity gains by 2020 while also generating $15 billion in revenue growth from software and technology. At the heart of this is Predix, an analytics platform to help assets run more effectively. GE is using it internally, and has already garnered $5.5 billion in revenue gains by making it available to GE’s customers. All the while, Fowler has developed a well thought out plan to keep GE’s information secure. He talks about all of the above and more in the following interview.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 32nd article in the CIO’s First 100 Days series. To read past interviews with the CIOs of P&G, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, CVS Caremark, and Ecolab, among many others, please click this link. To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: In our last conversation, a number of months back, you were the Chief Information Officer of GE Capital, a unit that has since been sold off, and you have taken over the role of global CIO for all of General Electric. I wonder if you could reflect on the transition, how you found out about the new role, how you began to prepare to the ascension to the role, and how the news of the role came to you.
Jim Fowler: The role came about as a series of leadership succession movements were planned in the company. Those successions, based on a few retirements, led to the previous group’s CIO, Jamie Miller, taking on the CEO role of our Transportation business. That planning started to happen over the summer as some of the retirements came to be known. I think I found out about it around mid-July. The plan was to have me step in as the group CIO later in the year. I had thirty days’ notice before the formal announcements went out to start to think through what I had to do to prepare for the role and to lay out a plan.
I used that thirty days to spend some time with Jamie, understanding what her thoughts were as I transitioned into the role, what things she felt needed to be continued or changed, and get her feedback on what it had taken her to be successful in the role. I also used the opportunity for myself to reflect on my experiences in the company and where I thought the company was headed relative to digital products, what we were doing related to growing the company in new areas, and how that was going to relate to the priorities for the IT function. So, that let me lay out a ninety day plan. I am coming to the end of that ninety days having worked through a lot of the steps in the plan.
High: Can you describe your purview as CIO of GE?
