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Jack Welch has died

wsj.com

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Re: Jack Welch has died

#71

Post by danmaz74 »

brandonmenc wrote: post #24

My father worked his way up from the foundry to "Business Leader" (management) at GE, starting in the mid 1970s. GE was a mess internally, all the way down to the shop floor, before Welch took over. His impact cannot be understated. We were big Jack Welch fans - if he hadn't grown GE the way he did, my hometown - where it was the largest employer for decades - would have been a lot poorer.

Would you mind expanding what you think he did right? I'm curious to have a counterpoint to the other top comments, which are pretty negative.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#72

Post by jpmattia »

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…

> Much of those gains came from GE Capital

Worth noting: The only reason GE did not go bankrupt in 2008 was because the government bailed out GE Capital. It's doubtful that GE Capital's risks were being properly accounted for when Jack was in charge, and it was a large fraction of Jack's balance sheet.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#74

Post by hristov »

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”.

And to be clear he was absolutely lying about that. Immelt was certainly a problematic leader, but a lot of the problems with GE happened under Welch. The biggest issue with GE was massive insurance liabilities for assisted living insurance which drastically exceeded anything GE predicted.

Well Welch started the insurance business in GE and took on a lot of these liabilities.

And while Immelt certainly had his problems, his mistakes were basically in the fact that he continued the Welch strategy rather than make new types of mistakes.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#75

Post by dobleboble »

kingkawn wrote: post #6

In upstate New York he held back for over a decade any effort to mitigate legacy PCB pollution from GE’s mostly closed factories there. He funded AstroTurf organizations and downplayed research showing connections between PCB pollution and health problems.

For claims like that it helps to link to a source for the data. Making inflammatory statements without backing evidence makes for poor discourse IMO. I found this article that seems to cover the topic: https://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Dredging-up-the-tru...

Re: Jack Welch has died

#76

Post by Pxtl »

Here's a reprint of an old WSJ article from the "Neutron Jack" era:

> EVERYONE FIRED

> Wall Street Reacts Favorably

http://www.angelfire.com/hi3/ideology/fired.html

Michael Moore used it as the introduction to his '90s-era book "Downsize This!".

Welch is quoted in the article:

> Jack Welch, chairman of General Electric, had more concrete advice for the downsized workers.

> "We've got 40 openings at our Tijuana facility right now," beamed a jubilant Welch. "I'd be more than happy to accept applications from any of our US workers who would like to relocate there. Just give our personnel department a call - and it will definitely help if you can speak Spanish!"

Re: Jack Welch has died

#77

Post by bena »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #28
oumua_don17 wrote: post #13

From wikipedia [1]: >> He stated that global warming is "the attack on capitalism that socialism couldn't bring", and that it is a form of "mass neurosis". Yet, he said that every business must embrace green products and green ways of doing business, "whether you believe in global warming or not...because the world wants these products". From [2]: >> A vitality curve is a performance management practice that calls fo…

I have never liked or understood the popularity (at least for a time) of the 'vitality curve'. Indeed, if you think that 10% of your employees must be fired every year then, to me, it is a sign that something is horribly wrong and you should really focus on that, not to mention the horrible effect this practice has on company culture and atmosphere.

I think the core idea makes sense, at least intuitively. Remove the worst performers. Make room for better people.

The issue is that you will always have "worst performers". There needs to be a minimally acceptable performance level. And you also need enough slack so that the churn isn't affecting overall performance.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#78

Post by shekharshan »

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.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#79

Post by DavidAdams »

danmaz74 wrote: post #71
brandonmenc wrote: post #24

My father worked his way up from the foundry to "Business Leader" (management) at GE, starting in the mid 1970s. GE was a mess internally, all the way down to the shop floor, before Welch took over. His impact cannot be understated. We were big Jack Welch fans - if he hadn't grown GE the way he did, my hometown - where it was the largest employer for decades - would have been a lot poorer.

Would you mind expanding what you think he did right? I'm curious to have a counterpoint to the other top comments, which are pretty negative.

If you're trying to turn around a mis-managed company, a few rounds of identifying and eliminating people in the manager ranks that aren't pulling their weight could have a huge positive impact. So I could see that "neutron" Jack's stack ranking could have been great, had it been limited. But when you're consumed with your own genius, you tend to think that the thing that seemed to work, and everyone praised you for yesterday will keep working tomorrow.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#80

Post by kingkawn »

dobleboble wrote: post #75
kingkawn wrote: post #6

In upstate New York he held back for over a decade any effort to mitigate legacy PCB pollution from GE’s mostly closed factories there. He funded AstroTurf organizations and downplayed research showing connections between PCB pollution and health problems.

For claims like that it helps to link to a source for the data. Making inflammatory statements without backing evidence makes for poor discourse IMO. I found this article that seems to cover the topic: https://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Dredging-up-the-tru...

what I said is verifiable with a cursory web search, as you have shown.

I know people with cancer linked to this pollution.

Your standard of truth makes no room for any reporting of personal experience and is invalid.

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