SVKM’s Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies

Hyderabad Campus

Post Graduate Diploma in Management

2019-21

BUSINESS COMMUNICATION – III

COMMUNICATION STYLE OF CEO

Jack Welch – General Electrics

Submitted by:
Abhinav Johar
80303190061

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JACK WELCH

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 Background

• Jack Welch is one of the world's most respected and celebrated CEOs, known for his
unmatched track record of success, enormous love of people, fierce passion for winning,
and unbridled desire to change the world for the better using his unique management
practices, which are collectively called The Welch Way.

• In his 21 years as CEO, Jack transformed GE into the world's most admired and successful
company with his innovative management techniques. Revenues grew five-fold from $25
billion to $130 billion, income grew ten-fold, from $1.5 billion to $15 billion, and the
company's market capitalization had a 30-fold increase of more than $400 billion. His
achievements are considered epic, and as a result, thousands of companies around the world
have adopted the Welch Way.

• After retiring from GE in 2001, Jack Welch has only become more active in business. He
has written two best-selling business books, Jack: Straight from the Gut and Winning, and
will be releasing a new book, The Real-Life MBA, in April, 2015. He actively participates
in managing numerous companies as part of a private equity group, and for four years wrote
an immensely popular weekly column for BusinessWeek magazine. He is a fixture on TV
as a popular business commentator.

• Jack has always been defined by his zealous love of teaching and commitment to building
leaders. At GE, he created the world's best corporate training center and regularly taught
there himself. More recently, he taught a popular course as a visiting professor at MIT's
Sloan School of Management.

• In 2010, Jack founded the Jack Welch Management Institute, a business school that offers
executive education and management training. Jack is intimately involved in every aspect

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 of the Institute. As Executive Chairman, he hosts video conferences with students, appears
in exclusive videos about current business events and is deeply engaged in the development
of the program's curriculum.

• Jack Welch was born in Peabody, Massachusetts, the son of Grace Andrews, a homemaker,
and John Francis Welch, Sr, a Boston & Maine Railroad conductor. Welch was Irish
American and Roman Catholic. His paternal and maternal grandparents were Irish.

• Throughout his early life in middle school and high school, Welch found work in the
summers as a golf caddie, newspaper delivery boy, shoe salesman, and drill press operator.
Welch attended Salem High School, where he participated in baseball, football, and
captained the hockey team.

• Late in his senior year, Welch was accepted to University of Massachusetts Amherst, where
he studied chemical engineering. Welch worked in chemical engineering at Sunoco and
PPG Industries during his college summers. In his sophomore year, he became a member
of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity. Welch graduated in 1957 with a Bachelor of Science
degree in chemical engineering, turning down offers from several companies in order to
attend graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He graduated
from the University of Illinois, in 1960, with a masters and a PhD in chemical engineering.

• Welch joined General Electric in 1960. He worked as a junior chemical engineer in

Pittsfield, Massachusetts, at a salary of $10,500, which would be equivalent to
approximately $90,000 in 2018 dollars. In 1961, Welch planned to quit his job as junior
engineer because he was dissatisfied with the raise offered to him and was unhappy with
the bureaucracy he observed at GE.

• Welch was persuaded to remain at GE by Reuben Gutoff, an executive at the company,

who promised him that he would help create the small-company atmosphere Welch desired.
In 1963, an explosion at the factory which was under his management blew off the roof of
the facilities, and he was almost fired for that episode.

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• By 1968, Welch became the vice president and head of GE's plastics division, which at the
time was a $26 million operation for GE. Welch oversaw production as well as the
marketing for the GE-developed plastics Lexan and Noryl. Not long after, in 1971, Welch
also became the vice president of GE's metallurgical and chemical divisions. By 1973,
Welch was named the head of strategic planning for GE and he held that position until
1979, which involved him now working from the corporate headquarters, exposing him to
many of the "big fish" he would one day be among. Not long after his promotion to head
of strategic planning, Welch was named senior vice president and head of Consumer
Products and Services Division in 1977, a position he held until 1979 when he became the
vice chairman of GE.

• In 1981, Welch became GE's youngest chairman and CEO, succeeding Reginald H. Jones.
By 1982, Welch had dismantled much of the earlier management put together by Jones
with aggressive simplification and consolidation. One of his primary leadership directives
was that GE had to be No. 1 or No. 2 in the industries it participated in.

Six-Sigma, The GE Way:

• Throughout the company and in the public eye, Welch believed and promoted an ideal
whereby his company and other companies should either be number 1 or number 2 in
a particular industry or else leave it completely. In adopting Motorola’s Six Sigma
program for increasing productivity in manufacturing industries and other management
changes, Welch illustrated that the key to excelling in an industry relied on the value of
the people working for that company, but he had little patience with lacklustre
performance.

• Welch was given the nickname "Neutron Jack" for eliminating employees while leaving
the office buildings intact. Welch was known for making surprise visits to office
buildings and factories to check on his workers.

• He developed a “rank and yank” style of dealing with underperforming employees and
managers by making clear cuts from staff based on their rankings against other

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 employees and divisions. At the same time, Welch made movements to cut the fat from
what began as a nine level layer of management and to establish an air of informality
at the company as if it were a small company rather than an amalgamated corporation
as it became during his tenure and into the present day.

• In retirement, Welch continued to be active, as a writer and public speaker, penning a

memoir in 2005 called “Winning” which reached number one on the Wall Street Journal
and New York Times best-seller list. In 2016, Welch joined a business forum created
by then President-elect Donald Trump to provide strategic advice on issues of the
economy.

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 General Electric

• General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate incorporated

in New York City and headquartered in Boston. As of 2018, the company operates through
the following segments: aviation, healthcare, power, renewable energy, digital industry,
additive manufacturing, venture capital and finance and lighting.

• In 2018, GE ranked among the Fortune 500 as the 18th-largest firm in the U.S. by gross
revenue. In 2011, GE ranked among the Fortune 20 as the 14th-most profitable company
but has since very severely underperformed the market (by about 75%) as its profitability
collapsed. Two employees of GE—Irving Langmuir (1932) and Ivar Giaever (1973)—have
been awarded the Nobel Prize.

• Bill Lane joined GE as a speechwriter in 1980, and became the Manager, Executive
Communications for the Company, and Jack Welch’s speechwriter. In his book Jacked Up:
Inside Welch's Communication Revolution at GE, he tells stories from his experiences with
Jack Welch and other key players, with the candour that Welch prized above all.

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• The vanity of communications is about never – ever – allowing anything but your best face,
and that of your organization, to ever, ever, appear in front of your constituencies or your
employees or your mates.

• I fell prey to a typical attitudinal conceit, a root cause of presentation disasters: the belief
that what you think is so important is also considered to be so by the audience. The best
presentations I’ve done in my life are ones about which people I respected came up and
said: “It was great, but it was too short. I wanted to hear more.” All first draft presentations
are too long and should be cut. Second, third, and forth drafts should be cut further.

• Never, ever, make a presentation you do not feel is excellent—a home run. If you don’t
spring up to the podium because you can’t wait to do it, something is probably wrong.

• The domination or orchestration of company meetings may sound like the machinations of
a control freak, a meddler, an autocrat, or dictator. That is precisely what I am describing;
but it also the picture of a leader, and how a leader can capture ownership of his key
meetings and his organizational communications, virtually overnight. These meetings were
Jack’s megaphone, and everybody knew it. Do the people who attend your key meetings
know whose thoughts a views they are hearing?

• [Jack] would tune out, and write-off, people who made presentations that had an air of
“going through the motions” or “reporting” rather than passionately advocating some
course or other. Jacked Up by Bill Lane. He loved the latter even if he disagreed with the
course being suggested. Any presentation that does not give the people in the audience
something they can take out the door with them and use is a failure and a waste of their
time. The question always in your mind must not be, “Do I care about this?” But, “Will
they care about this?”; “Should they care about this?” Don’t walk out there and bore people.

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Jack shared the following about public speaking after his first
speech taught him many lessons –

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• “I’ll never forget my first speech. It was 1964 in Cooperstown, NY, and I was a 29-year-
old project manager at GE who’d been asked to present a new plastics venture to a group
of 300 high-level corporate types.

• Weeks beforehand, I meticulously wrote out every word I was going to say, and practiced
reading it out loud what felt like a thousand times.

• Regardless, my rank inexperience in front of a crowd, combined with my self-

consciousness about my lifelong stammer, made me a complete wreck, and without getting
specific, let’s just say I spent a lot of time "feeling ill" the day of the big event, which ended
up being, as you might imagine, an exercise in endurance for both me and the audience. I
stunk.

• Today, giving a speech or a presentation is one of the most fun things I do in life. I love it,
and having been out in front of more than one million people in audiences around the world
in the past fifteen years, I’d like to think I’ve come a long way toward getting it right.

• At the same time, I’ve come to believe a person’s skill in public speaking — be it in front
of a crowd of 1,000 strangers or a meeting with five close associates — is more essential
than ever. Making your case in writing is increasingly a thing of the past.

• You are what you say; your communication approach is your fingerprint, both professional
and personal. I believe this so deeply, in fact, that we now dedicate much of a semester to
effective presentations at the Jack Welch Management Institute.

• Now, hundreds of books and articles, if not more, have been written about the "art of public
speaking," so I know I’m not inventing gravity here. But from a very personal perspective,
allow me to share my three rules of success.

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1. Keep your message simple.

• Not simplistic, mind you. Not dumbed down, either. But simple, as in not over-complicated
and completely graspable. This imperative is only possible, incidentally, when you know
what you want to say and have a strong conviction about it.

• Listen, people get up on stage all the time and wander all around their message, trying not
to offend anyone, or trying to soften its impact to make it palpable to all viewpoints in the
room.

• Sometimes they try to bring the audience through the circuitous thinking they themselves
had to go through to get to their final point. And still other times, they bury their audience
in data, hoping the data will somehow translate itself, or at least make them look more
sophisticated. In all cases, the result is almost invariably befuddlement.

• The best speeches and presentations do not make the audience chase the message. They
have a strong central point, expressed in bold, clear, unambiguous language, with strong
supporting arguments that analyze and make sense of the data. Sure, at the end, given your
clarity, a few people may disagree with your conclusion. But that’s a lot better than leaving
most people confused.

2. Tell your audience something they don’t know.

• I’m always amazed when a manager comes into an executive or board presentation and
basically recites materials that all of us have already received by email. Likewise, I’ve seen
too many speeches to count where the person on the stage repeats a well-worn message and
the stories to go with it, or simply reads from his or her slides.

• Every time you speak before a crowd or a group, part of your job is to surprise and delight;
you have to give people nuggets of information that are new and interesting, and make them
smarter.

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• Now, this doesn’t happen without preparation. It doesn’t happen without you really asking
yourself beforehand, "What can I say that will give the audience some kind of context about
how all this stuff matters to the company and the industry and their lives?"

• Giving a speech is not about relating information or a point of view so that people go,
"Hmm," and move along. It’s about igniting exciting conversations that go on long after
you’re done talking.

3. Let your passion rip.

• I don’t get it, but there’s a popular strand of thinking that speakers gain credibility in front
of audiences by appearing pensive and logical, almost contained to the point of flatness,
like a 3-star general giving testimony before Congress.
• Obviously, I’m not completely opposed to those affects. No one takes a whirling dervish
seriously. But I’d make the case that you gain more than you lose when you unleash your
inner fire in front of an audience, and show them how much you believe and care about the
topic at hand.

• Today when I speak, it is always my most passionate lines that get the most engagement.
For instance, one of my most urgent messages to managers is that they have to get into the
skin of their employees; they need to understand their minds and hearts so they can excite
them about, and give purpose to, the work.

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• I feel this point so strongly, that once I blurted out, "If you’re a bore to the people who
work for you, go slap yourself!" It was a heat-of-the-moment kind of comment, coming
straight from my heart and gut, and I know that’s why it was the message people walked
away with.

• Frankly, a version of the same line could be said about public speaking as well. If you’re a
bore to your audience, go slap yourself! Because it’s entirely preventable. Don’t
overcomplicate your message, enlarge the brains of your listeners with context and insight,
and show ‘em how you really feel.

• Next thing you know, public speaking will be as fun for you as it is for the people listening,
with one big added bonus — a boost to your career trajectory.

• Jack is an energetic, intelligent speaker. He’s at his best responding to questions, and he
does so with real thoughtfulness and candor.

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• That said, he comes across as a bit of a bully with a nasal, harsh voice that grates on the ear
and a tendency to think his answers are more startling and original than they are. He’s a
real Yankee – the kind that says ‘chaaaarge’, not ‘charge’ and ‘staaaart’, not ‘start’.

• Jack is fine in small doses, and when he’s well focused. But he would pall over the longer
haul of an hour-long speech.

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 Speed, Simplicity, Self-Confidence: An Interview with Jack Welch

This meeting was led at Welch's office in Fairfield, Connecticut by Noel Tichy and Ram
Charan. Mr. Tichy was manager of GE's Management Education Operation from 1985 through
1987. He is a professor at the University of Michigan's School of Business Administration,
director of its Global Leadership Program, and coauthor of The Transformational Leader (John
Wiley and Sons, 1986). Mr. Charan is a Dallas-based expert who exhorts organizations in the
United States, Europe, and Asia on actualizing worldwide techniques.

LEARNINGS FROM THE INTERVIEW

• Jack welch prefers the term “business leader” Great business pioneers make a dream,
articulate the vision, enthusiastically claim the vision, and constantly drive it to fruition. To
the exclusion of everything else, however, great pioneers are open. They go up, down, and
around their association to contact individuals. They don't adhere to the built-up channels.
They're casual. They're candid with individuals. They make a religion out of being
available. They never get exhausted recounting to their story.

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• Genuine communication takes endless long periods of eyeball to eyeball, to and fro. It
implies more tuning in than talking. It's not declarations on a tape, it's not declarations in a
paper. It is individuals coming to see and acknowledge things through a consistent
intelligent procedure focused on agreement. What's more, it must be completely tenacious.
That is a genuine test for us. There's as yet insufficient authenticity right now.

• EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION: For an enormous association to be successful, it

must be basic. For a huge association to be basic, its kin must have fearlessness and
scholarly confidence. Shaky directors make multifaceted nature. Startled, apprehensive
directors utilize thick, tangled arranging books and occupied slides loaded up with all that
they've known since youth. Genuine pioneers needn't bother with mess. Individuals must
have the self-assurance all things considered, exact, to be certain that each individual in
their association—most elevated to least—comprehends what the business is attempting to
accomplish. Be that as it may, it is difficult. One can't accept how hard it is for individuals
to be straightforward, the amount they dread being basic. They stress that on the off chance
that they're straightforward, individuals will believe they're dim-witted. In all actuality,
obviously, it's simply the converse. Clear, intense disapproved of individuals are the most
basic.

• ABOUT DIVERSITY: Individuals are not lousy, period. Pioneers need to locate a
superior fit between their association's needs and their kin's abilities. Staff individuals,
whom he like to call singular givers, can be gigantic wellsprings of included an incentive
in an association. In any case, each staff individual needs to ask, How would he include
esteem? How would he assist make with peopling on the line increasingly viable and
progressively serious? Before, many staff capacities were driven by control as opposed to
including esteem. Staffs with that centre must be disposed of. They sap enthusiastic vitality
in the association. With respect to centre directors, they can be the fortress of the
association. Yet, their occupations must be reclassified. They need to consider them to be
as a blend of educator, team promoter, and saviour, not controller.

• POWER OF SMIPLICITY AND LOYALTY: In the same way as other huge

organizations in the United States, Europe, and Japan, GE has had a verifiable mental
agreement dependent on saw lifetime business. Individuals were infrequently expelled with

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 the exception of cause or serious business downturns, as in Aerospace after Vietnam. This
delivered a fatherly, primitive, fluffy sort of dependability. One invests his energy, difficult
work, and the organization dealt with him forever.

• That sort of faithfulness will in general centre individuals internal. Be that as it may, given
the present condition, individuals' passionate vitality must be cantered outward around a
serious existence where no business is a place of refuge for work except if it is winning in
the commercial centre. The mental agreement needs to change. Individuals at all levels
need to feel the hazard reward pressure.

• Welch's idea of faithfulness isn't "offering time" to some corporate substance and, thus,
being protected and shielded from the outside world. Unwaveringness is a partiality among
individuals who need to think about the outside world and win. Their own qualities, dreams,
and desire cause them to incline toward one another and toward an organization like GE
that gives them the assets and chances to thrive.

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 Learnings From Other Blogs And Interviews

• BE BOUNDARYLESS: For him, there ought to never be an explanation behind

extraordinary thoughts not to be shared to each individual from the association, regardless
of whether it is the chief or a typical worker. Thus, he went past customary capacities and
called attention to that thoughts ought to be looked, regardless of whether from different
organizations or the various offices in the association, and passed on to the group. He
accepted more in driving than overseeing.

• This administration style was first called "essentialness bend" and gained the expression
"rank and yank" after some time. During his initiative in GE, he remunerated directors who
had a place with the top 20% with higher pay and rewards while he let go the individuals
who were in the base 10%. This came about to a major decrease in the quantity of workers
in 1985.

• INFORMALITY IN OFFICE: Welch had faith in straightforwardness with regards to the

board. He was not an enthusiast of unpredictability and began a mark crusade to rearrange
things in the association. Confused letters and notices were dispensed with under his
administration. Much the same as Google and Facebook, he supported progressively
agreeable garments at the workplace, without ties. He additionally permitted
conceptualizing among officials and associates.

• KEEP THE BEST: At whatever point they obtained different organizations or

experienced mergers with different associations; he didn't have any hesitations to fire
workers who he believes are not required. He didn't show dithering to decrease the quantity

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 of representatives in light of the fact that for the corporate virtuoso, holding a couple
however great individuals in an association is significant.

• ELIMINATION OF BUREAUCRACY: The previous GE CEO was not an aficionado of

keeping exacting principles or procedures to complete work. For him, it is essential to chip
away at fundamental things. Not at all like a bureaucratic association which has levels with
regards to tending to issues, with issues being raised to the individual or division
dependable, a less proper practice permits individuals from the association speak with one
another.

• BE DOER AND REALISTIC: He urged his group to follow up on what is close by and
see the realities. For him, there is no space for suspicions yet for choices. He disposed of
organization and rather concocted techniques to achieve work quicker. Pundits guarantee
that this administration style drove a portion of his representatives to compromise with
regards to their employments.

• WELCOME CHANGE: Despite the fact that not all were steady of this viewpoint, Welch
rolled out radical improvements inside the association, which he accepts, was instrumental
to the accomplishment of the organization under his administration. He was not terrified to
sell organizations which he thought were not doing incredible. Additionally, he diminished
essential research.

• TAKE RISKS: While with GE, he had the option to secure RCA however didn't stop for
a second to sell its properties. He was likewise not hesitant to take the organization to the
following level by quitting any pretense of assembling and focusing on money related
administrations through obtaining of different organizations.

• PRIORITIZE VALUE OVER FIGURES: Jack Welch, obviously, had consistently been
firm in saying that individuals should work to make the business number one or possibly,
number two. Notwithstanding, he additionally accentuated the importance of keeping
clients cheerful being available to new thoughts and dispensing with organization. He was
more on these things than how a lot of cash was the organization making. Incidentally, this
initiative style added to making GE an assembling monster.

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• KEEP UP WITH COMPETITORS: He urged his office laborers to be on their toes
consistently and not be eased back somewhere near dynamic. What he needed was for
representatives to be speedy in settling on choices yet in addition be judicious. He
emphasized that it is a great idea to have transient plans yet it is ideal to design long haul
while one is occupied with things close by.
Jack Welch trusted in controlling one's fate. His administration procedures may be
excessively unforgiving and cold to pundits however his style worked. Viewed as a steady
head, Welch isn't one who discovers euphoria in being torpid. He showed others how its
done and lived by his standards, making him an exceptionally powerful figure in corporate
America.

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 Blog: Winning And Profitabilty

• Welch accepts that triumphant and being beneficial is an organization's main social duty.
He accepts that triumphant organizations can give the most back to society and have the
most joyful workers. In this way, given his fixation on winning, it should not shock anyone
that one of Welch's books is entitled Winning.

• Welch has been a heartless cost shaper. Toward the start of his CEO residency, Welch laid
off a large number of workers, which earned him the moniker Neutron Jack.One can
contend with his strategies, however one can't contend with the achievement he brought
GE.

• Welch emphasizes boundaryless behavior and constantly searching for better ideas.

• To be an innovative company, you can’t punish every risk. Welch says: “If you’re leading
a group and you got somebody taking a swing, you’ve got to make examples out of them.
Make them heroes for taking the swing.”

• Welch raises a model where GE sold a vitality productive light in the mid 80s for $10.99.
Obviously, it was certifiably not a major merchant. Welch says the item was before now is
the ideal time. It took ten years for the expenses to descend and the item to turn into a
triumph. In any case, GE remunerated the whole group (120-160 individuals) with new
TVs, an outing to Disney World for seven days, and open congrats. The organization
needed to show that it rewards hazard taking and development.

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• Welch believes that values really are just behaviors that set the principles for how a
company operates.

• Welch accepts that in an association, representatives can be separated into a presentation

separation. He accepts 20% are all-stars and A players, 70% are normal (and need to work
to get into the top 20%), and 10% should be effortlessly discharged from the organization.

• Welch accepts that there are four kinds of managers. The sorts spin around qualities and
responsibility, regardless of whether the dedication is budgetary execution or something
else:
1. The first kind of manager conveys on responsibilities and offers the estimations of the
organization. They are guardians.

2. The second kind of manager doesn't convey on duties and doesn't share the estimations
of the organization. They are no more.

3. The third kind of manager misses duties however shares the qualities. This sort is
progressively troublesome. You for the most part can allow them another opportunity
in another office or condition.

4. The fourth kind of manager conveys on duties yet doesn't share esteems. "This is the
person who regularly powers execution out of individuals instead of motivates it: the
czar, the big cheese, the dictator," Welch says. Welch accepts that these managers, in
spite of their presentation, despite everything should be expelled from the organization.

• According to Welch, the ideal leadership criteria is as follows:

1. Make a reasonable, basic, reality-based, client centered vision and [be] ready to impart
it clearly to all voting public.

2. Get responsibility and duty and be unequivocal… set and meet forceful targets…
consistently with enduring respectability.

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 3. Have the fearlessness to enable others and act in a boundaryless style… have faith in
and be resolved to Work-Out as a method for strengthening… be available to thoughts
from anyplace.

4. Have an energy for greatness abhor administration and all the drivel that accompanies
it.

5. Have, or have the ability to create, worldwide minds and worldwide affectability and
[be] open to building assorted worldwide groups.

6. Invigorate and relish change don't be alarmed or deadened by it. Consider change to
be opportunity, not only a danger.

7. Have tremendous vitality and the capacity to empower and strengthen others.
Comprehend speed as an upper hand and see the complete hierarchical advantages that
can be gotten from an emphasis on speed.

• HR is the main impetus behind what makes a triumphant group. One makes the contention
that the group that handle the best players wins. HR is associated with ensuring we field
the best players. That is their activity. Furthermore, their main responsibility is to sit in each
gathering, be engaged with all aspects of the business condition. They are not the wellbeing
and bliss, picnics, benefits group. They're the advancement group, building up the present
and tomorrow's pioneers. In the event that one has an association where HR is consigned
to structures and advantages, he got an inappropriate game moving.

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