The initiatives are playing a critical role in changing GE, but the most significant change in GE has been its transformation into a Learning Company . We have a Company more agile than others a fraction of our size, a high-spirited company where people are free to dream and encouraged to act and to take risks. But values and behaviors are what produce those performance numbers, and they are the bedrock upon which we will build our future. The rest of our letter will describe these abiding values and beliefs because they are at the heart and soul of everything we do, what we stand for, what we stand on and, most important, where we are going. It's the first and most important of our values.
Integrity means always abiding by the law, both the letter and the spirit.
Inside the Company, integrity establishes the trust that is so critical to the human relationships that make our values work. With trust, employees can set stretch performance goals and can believe us when we promise that falling short is not a punishable offense. Integrity and trust are at the heart of the informality we cherish. In our external dealings, with our unions and governments, we are free to represent our positions vigorously, in a constructive fashion, to agree or disagree on the issues, knowing that our integrity itself is never an issue. A period of transition is a period of change, and some of our values will be modified to adapt to what the future brings.