I walked into Kim's office for my one-on-one. I was a junior engineer with great ambition. All the feedback was good. I was enjoying the work and looking a few years down the road.
"Kim, what can I do to develop and grow? I want to be a lead engineer and eventually a manager."
Kim replied, "Oh, Brian, you are doing great. Just keep it up, and in 15 or 20 years, you will be there!"
Encouraging words but not the timeline I was thinking of.
The next week, I decided to make a change and move from engineering to finance. Seeking out the CFO of the business, Matt, a rising star in the world of GE CFOs, I told him I wanted a change.
He said, "I have just the right project to test you—whether you have what it takes." For a couple of months, I was doing two jobs: my day job as an engineer and a finance special project—dissecting the accounting closing process.
In this process, what could they automate? Simplify? Eliminate? The ideal was moving from a two-week to a three-day close. The Holy Grail of GE accounting, the stuff of CFOs' dreams, was the 3-day hard close.
I did a decent job for a complete neophyte and good enough for Matt to give me a shot. His recommendation was the anointing I needed to enter a month-long tryout for the GE Corporate Audit Staff—a school of hard knocks for would-be GE CFOs.
His parting advice rings in my ears today, "Brian, in your first week, you have to figure out what to de-scope. What you decide not to focus on is as important as what you focus on."
A critical daily question: What am I NOT going to focus on?