GE's current boss, Larry Culp, observed that Jack Welch 'changed the business landscape as we know it'
magazine anointed him “manager of the century” . The plain-spoken Mr Welch had admirers outside business circles, too. Beth Comstock, a formervice-chairwoman, recalls attending overflowing shareholder meetings with him where “little old ladies were shaking like they were meeting a rock star.”
The Welch revolution rested on four pillars: people, process, purpose and profit. Start with people. Ex-lieutenants praise him for nurturing talent. He encouraged employees to take risks and speak their minds, remembers Jeff Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management, who taught at the company university in Crotonville.’s bloated bureaucracy, he introduced the policy of “rank and yank”, sacking the bottom 10% of managers, measured by financial and other metrics, each year.
Mr Welch was also obsessed with processes. Some were radical in his day but have since become commonplace. To prevent turf wars from killing new ideas, for instance, he insisted that town-hall meetings be held so that all relevant parties could raise objections. He championed Six Sigma, a series of techniques that aimed to keep manufacturing defects below 3.4 per million parts.’s purpose also changed on his watch.
There is no denying that Mr Welch was a towering figure who helped jolt America Inc out of the complacent 1970s. At times, he may have shaken too hard. On March 4th the current boss, Larry Culp, observed that Mr Welch had “changed the business landscape as we know it”. He did not say whether it was for better or worse.
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