Mini-Report on General Electric and Jack Welch

This was written during our Rensselaer orientation class - "Heros, Leaders, and Innovators." As part of the class activity, and through readings, we were presented a profile of the highly acclaimed CEO Jack Welch, together with the history of General Electric while under his management. I would have like to have gotten into a General Electric innovator that I admire, like Thomas Edison, but I just got a chance to do that recently so that worked out. I'll post that paper shortly.

Jack Welch as a Leader and a Person
From the information discussed, Jack Welch seems to lead through strength, and with his own powerful personality. He looked for change in a situation that seemed to not need any, and in doing so greatly changed the perception and future of his company, General Electric.

He is visionary, transformative, and dedicated, which together drove this change in what is one of the oldest companies in the United States. At the time GE had a wide range of business units and no cohesive plan for the company. One of his first steps upon becoming CEO was to develop a strategic vision to better manage the business units together. This vision required change, and as a leader, he was certainly willing to embrace change, consolidating many of these business units, and laying off numerous people. Because he was so focused on his vision throughout his tenure as CEO, he has been described as somewhat Machiavellian, making sacrifices to achieve the desired ends. Despite this, he had great confidence and took great pride in his employees, especially those perceived to be the highest performing. Rather than becoming an expert (or even a serious adept) in all of the business’ diverse areas, he chose to focus more on the management and leadership aspects of the company. He was confident enough to delegate tasks, and rely on the market expertise of those responsible for running their individual divisions, while encouraging coaching and process improvement. This first part can be seen in the fact that he allowed division managers to pursue many acquisitions without his detailed oversight. At the same time, his creation of the six sigma system, and the Crotonville coaching center helped drive business and employee performance without infringing on a manager’s discretion.

To describe him to a friend, I would first mention that he is a very driven person, and passionate about what he does, and the company he leads. Because of that, he can appear to be tough, cold, or nasty. This is not far from the truth, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. He comes across this way because he is so concerned with the performance of the company, that he is willing to make certain sacrifices and be painfully honest to accomplish the goals he feels will bring success. His work seems to play a strong part in his life, and at work, he has a distinct vision, along with specific missions, and goals designed to achieve those missions. It certainly is true that he fired a large number of employees in various corporate realignments, and set up a structure where annually, the bottom 10% of employees were fired, though his tactics were not without results. Over the course of his tenure, the company’s market value increased 20.4%. He saw this not as being cold, but as doing the right thing for the larger number of people – the top performing employees, and the shareholders. He is very opinionated too though, and many good people left the company because their vision did not fit exactly with his. He called these people non-believers, and while accepting them early on, eventually he forced them out.


Would I like to work for Jack Welch?
Choosing to work for Jack Welch would be a tough decision, because there are so many positives and negatives that influence the choice. On the one hand, he has a vision, and an idea of how to make that vision come to life, though on the other hand, if at any point I begin to disagree with his mission, or if my ideas don’t fit within his framework, it is likely that I would be out of a job. Perhaps that would not be such a bad thing though, given the powerful nature of his vision and execution, since I would be able to draw from all the experience I gained while we worked together. I really like the fact that he supported an objective meritocracy, and came up with ways to understand, drive and reward performance. I think it’s very important that, when looking to accomplish a goal, one be objective about the tools and methods used. In doing this too, I appreciate that he both used hard indicators, such as profit performance, and intuitive indicators, such as his insistence to interview every manager quite a ways down the chain. Overall, since he is willing to change things, and because if nothing else it would provide great experience and exposure, I would probably like to work for him, even if it would tire me out significantly.