Jack Welch is called a great manager for several reasons. However, the most important are self-confidence, trust in people and a willingness to do more than you are asked to do. He started his career from the lowest position at General Electric, and went up to the highest.
When he became CEO of General Electric, everyone said that it was impossible to change such a whopper and it was useless to make any transformations in it. This means that you should not invest money in its shares. However, Welch made it so that the value of his company's shares rose fortyfold in the twenty years that he was an executive.
Biography
Jack Welch was born in 1935 in Peabody, Massachusetts. His family was friendly and close-knit, and this gave the boy confidence that everything in his life would be fine. Since childhood, he stuttered slightly, but did not pay attention to it. Instead of being embarrassed, Jack became a strong, athletic and successful student.
After graduating from high school, he graduated from the University of Massachusetts and then completed his doctorate at the University of Illinois.
In 1960, he began working as a junior engineer at General Electric. And the first lesson that the young specialist learned here is that you have to do more than you are asked, then you will be noticed.
Even then, the ambitious young man was not going to sit in a lower position. His goal was constant growth and career advancement.
His job was to present his ideas to senior researchers, and they already approved them or not. Then Jack forged relationships with all the elders, and also entered into the trust of CEO Ruben Gutoff. Here his “do more than asked” strategy came in handy, and he began to be celebrated among other young employees.
Once Welch got tired of this fuss, and he decided to quit. Then he saw that his strategy was working: he was offered a raise and a promotion.
In 1963, he learned a life-changing lesson from senior executive Charlie Reed. At the chemical plant there was an explosion due to Welch's fault, and he went to Reed "on the carpet" with a shaking heart. Instead of swearing, he heard something completely different: the leader calmly asked him to tell what conclusions he made after the explosion and how to avoid such disasters in the future.
This situation gave Jack even more confidence in his abilities, and also made him a loyal employee of GE. Since then, he began to quickly climb the career ladder, using connections, persuasion, requests and other means. However, this one was not only for personal gain: he saw that a lot could be changed for the better in the company, and he knew how to do it. He was eager to make GE more modern and less bureaucratic.
While climbing the career ladder, he developed his own management style: mercilessly firing those who did not meet his requirements, and forcing him to work hard and paying generously to those who suited him as a specialist.
In 1971, Welch became the heads of the chemical and metallurgical department of the company, and in 1981, its CEO. So in twenty years he passed twenty-nine structural steps of the career ladder - this is an unprecedented result.
Personal life
In Jack Welch's personal life, everything was also stormy: he lived with his first wife for twenty-eight years, they have four children. Subsequently, he became the husband of two more women: he lived with Jane Beasley for four years, and he still lives with the writer Susie Wetlaufer, they became co-authors of several books.
