Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 24, 1991 TAG: 9103220969
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: E2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Tom Brock, the top man in a work force of 2,100, says that if people see their boss as a manager and use only that title, "they're playing to the bureaucracy and you're in trouble."
Brock would rather be known as a leader. "When they see you as a leader, they respect you and value your contribution," he said.
In his first year as general manager, Brock brought employees a new sense of involvement in the plant. "People will go off the cliff for this guy," said Roger Farley, the company's spokesman.
An energetic engineer, Brock draws from a vocabulary of sports terms to describe the creative ideas produced by the 200 employee teams at the big factory. When the volunteer team concept was introduced more than a year ago, "Tom was what we needed to get the whole thing together," said Scott Ernst, team development and training manager.
At 45, Brock has come up in a hurry.
He joined GE at Salem in 1968, the year he graduated from Georgia Tech. He's worked and learned there since, except for seven years at Erie, Pa., and Charlottesville in the 1980s. He came back to Salem in 1989 as general manager of technology and production before he followed Joel Tenzer as general manager a year ago. Brock has a master's in business administration from Lynchburg College.
He's in the middle of a three-generation GE family. His father was a GE engineer and his son, Thomas III, is in the company's technical sales program in Detroit. A brother is a GE sales manager in Charlotte, N.C.
Brock is subcontracting a house he's building in Roanoke County. Irene, his wife, works with horses. Their daughter, Susan, is a senior at Randolph-Macon Woman's College.
by CNB