It eventually did, but it took a few years, after I left. GE had a lot of money to burn, back then. I remember going to a corporate party, at this mega-fancy catering campus, in Chantilly, VA. Green serpentine walls, grecian columns, reflecting pools, etc. Pretty crazy.
I think that Welch spawned a whole bunch of "Mini-Jacks," that worked to be what they thought he wanted.
The division was doing badly, and this guy was sent in to "clean it up."
I suspect that he ended up "cleaning it out," which was probably a win, in his book.
I worked with some top-shelf engineers, back then. GE could hire the best. If they had been managed well, they could have been awesome.
The management, however, was terrible, especially at the higher levels. Lots of nice suits and cufflinks, but very little smarts.
>>I think that Welch spawned a whole bunch of "Mini-Jacks," that worked to be what they thought he wanted.
>>The management, however, was terrible, especially at the higher levels. Lots of nice suits and cufflinks, but very little smarts.
People being people, eventually corruption takes over all processes. This whole idea that one had to stack rank the bottom 20%, promote the top 20% and let the former eventually fire the middle performers depended on honesty from people running the processes.
>>The management, however, was terrible, especially at the higher levels. Lots of nice suits and cufflinks, but very little smarts.
All the best depending on mediocre people to promote smart people above them, heck even the smart people wouldn't promote people smarter people above them. What this means is the process in most companies that practiced this was fixed. Most managers promoted their lackeys, fired who ever was good(perceived as a threat to their own position), remainder was tolerated as long as they stayed inert. This now achieved the very opposite what the process was to achieve.
This should kill the company, and it often does, but most large companies have products and customers that take a while(years, to even decades) to go away. To that end, this could go on for ages until things reached their natural end.
I think that Welch spawned a whole bunch of "Mini-Jacks," that worked to be what they thought he wanted.
The division was doing badly, and this guy was sent in to "clean it up."
I suspect that he ended up "cleaning it out," which was probably a win, in his book.
I worked with some top-shelf engineers, back then. GE could hire the best. If they had been managed well, they could have been awesome.
The management, however, was terrible, especially at the higher levels. Lots of nice suits and cufflinks, but very little smarts.