Who is the greatest American CEO of the last decade? Jack Welch, who retired as GE’s (NYSE:GE) chief in 2001. He held his job at the head of the world’s largest conglomerate for 20 years. During that time, GE’s stock rose from roughly $1.30 to $40. Revenue at the company moved from $27 billion to $130 billion over the same period.
In 1999, Fortune named Welch its “Manager of the Century”
Welch did a number of things at GE that made him the public face of American business, not just in the US but overseas. He certainly became the most well-known and most admired CEO of his generation.
While at GE he:
*Made popular the idea of cutting costs through layoffs and basing employment on strict measurements of worker performance. He favored firing employees who rated at the low end of the evaluation scale.
*Adopted the Motorola “Six Sigma” method of tracking manufacturing quality.
*Pressed the philosophy that if GE could not be N0.1 or No.2 worldwide in any business that it owned, that operation should be closed or divested.
*Put shareholder value ahead of GE jobs and the company’s role as a corporate citizen within the broader economy and community.
*Trained a generation of corporate managers that were so admired that many went on to run other large international corporations with mixed results.
*Took the torch from Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca as the major public presence promoting the excellence of American business, corporate innovation, and high management standards.
*Helped champion huge pay packages for successful heads of large American companies.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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