Jack Welch And His Transformation Of General Electric

Please read Case Study: The Jack Welch Era at General Electric in Chapter 5 and answer questions 1 & 3. Please submit the answers by the end of week #3. At least one page is required.

In three words Dismal, Denial, and Diswoned! Mr. Jack Welch’s, reigned as Chairman and CEO of GE during the years of 1981-2001, taking over from his predecessor Reginald H. Jones.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, was one of the first CEOs to change a company so drastically and destroy policies that had been for years. When Jack Welch first entered General Electric, he was given a PPO project on plastic. Jack Welch contributed greatly. Yet, he was only given

When Reg Jones, Welch’ Predecessor, became CEO in 1973, the company organization was just completed to be centralized, but Jones could not able to keep up with reviewing massive volume of information generated by 43 strategic plans. Finally in 1977, he capped GE’s departments, divisions, groups, and SBUs with a new organizational layer called “sectors”, which represented macrobusiness agglomerations.

Such curve is really helpful in the beginning. Before Welch control the GE, there existed two bureaucracy problems. One was too many vice presidents and too many staffs with authority to review and approve decisions. Other was that headquarters staff practiced a “superficial congeniality”. After starting the 20-70-10 curve, on the one hand it helped to cut the inefficiency manage layer staffs off, and also increase the enthusiasm of the staffs. Besides, his generously rewarded managers who achieved performance goals that turned everyone in GE work harder and with high energy level. On the other hand, this method succeeds in stopping the generation of bureaucracy. Employees in GE can confront their bosses to express frustration with bureaucratic practices and suggest more efficient alternatives freely. Thousands of such sessions were held to drive out the bureaucratic mentality.

Rober Devlin is a chairman and CEO of American General Company. The corporation is the third largest multiline financial services company that provides life insurance, pensions, annuities, consumer loans, and investments. As a CEO, which is a high-level management position, he must responsible for many different resources and decisions. If the company doing well, CEO acquires recognition. If not, he must responsible for the downside of the business. Typically, responsibilities include decision maker on strategy and other key policy issues, manager, and executor. The decision-making role involves high-level decisions about policy and strategy of the company. The hardest part for him is to face and solve multiple

Soon after taking charge, Welch set the standard for each business to become the #1 or #2 competitor in its industry—or to disengage. Asked whether this simple notion represented GE’s strategy, Welch responded, “You can’t set an overall theme or a single strategy for a corporation as broad as GE.” By 1983, however, Welch had elaborated this general “#1 or #2” objective into a “three circle concept” of his vision for GE. (See Exhibit 2.)

The corporate culture of General Electric (GE) is a composite of its people, leadership, organization, structure, and processes from past to present. This paper will provide an assessment of the corporate culture of GE, and provide an insight into the dynamics, which have made it one of the world’s premier companies.

This report’s objective is to provide analysis of the leadership challenge that General Electric (GE) is currently facing, and to recommend solutions. The primary problem is determining what kind of candidate is required to replace retiring CEO Jack Welch. This has left GE to question how much does the company want to change policy over the previous era, and where does the company want to be in future?

The third factor is Innovation. GE is at the forefront of innovation in the technological and services field. With 11 different operating units that make GE a Fortune 500 Company, it has to be constantly working to create and implement new technology and better service for the clients they serve. One example of its innovation prowess is that over the 110 plus year history of GE, it has amassed more than 67,500 patents and the firms scientists have been awarded to novel prices and numerous honors. GE needs to be innovating constantly because it operates in more than 100 countries around the world and generates approximately 45 percent of its revenues outside the U.S. mainland. A manager at GE needs to put innovation to work and function for his or her team. In order to do that the manager has to plan ahead taking in consideration that innovation leads to changes and he and his team have to he prepared to undertake them with or with out notice.

As stated in the assignment profile, Lincoln Electric is considered one of the best managed companies in the world. I believe this to be partially attributed to their hiring process. Lincoln Electric has strict requirements to weed through unqualified candidates who will not buy in to the company culture of excellence. This is an especially important aspect of their hiring process particularly due to the fact of leadership – a trait that plays a vital role in implementing and sustaining a company’s culture.

General Electric (GE), established in 1892, is an American based, diverse conglomerate. General Electric is common household name, as well as a renowned name in electric, oil, gas, power, renewable energy, aviation, transportation, and healthcare. In 2015, the Fortune 500 Company had over $117 billion in revenue. The company continues to expand, and even surpasses the yearly goals it sets for its self. As of 2015, GE has 10 research centers, employees over 3,000 engineers and PhD’s between these centers, and filed 3,100 new patents. In the healthcare arm, GE creates diagnostic imaging, clinical systems, and information technology products, as well as participating in drug discovery and other biopharmaceutical technologies. GE provides pivotal technology for healthcare and fuels the healthcare revolution. These healthcare advancements are used to develop healthcare facilities in third-world countries, as well as American healthcare (General Electric, 2016).

Prior to Welch taking over the position as the CEO, General Electric’s organizational structure was a little out of hands even for his predecessor. There were too many layers of sectors transmitting information to the CEO. Welch came with a new strategic planning idea in mind. Restructuring was one of his early priorities. Shortly after, Welch became the new face of the company;

General Electric has had exceptional leadership that has kept the company at the top of their business. This success is attributed to both individual efforts to spur the corporation and the consequential results achieved collectively. GE has established the entire organization based on creativity and innovation, as they tend to inspire the public and improve their present lifestyles. However, this subject needs thorough discussion by distinguishing between standalone innovators and the one who rely on others, that is, gauging the difference between the leaders who accomplish their purposes through force or those who use persuasion (Machiavelli, p.21). This ideology of GE has

Jack Welch’s vision of what GE was possible of gave the company a vision for twenty years while he was the CEO and chairman. He states, “leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.” (Winning, pg 67) He not only allowed for employees to stretch, but demanded it. In teaching workers to stretch Welch knew that workers “may fail. In fact, they probably will fail. But stretching, and stretching the business, is going to improve performance results.” (Jack Welch on Leadership, pg 105) He also states that “only by setting the performance bar high did it become possible to discover people’s capabilities.” Jack Welch’s emphasis on candor and breaking the bureaucracy of modern business separated him from his contemporaries. He excited others of the possibility of being the biggest and best company in the world and rewarding his best employees that shared the values of GE. According to FORTUNE Editorial Director Geoffrey Colvin In "The Ultimate Manager, Welch leads the annals of management history not for anticipating the new world's changes ahead, but for acting on them: "His great achievement is that having seen it, he faced up to the huge, painful changes it demanded, and made them faster and more emphatically than anyone else in business. He led managers into this new world, which we still inhabit, and just as important, he showed business