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What story does the evidence tell you? If you're going to disqualify someone as a leader, Jack Welch is not that guy.

by tyre 7y ago

unlinked_dll 7y ago
It tells me that he built a house of cards and left before the wind knocked it over
buran77 7y ago
He's the type of leader who grew the company on a minefield of figurative debt and real hidden costs. Leaving behind something with a solid foundation makes you a good leader. Getting out in time from a Ponzi scheme you built doesn't. Another trait of a real leader is to be able to grow another leader who can do the same. By his own statements he failed.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  And you don’t complain publicly about the people you hired. Especially while loudly proclaiming how good you are at hiring.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    The quote does say "according to friends" - so maybe he only complained privately.
    - rumanator 7y ago
      The problem isn't his choice of audience, but his choice of message.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      It doesn’t really matter. In his book he portrays himself as a great teacher and coach. So not his successor failed but Welch’s mentoring failed. He had all the tools available to bring up a successor but couldn’t do it. Reminds me a little of the US president. Take credit for everything positive that happens and when something goes wrong, point at somebody else and often at somebody he personally selected and hired.
- tyre 7y ago
  GE crashed nearly a decade after he left. He spent decades building GE into a powerhouse in many industries. Finding a leader who can replace you is a miniscule piece of being a leader. Also, that's ultimately the Board's responsibility. The CEO reports to them.
  - buran77 7y ago
    Even a weak foundation takes time to crumble. Jack Welch built the foundation for GE's growth on the surface of a bubble that would burst in 2008. Perhaps the real mistake of his successor was not jumping off the pyramid soon enough. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/business/ge-jack-welch-immelt.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/business/ge-jack-welch-im...
    - cxr 7y ago
      > It goes like this: you can do the wrong things but be in a long enough feedback loop that the effects only really start to show themselves some time later. So rather than successfully correlating results to their real causes, what happens instead is: > a) people fool themselves in the meantime that bad things aren't bad, and > b) in the aftermath, when the consequences do start to appear, the temporal offset from the real root cause is so large, and they have so many other things to attribute failures to, that they can (and probably will) go the intellectually dishonest route https://www.colbyrussell.com/2018/10/11/mozilla-and-feedback-loops.html https://www.colbyrussell.com/2018/10/11/mozilla-and-feedback...
  - hitekker 7y ago
    > Finding a leader who can replace you is a miniscule piece of being a leader. Is this view based on the way Seneca Systems was terminated?

What story does the evidence tell you? If you're going to disqualify someone as a leader, Jack Welch is not that guy.

by tyre 7y ago

What story does the evidence tell you? If you're going to disqualify someone as a leader, Jack Welch is not that guy.

unlinked_dll 7y ago

It tells me that he built a house of cards and left before the wind knocked it over

buran77 7y ago

He's the type of leader who grew the company on a minefield of figurative debt and real hidden costs. Leaving behind something with a solid foundation makes you a good leader. Getting out in time from a Ponzi scheme you built doesn't. Another trait of a real leader is to be able to grow another leader who can do the same. By his own statements he failed.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
And you don’t complain publicly about the people you hired. Especially while loudly proclaiming how good you are at hiring.
- michaelt 7y ago
  The quote does say "according to friends" - so maybe he only complained privately.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    The problem isn't his choice of audience, but his choice of message.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    It doesn’t really matter. In his book he portrays himself as a great teacher and coach. So not his successor failed but Welch’s mentoring failed. He had all the tools available to bring up a successor but couldn’t do it. Reminds me a little of the US president. Take credit for everything positive that happens and when something goes wrong, point at somebody else and often at somebody he personally selected and hired.
tyre 7y ago
GE crashed nearly a decade after he left. He spent decades building GE into a powerhouse in many industries. Finding a leader who can replace you is a miniscule piece of being a leader. Also, that's ultimately the Board's responsibility. The CEO reports to them.
- buran77 7y ago
  Even a weak foundation takes time to crumble. Jack Welch built the foundation for GE's growth on the surface of a bubble that would burst in 2008. Perhaps the real mistake of his successor was not jumping off the pyramid soon enough. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/business/ge-jack-welch-immelt.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/business/ge-jack-welch-im...
  - cxr 7y ago
    > It goes like this: you can do the wrong things but be in a long enough feedback loop that the effects only really start to show themselves some time later. So rather than successfully correlating results to their real causes, what happens instead is: > a) people fool themselves in the meantime that bad things aren't bad, and > b) in the aftermath, when the consequences do start to appear, the temporal offset from the real root cause is so large, and they have so many other things to attribute failures to, that they can (and probably will) go the intellectually dishonest route https://www.colbyrussell.com/2018/10/11/mozilla-and-feedback-loops.html https://www.colbyrussell.com/2018/10/11/mozilla-and-feedback...
- hitekker 7y ago
  > Finding a leader who can replace you is a miniscule piece of being a leader. Is this view based on the way Seneca Systems was terminated?