GEs Jeff Immelt:

The voyage from MBA to CEO

Jeff Immelts leadership approach
and style
Employee-oriented and charismatic style of leadership is synonymous to Jeff Immelt
1.Leverage human capital for growth: Believing in power of people
2.Employee deployment: Knack for Identifying peoples (Greg Lucier / Dow Wilson) real talent and
deploy them at the right place at the right time
3.Leadership by motivation: Engage and energize people around you even though they are not your
direct reporting line
4.Create new business platform for growth that require infusion of human capital over physical capital
5.Innovation-focused: Drove growth by fostering innovation
6.Customer centric

Factors contributing to Jeffs
leadership style
1.Mentorship at the right stages throughout his career
2.Exposure to tough and complicated business challenges like Appliances service business
3.Independence to take decisions yet being monitored closely
4.Drew insights from mistakes: Never to repeat them
Assessment of the various steps taken by Jeff Immelt on
assuming the leadership role of GE
1.Growth in tough times: His customer-centric approach helped GE link its image with customers and
investors ensuring growth even in tough times
2.Technological leadership: Identification of Innovation as key driver for future growth
3.Sustainable growth: Investment in mergers and acquisitions and emerging economies established
vision for the company to sustain leadership in a globalized world
Identification of domain expertise for change and successful implementation of strategy
4.Employee satisfaction: Focus on people management and development for excellence in execution in
line with his people centric philosophy of management
5.Employee growth: Hands-on development of leadership amongst employees led to development of
new leaders
Learnings
1.Recognition of human capital management as the backbone of modern businesses
2.Encouragement of employee development to drive inclusive growth
3.Empowerment of employees to take decisions and risks, thereby driving leadership amongst employee
cadres
4.Encouragement and development of expertise in functions and domains to drive Technological leadership
5.Importance of cultivating performance around teams, rather than stars
6.Importance of driving Values and Culture at an organizational level