The Revolution that Began from the Top
Jack Welch planned to launch a revolution at GE from the day he took over the company and wasted no time in executing his plan. No one in American business had the vision to transform a basically healthy major company, to fix something that wasn't broken.
Welch's revolution began from the top. He made GE leaner, tougher, faster more competitive – with fewer people, fewer business units, few managers, and more leaders. Though to many GE had been an icon, a sacred institution that could not be tampered with, Welch applied a kind of "survival of the fittest" rule of thumb to GE businesses and to GE personnel; those who survived were the ones who were needed.5 For twenty years he led a series of revolutions at GE, seeking to recast a highly bureaucratic, labor-intensive and slow corporate giant into a highly productive entrepreneurial organization that would function with speed, simplicity and passion of a small company. Given GE's size and complexity, it was a heroic task, but Welch knew that to make GE the world's competitive enterprise, transformational change was essential.

Improving Connectivity
Creating a Seamless Link between Strategy, Management, and Employees
Determined to harness the collective power of GE employees, create a free flow of ideas, and redefine relationships between boss and subordinates, Welch developed Work-Out: a series of town hall meetings conducted by GE management and designed to encourage employee feedback, cross-pollination of ideas, and employee empowerment. "In the Welch-led GE culture, traditional barriers dividing employees, co-workers, and management give way to tethers of interdisciplinary and interdepartmental cooperation."1

The Need for Change
The revolutionary massive changes introduced by Jack Welch worked. By the mid-1990s GE had become the strongest company in the United