Welch On Management

MGT4121

Week Eight Journal Submission : Chapter 14

Case Study: Jack Welch

In a classroom where Jack Welch has appeared more than 250 times in the past seventeen years to engage some 15,000 GE managers and executives, something extraordinary happens. The legendary chairman of GE, the take-no-prisoners tough guy who gets results at any cost, becomes human. His slight stutter, a handicap that has bedeviled him since childhood, makes him oddly vulnerable. The students see all of Jack here: the management theorist, strategic thinker, business teacher, and corporate icon who made it to the top despite his working-class background. The fact is no one leaves the room untouched. If leadership is an art, then surely Mr. Welch has proved himself a master painter. Few have personified corporate leadership more dramatically. Fewer still have so consistently delivered on the results of that leadership. For 17 years, while big companies and their chieftains have come and gone, Welch has led GE to one revenue and earnings record after another. What can be inferred from this case study is the fact that Jack Welch does it through sheer force of personality, coupled with an unbridled passion for winning the game of business and a keen attention to details many chieftains would simply overlook. He does it because he encourages near-brutal candor in the meetings he holds to guide the company through each work year. And he does it because, above all else, he’s a fierce believer in the power of his people.

Welch likes to call GE the “grocery store.” The metaphor, however quirky for such a large firm, allows Welch to mentally roll up his sleeves, slip into an apron, and get behind the counter. There, he can get to know every employee and serve every customer.

After being extremely skeptical of quality programs, what’s going on at GE now is Six Sigma. Jack Welch felt that quality programs were too heavy on slogans and to short on results. Yet, Six Sigma is different. A Six Sigma quality level in a company like GE can save a company a great deal of money.