Jack Welch biography. Jack Welch: biography, books. Career advancement

John Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr. (born John Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr., b. 1935) is an American businessman. From 1981 to 2001 he held the position CEO at the General Electric Company. He currently serves as an advisor to a small group of Fortune 500 CEOs. From time to time, Welch continues to speak to the business community and students. The story of Jack Welch has become a legend of the 20th century. About how the son of a simple railway conductor managed to bring an aging business monster with a clumsy bureaucratic system to the second place in the world in terms of number working capital, is now being told at universities around the world.

The methods used by Welch have become classics of management today, but in the early 70s of the last century, when the young engineer was just starting his career, everything was completely different - his revolutionary proposals caused strong opposition and he could pave his way to the top only thanks to the ability to not turn off the intended path.
Education as an incentive to work
The perseverance and hard work that has always distinguished Jack Welch, he inherited from his father. Despite the most ordinary and by no means profitable position of a conductor, he was distinguished by an amazing service zeal and by his example showed his young son that you need to take the work you do with complete seriousness. A person who is able to spend the night at work just to avoid being late for work in the morning due to bad weather is able to teach a child to work hard much more effectively than any professional teacher. Subsequently, Welch himself remembered his father with warmth and believed that this inconspicuous railway employee had a considerable merit in his success.

Romance with General Electric - the beginning
After graduating from the University of Massachusetts, young Jack in 1960 joined one of the departments of the company founded by Thomas Edison himself. The department of plastics, in which Welch began to work, almost became the young man's last job at General Electric. whole year the young man literally suffocated from the sluggishness of the bureaucratic machine that had long since rusted and swallowed up the entire firm. To cope with it seemed unrealistic, and he submitted a letter of resignation. But the management of the department persuaded the promising specialist to stay, not yet suspecting that they were saving for the company not just an intelligent engineer, but a person who would turn it into a corporation managing billions of dollars.
The Way Up: Twenty Years That Shook General Electric
Unlike many other successful executives and businessmen who reached the top career development with unprecedented ease and speed, Jack's way upstairs took a long twenty years. Already at the beginning of his career, he was well aware that, given the current state of affairs in the company, in a few years it would not only be able to find new sources of income, keeping up with the times, but also to maintain existing profitable production.
Jack actively set to work, trying to do his job with maximum efficiency, but at the same time constantly criticizing the bureaucracy that flourished in production and generating new ideas for organizing management in the company. At first, Welch's straightforwardness and stubbornness only irritated the authorities, but over time they began to listen to him, and 13 years after starting work at General Electric, he became the head of the metallurgical and chemical production firms.
From that moment on, he began to introduce innovative management methods. First of all, like any revolutionary, he destroyed the already existing system of work, significantly reducing the number of people, and especially managers in the company, leaving only those who really benefited it. In total, the number of reduced employees for all the years of Welch's work in the company, including the years of his reign of General Electric, reaches 100 thousand people. These truly unprecedented measures have allowed the company to take a leap forward, increasing production efficiency and annual turnover several times.
Then, skillfully encouraging and motivating worthy employees, he achieved their full return on work, and over the twenty years of his reign - from 1981 to 2001, the value of the corporation he headed increased 30 times.
In fact, the story of Jack Welch is a story about how you can build a successful business, relying solely on the right prioritization and skillful team management. Today, the former head of General Electric has retired, and devotes all his free time to creating books in which he tells his own secrets of success.

Jack Welch did not stand at the origins of General Electric - the company was already more than a hundred years old when he took over the reins, but he managed to transform it and write books about it. To the surprise of many experts who argued that GE was too big for its shares to grow, and investing in it only for the sake of dividends, during two decades of leadership, Welch increased its value by 40 times.

stutter boy

Jack Welch was born on November 19, 1935 in Peabody. His parents, father John Francis Welch and mother Grace, tried to instill in their son a sense of self-confidence, which was useful to him throughout his career.

As a child, Jack stuttered a little, but this did not stop him from excelling in school and sports. He received a degree in chemical engineering in 1957 and a PhD in 1960 before joining General Electric as an associate engineer.

Always give more than what is asked

Jack Welch, whose biography at GE began with the development of a new plastic for industrial applications, polyphenylene oxide (PPO), worked with a small development team. Because of GE's vast structure, he eventually had to "sell" his project to senior scientists in order to get their help.

Welch installed a good relationship with Ruben Gutoff, CEO of GE, always doing more than he was asked to. When a project manager needed a project analysis, Jack provided it, along with a cost analysis for similar products from competing companies like DuPont. It was part of his strategy to stand out from the crowd by exceeding expectations and offering a new and possibly valuable perspective to his superiors.

Failed dismissal

When the bureaucratic nature of a large corporation such as GE began to annoy Welch, in particular the same allowances for all employees in the first year of work, he tried to quit. However, Gutoff persuaded him to stay by offering him a large pay raise and promising managerial positions in the future. So Rudolph agreed to help Jack bypass some of the bureaucracy that plagued GE. The special treatment he received from the chief executive strengthened his confidence in the differentiation policy he subsequently adopted. Jack Welch, whose quotes are very popular, said on this occasion: "Differentiation brings forward people who are energetic and extroverted and underestimates the modest and introverted people, even if they are talented."

Big Bang

In 1963, Jack Welch received another lesson in working with people. The chemical plant exploded, and although no one was hurt, the shaking young man had to drag himself onto the carpet to Charlie Reid, a higher-level executive, to give an explanation. Instead of scolding his subordinate, Reed focused on what was learned from the incident and asked him for advice on how to avoid future explosions. Welch left the office with renewed confidence and an even more committed GE.

When a job opening for PPO Sales Project Manager came up, Jack began pestering Gutoff to fill the position, despite his lack of experience in the field. He obviously had some talent as a salesman, because the appointment was received. Welch made a tradition of celebrating his team's success by throwing a party every time orders reached $5,000. Successful team sales in 1968 led to Jack's appointment as general manager of the entire plastics division, the youngest at GE.

Jack Welch: The Manager's Story

Plastic was not held in high esteem by General Electric as the company struggled to break even after several years of capital-intensive research. Welch, young and confident, predicted that GE's plastics business would double to rival DuPont, the chemical giant. Jack and his team went on an unprecedented publicity stunt. It involved billboards, radio promotion, and even a public display of merchandise in a parking lot, with Major League pitcher Denny McLain throwing balls at Welch holding a sheet of industrial plastic as protection.

Jack achieved his goal of doubling the business within three years and thereby solidified his management style. He was outspoken and even a little callous when dealing with incompetence, quickly firing anyone who didn't meet his standards, but he was also very generous with those who did. The employees he approved were expected to work hard, but also paid them very well. Based on the results achieved, in 1971 Jack Welch was promoted to head of the entire chemical and metallurgical division of the company.

Personnel decides everything

Jack Welch Focused on Hiring and Retaining the best people, only on a larger scale. The way he recruits and fires staff has attracted unfriendly attention from GE's top management. The company increasingly relied on seniority and a flawed performance appraisal system as criteria for promotion, but Welch challenged that system by promoting and hiring people on merit.

In 1973, he wrote in his report that one of his long-term goals was to become the company's CEO. That same year, Welch was promoted to multi-unit manager for $2 billion. Unable to delve deeply into every field from X-rays to semiconductors, he came to appreciate the people who run the business even more. From 1973 to 1980, he used this concept - personnel above all, each time occupying more and more responsible posts.

A dark horse

By 1977, it was clear that Welch's success in every position made him a dark horse in the race to become the company's CEO, Reginald H. Jones. As part of the test, all candidates were invited to the headquarters of the corporation and given large sections of it to manage. Jack got consumer goods and services. Part of this portfolio included a business that Welch immediately liked - credit. Later, as CEO, Jack would make GE's growth engine the credit division.

Decisive error

Competing for the top nomination, Welch made one notable mistake. Oddly enough, this later helped him succeed. He had proven his ability to get things done and make tough decisions about a losing business, but he had concerns about his die-hard sense of competition. When the cost of acquiring the cable and broadcast divisions of Cox Communication began to rise with each negotiation, Welch canceled the deal.

He spent over a year convincing the GE board of the need for such an acquisition, and now he has to admit that he made a mistake. For some board members, the fact that Welch made a mistake and acted quickly to correct it was an argument in his favor. In 1980, with the consent of the board, Reginald Jones informed him that he would be the new chief executive.

Jack Welch - Winner

The journey from junior engineer to CEO took 20 years, an amazing pace to climb the corporate ladder with 29 levels of management. One of the first things Jack Welch, the winner, did as CEO was move to eliminate those levels to make way for people and ideas.

Throughout his career, simple principles such as “people are everything” and a constant drive to anticipate and exceed expectations have allowed Welch to stand out from the crowd. There is no doubt that Jack had tremendous self-confidence, but it was the effort he put into people and the trust that made him a great manager and helped him transform the company as a CEO.

Personal life

Welch's first wife Caroline bore him four children. In April 1987, the couple amicably divorced after 28 years of marriage. The second wife, Jane Beasley, was a former lawyer. The wedding took place in April 1989, and the divorce took place in 2003.

The third wife, Susie Wetlaufer, is the co-author of Jack Welch's Winning. At one time she worked as the editor of the Harvard Business Review. Jane Bisley, then still a wife, found out about the affair and informed the management of the magazine. In early 2002, Wetlaufer was forced to resign after admitting her relationship with Jack while preparing his interview.

Books

• In 2003 Jack: Straight from the Gut was published.
• The Winning book was published in 2005 and took first place on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list.
• It was followed in 2006 by Winning: The 74 Toughest Questions in Business Today.

In 2009, Welch founded the Institute of Management in his name, in which he personally participated in the development of the curriculum.

Jack Welch is one of the most famous business leaders in the world: Fortune magazine, summing up the development of business in the 20th century, recognized him as " the best manager century." Extraordinary business instincts and unique leadership skills this person, combined with efficient technologies management made largest company United States General Electric is a dynamic and mobile, and most importantly, the most successful company in the world.

Become the best - or lose.
Motto of Jack Welch

John (Jack) Francis Welch John (Jack) Francis Welch listen)) was born November 19, 1935 in Peabody, Massachusetts ( Peabody, Massachusetts). He received his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 1957 from the University of Massachusetts ( University of Massachusetts Amherst), and a master's and doctoral degree in 1960 from the University of Illinois ( University of Illinois).

Welch's entire life was associated with the General Electric Company ( General Electric, or simply "ji-i" - G.E.), an American business legend. It was founded by the world-famous inventor Thomas Edison, the creator of the incandescent lamp, electric generator, sound recording device and film projector (in 1878 G.E. It was called "Edison Electric Light", it acquired a new name in 1892 after merging with Thomson-Houston Electric). Of the thirty companies that were included in the Dow Jones list 100 years ago,1 this measure of the stability of not only the American, but also the world economy, General Electric, the only one (!) - is still on this list today.

Welch's career G.E. was fast-paced: having joined the plastics department in Pittsfield, Massachusetts ( Pittsfield, Massachusetts) in 1960, already in 1968 he turned out to be the youngest top manager of the company, and from April 1981 he headed it, taking the post of chairman of the board of directors and president of the corporation, being the youngest (45 years old) in the history of General An electrician". To become the first among the best, serious ambitions are needed: while still at the very bottom of the career pyramid, Welch openly stated that he intended to become president G.E.. He has always had a reputation as an incorrigible "critic" and "corporate dissident." As Welch himself admitted, “I did not like mothball presentations or reading reports and reports, preferring personal conversations with employees, from whom I expected, first of all, answers to the questions posed. I loved "creative conflict" and believed that in business best results leads to an open and honest discussion. If an idea doesn't stand up to demanding discussion, it dies."

During the two decades of his leadership - from 1981 to 2001 - total cost corporations increased more than 30 times: from 12 to 400 billion dollars! Sales increased from $25 billion to $125.9 billion and profit from $1.5 billion to $14.1 billion a year.

However, the results of the work done by the famous top manager are measured not only in numbers. More important are Welch's other merits:

Successful modernization traditional company, turning it into a model of a new mobile corporation that has become a model for the 21st century;

Experience in transforming a conservative corporate culture into an innovative one;

The values ​​and views he brought, a new understanding of leadership and the role of corporate spirit.

Retiring in 2001, the illustrious top manager found himself a worthy successor. Today, Welch continues an active life - he advises the heads of large corporations, heads his own company. Jack Welch, LLC lectures, writes books. His autobiography Jack. The very essence" Jack: Straight From The Gut, 2001)2 became a bestseller. He travels a lot, actively communicates with different people. The answers to the questions that both students and eminent top managers ask him are collected in the second book - “The ability to win” ( Winning: The Ultimate Business How-To Book, 2005). In books, Welch formulates his ideas and views on company management, describes "author's" methods of achieving success, reveals the secrets of leadership and effective leadership people.

The business philosophy of an outstanding manager and his experience of restructuring a giant corporation are of interest to everyone. In the book "Principles of management from a legend General Electric Jack Welch”3 Robert Slator spoke about the principles of successful business, which the legendary business leader adhered to in his work. Stuart Kreiner, in The Way of Business: Jack Welch,4 also reveals the secrets of Welch's extraordinary success and describes his strategies. Experts consider the main achievements of Jack to be the “war on bureaucracy”, the development of an active competitive strategy leadership in the market, creating a culture of open communication in the company and investing in people.

In the face of constant rapid change, long-term strategies for the development of the company are meaningless, so Jack Welch suggested limiting ourselves to a general concept that "unifies our private plans and strategies." The main thing is to know the direction and stick to it. general principles! The top manager outlined two directions for restructuring the company's management strategy itself: improvement of the management system and reduction of non-core assets. Radical "debureaucratization" involved the removal of unnecessary "floors" and links in the management chains. To ensure fast decision making in the most difficult situations, control systems had to become simpler and more mobile. The restructuring of assets led to mass layoffs of superfluous workers, both managers and workers, the elimination of entire structural divisions - G.E. cut staff by 10% per year. During the first five years of Welch's presidency, the number of personnel decreased by more than a quarter, which is why he received a stable reputation for ruthlessness and the grim nickname "Neutron Jack": a neutron bomb destroys enemy manpower, leaving buildings and equipment.

But Jack Welch didn't just cut staff, he developed his own personnel policy: according to the results of the year, only those employees who showed the lowest results in work were fired. The severity of the proposed measures has been justifiably criticized, but they have proven to be effective, so some innovations G.E., in particular, "competition from below", adopted by many corporations. The reformer divided employees into three categories:

BUT - employees who meet the "four rules of leadership in G.E.”: energetic, able to motivate others, make difficult decisions and always fulfill their obligations;

AT - "heart" of the company, competent specialists, but less proactive and energetic;

FROM - “lazy”, people who cannot and do not want to work well.

Welch demanded that managers adhere to a rigid proportion when evaluating the work of personnel: 20–70–10. Each leader had to “structure” his subordinates, each group had its own approach. Category BUT no more than 20% of the most energetic and enterprising employees could be assigned; they were maximally stimulated by salary growth, options to purchase shares in the company and the prospect of growth. Most employees - up to 70% - fell into the category AT; they were stimulated by salary increases and the opportunity to buy shares at a reduced price (there was no career prospect for these workers). And in each division there should have been 10% of outsiders, they were offered to look for new job. It was a relentless demand.

The procedure for reducing managerial personnel was no less radical, but somewhat different from the "selection" of performers. Welch treated managers with great attention, assessed not only the results of their activities for the current period, but also their potential. Managers in G.E. also categorized as:

1. Companies that meet their responsibilities and share new values ​​- candidates for promotion.
2. Companies that do not cope with their duties and do not accept new values ​​- candidates for dismissal.
3. Sharing new values, but not coping with their duties - candidates for training.
4. Companies that cope with their duties, but do not accept new values ​​- candidates for re-education.

The fate of managers from the first two groups did not raise any questions; relations with the rest were more complicated. They tried to help like-minded people who could not cope with their duties: they trained, improved their qualifications, transferred them to other areas of work, where they could prove themselves more successfully. They tried to “convert” professionals disloyal to the new course, but most often they still had to part with them. The strategy for selecting management personnel has changed: they began to give preference to their own employees.

Jack Welch introduced the practice of forming "anti-groups" that should be oppose the official policy of the leadership. Such groups, from the point of view of the "educator of corporate talents", encouraged discussions and destroyed "groupthink".

And before the arrival of Welch in G.E. there was a tradition - once a year at a meeting of the Board of Directors to analyze the activities of the management staff to identify promising candidates for promotion. Jack supplemented it with an almost dramatic act: at the end of the meeting, an envelope was sealed in which the name of his successor, the most worthy top manager of the company, was written (in case of the sudden death of the current chairman of the Board of Directors).

Welch managed to break the established stereotypes: as a result of the transformations, the company got rid of many non-core activities and unpromising industries, the number of employees decreased from 412 to 222 thousand, and labor productivity increased significantly. Management structure G.E. gained flexibility, increased the efficiency of decisions made, the company has become accustomed to a creative, energetic and flexible approach to solving problems. The cost of increasing efficiency was high, but such harsh, even cruel methods of management made it possible to turn G.E. one of the most valuable corporations in the world.

In 1989, the company began implementing the concept work-out("Warm-up"). It was a bold attempt to transform the corporate culture: to create an atmosphere of trust, to eliminate bureaucratic obstacles, to stimulate the free exchange of new ideas. Consultants held informal meetings of employees, created groups to solve emerging problems, and trained managers at all levels. As a result G.E. became effective organization, free from traditionally rigid barriers between specialists of different departments and professions, between the company and its key suppliers. Welch managed to radically (and very quickly) rebuild the corporate culture, instill new values ​​in employees: the main thing is work for the benefit of the client.

The success of a company in a highly competitive environment directly depends on the quality of its products, so in 1995 Jack Welch began the struggle for leadership in quality, for which he introduced a six sigma quality management program ( Six Sigma Quality Management), which has proven its effectiveness in Motorola. This program is focused on achieving "near-perfection" in production through consistent improvements in all processes, which are supervised by specially trained experts. At the heart of the Six Sigma quality management ideology is the personal responsibility of the employee for quality. “We are against the old control system because it does not take into account the human factor. Now this is the job of the manager, the leader, each employee. Quality is everyone's business,” says Welch.

Another constant concern of Jack Welch was the development of people - the principle of constantly improving the efficiency of each employee ( dd Vlue) has become a daily practice G.E.. In Crotonville ( Crottonville) works corporate Training Center (GE Leadership Center), where employees are trained and trained different levels. Out of respect for the legendary manager, who G.E. revered no less than Edison himself, this center was even renamed the Jack Welch Training Center.

The management methods and personal secrets of the work of the legendary top manager have been studied by many researchers, for a whole generation of managers they have become the best practice standards. Jack Welch is a unique personality, incredibly purposeful and charismatic. What can you learn from a business leader of this magnitude? Is it possible to master the rules of doing business that lead to unique success? Here are some recommendations for managers - Jck's Rules:

Make the instructions as clear as possible…and then read them to others."My job is to create good specialists opportunities to realize their abilities and put dollars in the right places,” says Welch. Really simple.

Make revolutionary changes rather than trying to fix up a building somehow. Permanent change looks tempting, but can lead to defeat. The Great Leap Forward is much better.

Change constantly. Self-satisfaction is deadly for a large corporation. Move forward all the time.

Think positive. Everything can be improved. “Productivity is the result of a deep belief that any task can be done better, and then even better.”

Surround yourself with the right people. Surrounded by toady performers, you will probably be comfortable, but it's the quarrelsome innovators that move the business forward.

Always learn. Whether you have worked all your life in one company or in a dozen different ones, your personal progress will be measured by the acquired skills, and not by salary growth. "Training is an investment in tomorrow."

Maintain simplicity. Whatever you do, keep it simple: communicate simply; put simple goals; create simple systems.

Educate your staff. Educate your employees and your company will educate itself. Constantly talk with employees, get to know people, develop them.

Plan for success. You are in charge of your tomorrow.

Make mistakes. Any person makes mistakes. Either you make mistakes and learn from them, or you forget about them and learn nothing from life's lesson. Neglecting mistakes is the path to failure.

The experience of Jack Welch confirms that management is more an art than a science: to succeed, you need to be emotional, passionate about it, giving all your best. Brilliant Business Leader (magazine Fortune called him "America's toughest boss") has always followed his main principle: "the main pillar of the company are people, not manufactured goods."
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1 Dow Jones Industrial verge (DJI) is an index of the US market, which is calculated at the stock prices of the 30 most quoted US companies ("blue chips") trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Over the past 100 years, the number of companies on the list has changed: in 1896 there were 12, in 1916 - 20, and since 1928 - 30.
2Welch J., Byrne R. Jack. The very essence / Per. from English. - Transit book; AST, M, 2004. - 480 p.
3 Crane S. Business Path: Jack Welch. 10 Secrets of the World's Greatest King / Per. from English. - St. Petersburg: Ed. "Krylov", 2004. - 192 p.
4 Slater R. Control principles from the legend of General Electric Jack Welch / Per. from English. - Minsk: Potpourri LLC, 2005. - 288 p.

Jack Welch is the legendary CEO of General Electric. During the two decades of his reign, from 1981 to 2001, the total value of the corporation increased 30 times - from 14 to almost 400 billion dollars. General Electric became the second most profitable company in the world. After his departure from GE in 2001, Welch wrote an autobiography, JACK: Straight From The Gut, which became a bestseller.

In 2005, together with his wife Suzy Welch (Suzy Welch) wrote the second book Winning. Jack Welch is currently an advisor to a small group of Fortune 500 CEOs. From time to time, Welch continues to speak to the business community and students.

Books (1)

Jack. My years at GE

He was called the toughest boss in the world. And then Fortune magazine awarded him the title of "Manager of the Century." In twenty years at the helm of General Electric, Jack Welch has broken conventional wisdom and turned an aging colossus into a competitive, fast-growing, and innovative company. This outstanding autobiography lives up to the classic canons of business literature and became a newspaper bestseller. New York times.

Jack Welch introduces us to the events of his amazing life- from childhood in a working-class family to running the most successful company in the world. The author talks about deeply personal events and experiences with his characteristic enthusiasm and frankness. While this book is about multi-billion dollar deals and tense corporate conflicts, it's about people. The author built his career on the fact that he demanded only the best from others and from himself.

Jack Welch

Jack Welch led General Electric (GE), a huge corporation of 300,000 employees, for twenty years, becoming its youngest leader at forty-five. He got a successful and stable, but inflexible enterprise. And Welch reformed this company: reduced marginal areas, expanded the scope of activities, simplified the structure, allowed GE to become more open to change and new ideas. He did everything to realize his guiding principle - "maximum profit at minimum cost."

Jack Welch's height is 173 cm. He stutters. He has been married three times and has four children from his first marriage. His fortune is estimated at $720 million.

Welch - the only late child in the family - was born in 1935 in Salem, near Boston (Massachusetts). His father John worked as a railroad conductor on a suburban line and was a real hard worker. If there was a danger that due to bad weather he would not be able to get to work in time in the morning, Welch Sr. came in the evening and spent the night at the station. Jack's mother Grace led household. Her Welch always remembers with special warmth. “I learned a lot from my mother,” Welch says in his autobiography, “the ability to fight hard for victory, a clear awareness of reality, the ability to motivate people with a “carrot and stick”, the constant desire for more and the commitment to the performance of the assigned work. AT school years Jack was a rather weak child - the smallest in the class, he also stuttered. But it was the mother with her advice, support and example that made Jack believe in his own strength. Believing in yourself has become a kind of GE calling card Welch. He did not seek to adopt someone else's style of leadership or behavior, but always remained as he was - a simple, rude and very demanding person.

After graduating from high school, Jack Welch entered the Department of Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. (Before that, he had tried to get into the more prestigious Naval Reserve Officers' Program but failed.) At that time, science had only recently begun to be taught seriously at Amherst, formerly an agricultural college. But studying there was inexpensive - only $ 50 a year, which suited Welch quite well, since his family was not at all rich. At the university, Jack went to the best students and, as he himself said, successfully combined his studies with a fun student life. After receiving a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering, he decided to continue his education at the graduate school of the University of Illinois at Urbana and Champaign, where he was given a scholarship. And after graduating from the magistracy, because due to economic crisis there were few job offers, he became a graduate student and defended his dissertation three years later. According to Welch, chemistry to some extent prepared him for business. Indeed, in it, as in business, there are no exact answers to all questions and often you have to rely no less on your own feelings than on numbers. This principle - to follow your feelings - Welch fully embodied as the head of GE.

“Having worked at GE for 41 years, I have experienced many ups and downs. Funds mass media portrayed me as a prince, then as a scoundrel"

After receiving a PhD in 1960, but deciding to give up a career as a scientist - he did not feel much inclination for it - Welch began to look for work. GE invited him to participate in a project to introduce a new chemical material– polyphenylene oxide, capable of withstanding the highest temperatures. He accepted the offer and moved to Pittsburgh, in his native Massachusetts. But disappointment soon set in. After working for the company for a year, Welch received a standard $1,000 raise, or about a 10% raise. It would seem that one can only rejoice. But Welch was not satisfied with the standard increase, the impersonal approach of GE to its employees - after all, his personal successes were not appreciated. And here, for the first time, Welch entered the fight against the bureaucracy that reigned in GE. True, in a rather trivial way - by threatening to leave. He still stayed when he negotiated another $2,000 in salary and a promise to save him from bureaucratic obstacles. In his first battle with the GE system, Welch won. Having become a leader, he always evaluated his subordinates individually - ruthlessly dismissed the incapable and generously rewarded the talented and diligent.

Welch's career developed very successfully, although not without some oddities - in 1963, according to him, he "blew up the factory." There was an explosion at the chemical plant he led, but, fortunately, no one was hurt. At thirty-two (1967), Jack became chief executive of the plastics division - the youngest in this position and, apparently, the most effective: in less than three years, the volume of production there grew almost two and a half times. During this time, his individual style of leadership took shape. Welch sought to shape his division—and subsequently the entire corporation—of the small-company style of operation by minimizing formal procedures. Instead of reports and presentations - one-on-one conversations, free exchange of opinions, intolerance for inefficiency. With people, Welch was often quite harsh, and sometimes even rude.

Jack Welch and President Bill Clinton at the White House meeting with the leadership of Saudi Arabia (1995)

In the mid-1960s, Welch lost both parents in a year and a half. He was especially shocked by the death of his mother, who died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-six - he was strongly attached to her. Welch, unfortunately, inherited from his mother not only her happy traits, such as perseverance and self-confidence, but also the disease - in 1995 he will undergo a serious heart operation.

In the meantime, Welch confidently moved forward. In 1971, he took over the chemical and metallurgical division, moving up another rung in the GE corporate hierarchy, and began to think about running the company itself. In 1975, he made this intention explicit for the first time, writing in his performance report that he was going to be CEO. In 1977, Welch had moved up to the 27th level of GE's leadership, leading the consumer products sector, and now he was only two steps away from the CEO - the top level, 29th. As the head of the sector, he automatically entered the list of applicants for the position of head of the corporation. Welch moved from Pittsburgh to Fairfield, Connecticut, where GE was headquartered.

Welch did not like the new place - in the central office, according to him, "a cold and unpleasant atmosphere" reigned. There was no feeling that had already become familiar to him " family business". In addition, intrigues flourished as the CEO change approached. Suffering from uncertainty, Welch even began to think about leaving GE, especially after he was offered to become CEO of Allied Chemical.

In 1997, Welch didn't yet know how to use a computer. Jane (second wife) offered to teach him, but he refused because he could not even type on a typewriter.

Choosing a new head of GE is a complex and multi-stage process. First, a list of several dozen candidates is compiled, then it is reduced to seven, and in the end there are three finalists, of which the best one must win. The head of GE - at the time it was Reginald Jones - conducts the traditional "interview about the plane crash." The candidate is first asked who he would entrust the leadership of the corporation to if he knew for sure that he would die. And then - on whom would his choice fall if he survived. To the second question, Welch answered without hesitation: "I would choose myself." Of the three finalists, he was the youngest - his rivals had already exchanged their sixth and seventh ten. And the relative youth of Welch was somewhat embarrassing for the board of directors. But Jones strongly recommended him to the board as his successor, and in December 1980 Welch was elected as the new CEO, and in early April 1981 he officially took office. “I knew exactly what kind of atmosphere I wanted to create in the company,” says Jack Welch. Assuming the post of CEO, he immediately set to work.

First of all, he decided to get rid of lines of business that bring relatively low profits. He put forward the principle of "first or second place": if some existing direction does not occupy one of these places on the market, then there are three possibilities - to improve it, sell it or close it. So, in the 1980s, he sold dozens of departments and product lines. In business, for Welch, there were no such concepts as "tradition", "habit", "convenience". His slogan was “maximum profit”.

As part of his strategy to improve the company's profitability, his other step was massive staff cuts, for which in 1982 Newsweek magazine dubbed Welch "Neutron Jack". As the explosion of a neutron bomb destroys people, leaving only buildings, so he built new sports complexes and hotels, while ruthlessly laying off workers. During the first five years of his reign, every fourth employee of the company lost his job (or was "sold" along with insufficiently profitable directions). But layoffs alone would never have made him a "great CEO." The cornerstone of Welch's approach to personnel was differentiation. The worst (or not good enough) GE employees went looking for a new job, and the best got all the benefits, including solid stock options. Welch constantly increased the number of employees who had this privilege: at the beginning of his twenty-year reign there were only 500 of them, and at the end - 32,000, that is, about 10% of all employees of the company.

"Business should be fun, but for many it's just a job"

Another important area of ​​Welch's activity is the fight against the bureaucracy he hates. In order to fulfill his paradoxical dream - to introduce informal family business principles into GE, this giant corporation - he greatly simplified organizational structure GE and reduced the number of senior executives. But Welch considers his most important "anti-bureaucratic" achievement to be the introduction in 1989 of the so-called "no borders" principle. According to him, the free exchange of ideas within the company, as well as the willingness to borrow best solutions that emerged outside its walls. For traditional GE, where each division has its own pride, this was not a trivial decision. Now, when evaluating the work of the leader, it was taken into account to what extent he contributed to the development of the “without borders” system, and those who did not follow this general line ended up on the street.

Under the leadership of Jack Welch, GE was able to expand the boundaries of its business. Welch understood that it would be difficult for her to compete with Japanese manufacturers in industries such as automotive or manufacturing consumer electronics, and decided to turn to a relatively protected area from foreign competition - the media. So in 1985, GE acquired Radio Corporation of America, owner of the popular NBC television channel, and went from being a light bulb manufacturer to being a media mogul.

The second and final decade of the reign of Jack Welch passed under the sign of globalization. Welch chose an unusual strategy for investing in foreign companies and focused on regions that were relatively unattractive at the time. So, in the 1990s, a controlling stake in the oldest Hungarian company Tungsram, which produces electrical equipment, was acquired. GE also invested in enterprises in Mexico and India.

After his appointment as vice chairman of GE, Welch tried to behave in a manner appropriate to this rank. One of the directors of the company told him, “Jack, I don't recognize you. It was much better when you were yourself."

After working at GE for no less than forty-one years (twenty of them - as its head), in 2001, Jack Welch left the corporation. During his leadership, the company's market value has increased almost 30 times, and GE has become the most valuable business in the world. The merits of Welch were appreciated.

Before he retired, he was earning about $4 million a year, and when he left his post, GE began paying him $2.5 million a year for his housing, meals, private jet, and more. True, Jack had to forego these benefits when they became public during the process of his divorce from his second wife in 2002. In retirement, Welch continues to be active - writing books, lecturing and even appearing in films - playing, for example, himself in the NBC comedy series Studio 30. In the good old tradition of GE, retiring, Jack Welch chose his successor - Jeff Immelt, to whom the next section of this chapter is devoted.

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author Isaacson Walter

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From the author's book

From the author's book

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From the author's book

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