Welch pushed his managers to become ever more productive. Inventories were trimmed, bureaucracies dismantled, and inefficiencies attacked with a vengeance.
Jack Welch was prescient in one area after another, and the time after his reign at General Electric (NYSE:GE) continues to reinforce the tough decisions he made as he looked out at where business was going to be in the decades ahead.
We talked about it recently when General Electric posted it quarterly numbers, of which were led by their global businesses.
Now that we're in a slowdown in the American economy, it would seem that General Electric would be offering guidance that would lower expectations. But current CEO Jeffrey Immelt said he still projects the company will grow profits during this period of time. Much of this is because of what Jack Welch did years ago.
It's irrelevant what people called Jack Welch, and a lot of them weren't pretty. Maybe the most hurtfull to him personally was the "neutron Jack" one, because of the tough decisions and steps he had to take to ensure the healthy survival of General Electric for the years ahead.
Jack Welch knew the only way General Electric would survive as a profitable company, was to take the steps he took under his tenure. He couldn't afford to try to be mister nice-guy and hope for the best. He wasn't going to allow circumstances to act on him and develop a learned helplessness within the company.
This is one of the tough things business leaders have to do at times. Short term sacrifices and tough choices have to be made to ensure a company can continue on in the years ahead.
I personally don't care what the people who don't know what they're talking about say, Jack Welch will go down in history as one of the greatest, if not the greatest business leaders in the 20th century. And the reason he will is because he saw what the 21st century was going to become.
The companies that will perform the best in the times ahead of us will be those that take the exact same steps Welch had to take years ago. We'll have to run lean where we can, fight against the lure of bureaucracy, attain a global reach, and fight as hard as we can against inefficiencies.
Entire industry's are being crushed because they havent' had the will to do this. Take for example the music and newspaper industries. Even though much of their problems are connected to denying the forces that were changing media and entertainment, at the same time they refuse to be run by people that know business, even today, as mentioned here, and recently with musicians fighting fiscal discipline, it shows they've been running wild with their spending.
Now that the industries are under pressure, the poor managment within them are being exposed. Welch saw these things coming years ago and prepared General Electric for it. Now they have the foundation in place to run while other companies and industries struggle to simply survive.
Other Jack Welch Resources:
Jack Welch's advice to MIT Sloan students
Remember to Sign up for my feed
Sponsored link: The outsourcing every manager requires - Tampa Locksmith
Comment Preview