"Success theatre" went supernova at GE. You would think that since everyone points it out that the needle would be moving in a new direction. It's not.
They are stuck in a perpetual performative.
What Happened to GE? (2021)
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Re: What Happened to GE? (2021)
#62What happened to GE? Simple. Jack Welch killed the golden goose. During his tenure he shifted focus and money away from long-term R&D in the name of boosting quarterly profits. Product development took a back seat to selling "services", i.e. focus more on selling contracts around maintaining your turbines than you do on developing and manufacturing good turbines in the first place. I won't even get into the heavy bor…
The interesting part is that Jack Welch wasn't an MBA - he was a (PhD) chemical engineer who'd worked at GE for his whole life after getting out of grad school. He'd had several management positions in the company before he got to CEO, so it's not like he didn't understand how the company worked and kinds of things it did.
It’s a bit more nuanced then that, it pretty much failed upwards if I remember this podcast accurately https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
Re: What Happened to GE? (2021)
#63Re: What Happened to GE? (2021)
#64When researching washing machines recently, I was surprised to see that probably the most innovative mass-market systems available right now are from GE. They’ve brought out a heat-pump based low-energy use combined washer/dryer* that supposedly performs great - something that can’t be said for existing combo or low energy systems. I was surprised to see innovative appliances from GE! I thought they had been reduced…
People who know about appliances say "Never buy a Samsung appliance or an LG refrigerator." Curiously enough, the most-hawked appliances at Home Depot are...
Stay the fuck away from Samsung appliances.
Re: What Happened to GE? (2021)
#65What happened to GE? Simple. Jack Welch killed the golden goose. During his tenure he shifted focus and money away from long-term R&D in the name of boosting quarterly profits. Product development took a back seat to selling "services", i.e. focus more on selling contracts around maintaining your turbines than you do on developing and manufacturing good turbines in the first place. I won't even get into the heavy bor…
Sadly, we are still in the throws of this.
Re: What Happened to GE? (2021)
#66for the curious on Jack Welch's management style - https://www.performyard.com/articles/jack-welch-management-s... There were many fans/followers through out US corporate boards - just like sports coach lineage, there were Jack's lieutenants taking over US corps. I have not followed their success/failures. All I remember was my then boss's total admiration for his management approach - I did not stick around. I alway…
One huge advantage the US has is the variety of thriving industries. It’s highly likely at least one will be thriving at a given time.
The USA, like all of us, lives in an industrial world and have maintained their supremacy in that world by being the pre-eminent industrial military power.
The loss of American manufacturing directly threatens this pre-eminence, which in turn threatens a lot of what made this world the way it is.
Re: What Happened to GE? (2021)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
People who know about appliances say "Never buy a Samsung appliance or an LG refrigerator." Curiously enough, the most-hawked appliances at Home Depot are...
Stay the fuck away from Samsung appliances.
My Samsung refrigerator has an amplified steel grinder where the ice maker is supposed to be.
They had a tech come out and repair it, so the sound is only half as loud now, but still much louder than any (non-Samsung) ice maker I've ever heard.
Re: What Happened to GE? (2021)
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haier is a remarkable company. It's not an accident that GE appliances took off after Haier purchased it.
It's darkly amusing that, at least for me and others on this thread, keeping the "GE" brand label is probably costing them sales. I also wouldn't even glance at a GE-branded home appliance if I were in the market, on the assumption it was cost-cutting trash, but if it's true that a different company has bought the brand and is making good stuff under it, now suddenly I might be interested. Which is the opposite of ho…
Haier has rebranded the top-of-the-line as "Café". My Café range has absolutely no GE branding on it. The most charitable interpretation I have for that is that they are looking to the future (2056) when their right to use the GE brand expires.
Re: What Happened to GE? (2021)
#69After suffering through a new (lemon) GE-branded fridge, I don't see myself ever buying a GE-branded thing again. Fool me once.
I have some hope that Samsung will learn from GE, and decide not to fully discard its more recent-era reputation for quality and excellence.
Re: What Happened to GE? (2021)
#70Lesson from GE: Financial engineering is not engineering.
Further lessons from GE:
* Gaming the system internally or externally is something a CEO needs to actively manage and defeat, not reward.
* Trying to turn businesses based on contracts for delivery (with lumpy revenue/risks) into contracts for service and recurring revenue is a dangerous game, because you take your eye off the ball that is delivering the products in the first place.
* Conglomerates of disparate businesses never work in the long term, primarily because of the points above. Google is an example of how that affects IT/cloud/services businesses. Microsoft is an example of how to re-orient the business to focus on a specific class of customers (Enterprise) and their direct needs.