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Jack Welch has died

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Re: Jack Welch has died

#111

Post by olivermarks »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #91
hylaride wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both. I've posted this before about Ballmer, but I'll repost: He consistently increased earnings via Windows and Office during his tenure as CEO. He was a very good businessman. He was not, however, a product guy. Witness their failures with the Zune, mobile, search, and early cloud computing. His problem was that he always tried to do what would be best for Microsoft first and not the customer. You can get away with…

Ballmer also didn’t create a personality cult around himself. He actually seemed ok with being viewed as a clown as long as it helped Microsoft.

Great point.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#112

Post by sgt101 »

salawat wrote: post #70
programbreeding wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Much of those gains came from GE Capital >GE’s profit has plunged in recent years, dragged down by hidden costs in the company’s Capital unit >he gave himself an A for his execution of its operations, and an F for his choice of successor Am I reading it right that the reason GE Capital was so successful during his time was because there were hidden costs, making it appear more profitable than it was, that didn't com…

Yes. You are reading it right. The best way to describe the management style of the 80's onward would be a financially engineered pump-and-dump characterized by putting workers through the meat grinder, and shirking any social responsibility that could be conceivably avoided by any means possible. Those are the basis of the hidden costs. Each person that got sacked took more institutional knowledge with them, and eac…

>If you have to sacrifice long-term stability for short-term growth, you're misreading the landscape

Or eyeing your bonus pot and the golf course / opera house.

Shareholders are holding for 3-6mths, executive incentive is aligned to those time spans.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#113

Post by scottlocklin »

>Under his leadership it became the largest company in America, switching from manufacturing toasters and television sets to fostering faster-growing businesses such as the NBC media business and the in-house financial arm, GE Capital.

Yeah, levering up, firing people, deindustrialization and financialization about sums up the dude's career. "Business guru decides burning the furniture more efficient than heating with coal."

Re: Jack Welch has died

#114

Post by RandallBrown »

cletus wrote: post #95
optimiz3 wrote: post #34

Steve Ballmer revered Jack Welch's rank-and-yank management style. During the 2000s and early 2010s Microsoft's stack-rank reviews were infamous for the internal politics created. Didn't matter if you had a full team of top-tier engineers, the bottom 15% WAS going to get managed out. Savvy managers would hire low-tier performers to protect the productive ones. That's the only lens through which I have to view Mr. Wel…

Add to that that stack ranking has a tendency to devolve into a popularity contest and that it most rewards those who do the best job of convincing everyone that their job is hard then one has to ask if this is really the best system for a group of people that trends towards being introverted.

I worked at Microsoft for a short time and got burned pretty badly by the stack ranking system.

In my first year there I had 3 different managers, so by the time my review came around, nobody really knew me very well. At least not well enough to fight for me in the ranking meetings.

So ultimately, I received the lowest ranking. What made it most annoying is that it was prefaced with a speech about how I was doing a good job, but someone had to get that ranking. This was just me.

About the only good advice that manager gave me was that if this happened again, I should leave the company because it was going to be an endless spiral that I couldn't get out of.

It was actually the last time they did the stack ranking and I left before finding out if things got any better. The whole project I was on got canceled a few weeks after I left anyway.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#115

Post by projektfu »

shekharshan wrote: post #78
optimiz3 wrote: post #34

Steve Ballmer revered Jack Welch's rank-and-yank management style. During the 2000s and early 2010s Microsoft's stack-rank reviews were infamous for the internal politics created. Didn't matter if you had a full team of top-tier engineers, the bottom 15% WAS going to get managed out. Savvy managers would hire low-tier performers to protect the productive ones. That's the only lens through which I have to view Mr. Wel…

They called him “neutron Jack” for that very reason.

That was more because of his restructuring in the early 90s. "As with a neutron bomb, the buildings are still standing but the people are gone." He didn't seem to understand GE's broad products businesses but did understand finance, so he continuously closed those operations.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#116

Post by watsocd »

Like many leaders, Jack made a lot of good decisions but the lure of quick profits playing financial games has taken more than one long lived company down.

I worked for Westinghouse starting in 1986. Westinghouse went through the same issues investing in real estate loans in the 90s and did not survive.

I remember my manager telling me in the late 80s that the Financial Services division was making more money than the rest of the company combined. This did not make a lot of sense.

It ended up taking the entire company down a few years later.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#117

Post by lquist »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #29

The article has a good summary of his legacy and his gracefulness: Under Mr. Welch, GE became known for consistent profit performance and a surging stock price. Much of those gains came from GE Capital, the finance arm that ballooned under Mr. Welch and would almost destroy the company during the 2008 financial crisis. GE’s profit has plunged in recent years, dragged down by hidden costs in the company’s Capital unit…

I've always subscribed to the theory that the true measure of a leader is what happens after they are gone.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#118

Post by [deleted] »

aswanson wrote: post #11
ethbro wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public figures are still human, with families...

Yeah, I have a hard time dancing on a persons grave. Unless they've done something totally evil, they should be afforded some respect. That said, hearing about Limbaugh's condition tested my ability to live by that principle.

[deleted]

Re: Jack Welch has died

#119

Post by rhizome »

stefco_ wrote: post #84
optimiz3 wrote: post #34

Steve Ballmer revered Jack Welch's rank-and-yank management style. During the 2000s and early 2010s Microsoft's stack-rank reviews were infamous for the internal politics created. Didn't matter if you had a full team of top-tier engineers, the bottom 15% WAS going to get managed out. Savvy managers would hire low-tier performers to protect the productive ones. That's the only lens through which I have to view Mr. Wel…

Contrast with W. Edwards Deming's approach that stresses the systematics of the organization and considers rank-and-yank a symptom of bad management: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Seven_Deadly...

As far as Welch is concerned, I'm pretty certain that his system was never going to find him in the bottom 10% of any possible ranking. Call it Gödel's Management Strategy.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#120

Post by [deleted] »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #39
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #29

The article has a good summary of his legacy and his gracefulness: Under Mr. Welch, GE became known for consistent profit performance and a surging stock price. Much of those gains came from GE Capital, the finance arm that ballooned under Mr. Welch and would almost destroy the company during the 2008 financial crisis. GE’s profit has plunged in recent years, dragged down by hidden costs in the company’s Capital unit…

“he gave himself an A for his execution of its operations, and an F for his choice of successor.” That alone disqualifies him as a leader “I did everything right but others screwed it up”.

[deleted]
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