Leadership, Corporate Icon And Management Theorist

Analyzing GE’s corporate-level strategy from 2001 – present with Jeff Immelt as CEO, GE focuses on the growth and development platforms. Technology is the key driving force for GE’s future and growth. Advancements in industries such as energy, health and aviation fueled demand for cleaner and more efficient energy production. GE identified new markets with potential high-growth that offered attractive returns through strategic mergers and acquisitions. As CEO, Jeff Immelt established a process for identifying projects that offered attractive growth potential which were then nurtured and treated as special projects or initiatives that were not subject to strict budget constraints. Immelt introduced GE’s three strategic imperatives as: (1) sustaining its strong business model, (2) strengthening the business portfolio, and (3) driving its growth initiatives. www.ge.com

Management has changed significantly over the past 50 years. The role of leaders in an organization is an ever changing thing. At one point, a manager was also the owner of the company, and thus used a carrot and a stick to get his employees to work, just like a parent personally invested in the raising of their child. Not anymore. Nowadays, leaders are there to “serve” their employees. The focus is on motivating the individual, achieving organizational goals by integrating each and every individual into the system. We no longer rely on a one size fits all approach, and management theory is no longer focused on having a winning philosophy, or motivating large groups.

"Management manages by making decisions and by seeing that those decisions are implemented." - Harold S. Geneen

In chapter 14 President Eisenhower made reference to leadership in yet another way when he said, “I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.” Leadership is pursuing and guiding people to do right not scaring them (Baker,2015).

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.

The leader I chose to do this project on is Jack Welch. Jack Welch was a chairmen and CEO of a very successful company known as General Electric. He started in the company in 1960 and he started from the bottom, as a junior chemical engineer for General Electric. He was with the company for about 40 years before he retired a very wealthy man, but through those 40 years he did a lot of things as a leader to improve General Electrics and helped making them into a very successful company. He helped in shaping General Electric into a powerhouse. I chose Jack Welch as my leader for this project because he is a very inspiring leader, who worked his way up from the bottom of the company to the CEO of General Electrics and performed very well as a

Mark, your reference that “Leadership involves motivating a group of people and aligning their interests towards a common goal in the aim of achieving it” is the epitome of Hightower and Welch’s leadership style even though their leadership style was very different. Hightower accomplished his goals at Disney by empowering his managers to follow through on his initiatives with complete autonomy, as he describes himself as having “a hammer in one hand and a velvet glove in the other hand” (Jick & Peiperl,2011, p. 418), this approach would naturally weed out the mangers that was noncompliant in advancing his new agenda. As oppose to Welch’s heavy hand revolutionary approach by dismantling the status quo and current infrastructure through

After watching Jack Welch’s lecture at MIT, where Welch explains his leadership philosophies and business acumen, it presented me with an opportunity to compare and contrast my own beliefs to that of Jack Welch. In this paper, I will examine and discuss aspects of the lecture that I agree with, as well as, aspects that I do not agree with. In addition, I will provide examples that I have seen in the workplace that coincide with Jack Welch’s presentation.

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?

“Management is active, not theoretical. It is about changing behaviour and making things happen. It is about developing people, working with them, effort to achieve objective and goals.”(L.Mullins, 2010. P, 425)

Analysis - GE has likely been so successful over the years because of its ability to foresee major trends and capitalize upon them. In the 1960s, for instance, GE was one of the eight major computer companies. Even recently, since 1986, GE has continued to acquire several organizations; portions of NBC, wind manufacturing, universe pictures, aerospace industries, international firms, software and hardware manufacturing, even oil companies abroad. The company culture describes itself as not one company, but many each unit a vast and complex enterprise in and of itself, with a corporate

Jack Welch has been named the “Manger of the Century” and has made innovative changes to management practices. He was born as John Francis Jr. on November 19, 1935 in Salem, Massachusetts. He attended Salem High School and then after graduating went to the University of Massachusetts. At the University of Massachusetts, Jack Welch received Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering. After getting his bachelor degree he went to the University of Illinois and received his Masters and Doctorate. Jack Welch became a member of General Electrics in 1960. While working at GE, Jack Welch made a significant impact, but his start at GE was shaky.

Management guru Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, has been instrumental in forming today’s top business management leaders by imparting effective knowledge in leadership management; he is widely credited with transforming GE into a multibillion-dollar conglomerate.

In 2001, shortly after Jeff Immelt became the CEO of GE, a series of events changed and impacted the corporate landscape. The immediate challenges that he faced included 9/11, and a subsequent series of high profile corporate scandals (Enron, WorldCom). In 2008, the financial crisis hit and had a severe impact on GE’s primary growth source, GE Capital causing it to accumulate bad debts and asset write-downs. These events caused slow domestic economic growth, crisis of confidence among investors and more global competitors.

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