Living in the COVID-19 World .. And Beyond #20: Some Reflections on 20 Years at GE
I started working at GE in 1984… and I left in 2004. My years at GE overlapped significantly with Jack Welch’s tenure as GE’s CEO (1981-2001). In recent weeks, there have been a number of articles in the NY Times and elsewhere writing about Jack Welch’s legacy in critical terms. Reading those articles has caused me to take some time to reflect on my years at GE also.
I came to GE from an unconventional background. I had gone to Oberlin College, and I have often joked that Oberlin prepared me to carry picket signs outside of GE and not to work as an executive within GE. Prior to joining GE, I worked for five years in human services, as a teacher, director of a day program for psychiatric adults, and as a manager of training at a human services institution. I chose to go to business school in order to get a job in a company like GE with the idea of being a change agent once I got there. I could say a lot more about my decision and the thinking behind it … maybe that will be another blog someday.
I loved working at GE. And it was hard and challenging and presented values conflicts for me on a daily basis.
What did I love?
· I loved the people that I worked with. I spent 3+ years working as the Human Resources Manager in a factory. I got to know every single person, not just as a worker but also more about their lives and their families. Last year, I organized a reunion of people from that factory, and we were all so happy to be together again and swap stories after most of us had not seen each other in 30 years. Many of my good friends today are people that I worked with at GE many years ago.
· I loved the challenges of how to make positive change to improve the lives of employees within an organization that, by the nature of the system of capitalism, was driven to make profits. I kept searching for and finding tactics that married better work lives for GE employees with improved organizational performance. I had to advocate for these changes, and I did not always win, but I loved the challenge of trying.
· I loved learning the skills and tools of being a Human Resources and Organizational Development professional. GE was recognized within the corporate world for its best practices in these areas. I was able to both help develop some of these approaches and as my career advanced, I was increasingly called upon to share what I had learned at GE with colleagues from other organizations from around the world.
One thing that made my years at GE unique was having Jack Welch as the company’s CEO. I had a limited number of direct interactions with Welch, but his presence was felt continuously throughout all levels of the organization.
My perspective on Jack Welch:
- I admired and respected Jack Welch. I admired and respected that he was willing to initiate and drive significant cultural changes. Among those changes, and I was deeply involved in executing these, were the introduction of Work-Out, the Change Acceleration Process, and Six Sigma Quality. Each of these were major upheavals in the GE culture and operating system and could not have been implemented without Welch being a strong and consistent advocate. And these changes, in my opinion, were both pro-employee (giving GE staff voice and power throughout the organization) and supported improved organizational performance.
- Jack Welch had a superb personal touch. I have saved from 30+ years ago, hand-written notes that I received from Jack. One time, I presented to Welch at his senior staff meeting at GE’s corporate headquarters in Fairfield CT. I was kept in a waiting area until there was a break in the meeting, and then brought in immediately prior to my presentation. As I came into the meeting room during the break, Jack Welch came over to me, put his arm around me and said something like: “Hi Mike, great to see you again, how have you been?” He said this as if I had just been with him the week before and as if we had a close personal connection. I had not seen him in several years and I doubt whether he would have been able to recognize me without seeing my name on his meeting agenda. But the warmth that he showed in that interaction was magnetic.
- Jack Welch was focused on profit-making; he made no secret of that. He wanted GE to be the most profitable company on earth. And that desire for profits contributed to some decisions and behaviors that were misguided and inappropriate.
- In sum, Jack Welch had great strengths as a leader and organizational thinker and significant weaknesses based on his desire to win within a system that measured success based on profits. I think he deserves neither to be revered nor condemned.
I’ll end this blog by writing again that I loved working at GE and I’m very glad that I was there during Jack Welch’s tenure as CEO. I learned a lot, I grew tremendously in my own leadership skills, and I also saw first-hand how destructive a relentless focus on profit can be on people and ultimately on an organization.