Jack Welch Fans Club

Salem High School, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Former CEO and Chairman

Winning: The Ultimate Business How-To Book, Shadow & Light: Literature & the Life of Faith, Jack: Straight from the Gut, Jack Welch Speaks: Wisdom from the World's Greatest Business Leader, The New Ge: How Jack Welch Revived an American Institution

Scorpio

John Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr. (born November 19, 1935(1935-11-19)) is the former Chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001. Welch gained a solid reputation for uncanny business acumen and unique leadership strategies at GE. He remains a highly regarded figurein business circles due to his innovative management strategies and leadership style.

Welch's net worth is estimated at $720 million.

Through the 1980s, Welch worked to streamline GE and make it a more competitive company. In 1981 he made a speech in New York City called "Growing fast in a slow-growth economy".[3] This is often acknowledged as the "dawn" of the obsession with shareholder value. Later, in an interview with the Financial Times on the Global financial crisis of 2008–2009, Welch said, “On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy... your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.”[4]

He also pushed the managers of the businesses he kept to become more productive. Welch worked to eradicate inefficiency by trimming inventories and dismantling the bureaucracy that had almost led him to leave GE in the past. He shut down factories, reduced payrolls and cut lackluster old-line units. Welch's philosophy was that a company should be either #1 or #2 in a particular industry, or else leave it completely. Although he was initially treated with contempt by those under him for his policies, they eventually grew to respect him. Welch's strategy was later adopted by other CEOs across corporate America.

Each year, Welch would fire the bottom 10% of his managers. He earned a reputation for brutal candor in his meetings with executives. He would push his managers to perform, but he would reward those in the top 20% with bonuses and stock options. He also expanded the broadness of the stock options program at GE from just top executives to nearly one third of all employees. Welch is also known for destroying the nine-layer management hierarchy and bringing a sense of informality to the company.

During the early 1980s he was dubbed "Neutron Jack" (in reference to the neutron bomb) for eliminating employees while leaving buildings intact. In Jack: Straight From The Gut, Welch states that GE had 411,000 employees at the end of 1980, and 299,000 at the end of 1985. Of the 112,000 who left the payroll, 37,000 were in sold businesses, and 81,000 were reduced in continuing businesses. In return, GE had increased its market capital tremendously.

In 1986, GE acquired NBC, which was located in Rockefeller Center; Welch subsequently took up an office in the GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. During the 1990s, Welch helped to modernize GE by shifting from manufacturing to financial services through numerous acquisitions.

Welch adopted Motorola's Six Sigma quality program in late 1995. He led the company to massive revenues. In 1980, the year before Welch became CEO, GE recorded revenues of roughly $26.8 billion. In 2000, the year before he left, the revenues increased to nearly $130 billion. When Jack Welch left GE, the company had gone from a market value of $14 billion to one of more than $410 billion at the end of 2004, making it the most valuable and largest company in the world.

At the time of his retirement, Welch received a salary of $4 million a year, followed by his record retirement plan of $8 million a year. In 1999 he was named "Manager of the Century" by Fortune magazine.

There was a lengthy and well-publicized succession planning saga prior to his retirement between James McNerney, Robert Nardelli, and Jeffrey Immelt, with Immelt eventually selected to succeed him as Chairman and CEO. Nardelli became the CEO of Home Depot until his resignation in early 2007, and now is the CEO of Chrysler, while McNerney became CEO of 3M until he left that post to serve in the same capacity at Being.

World class leaders and aspirants.