GE Two-Decade Transformation: Jack Welch’s Leadership

1A. Vision. Mr. Welch started from day one of his tenure as CEO to change the vision of GE as it relates to its employees, management and the aim of its products. His major goal was to fixed those poor achieving product lines that could be fixed, sell those product lines that could be sold but not fixed and drop those product lines that could not be fixed or sold. B. Mission. Mr. Welch mission was to downsize, de-staff and de-layer the GE organization to streamline it to be more efficient and effective. C. Strategies. Mr. Welch brought in various strategies; however, they all had three primary focus points in mind. He wanted to centralize the chain of command structure, while taking out layers of bureaucracy. He wanted input from all sectors of the GE family when determining how to do jobs better. He wanted management to be responsive up as well as down the chain of command. D. Organizational Structure. Mr. Welch knew he badly had to implement a cultural change if he intended to sustain high productivity. He wanted to replicate a small business culture, where ideals were freely shared with management and decisions were made on the spot. He started an initiative called “Work-out,” where employees with the help of a facilitator put their ideals on paper. Once the employee ideals were captured on paper, management was called in to hear the proposals and to make a decision on the spot. He also started an initiative in conjunction with “Work-out” called “Best practices” where he put together a team to learn from companies that were achieving higher productivity growth than GE. The team would look at those companies with successes and determine how they could mirror those ideals within the GE organization. Welch was committed to