Holding Jack resonsible for his actions....
Jack Welsh is 100 percent responsible for the demise of GE. The divisions he sold, GE HVAC, GE Small Appliances, Elano Products (supplied stainless tubing for GE Locomotives0 and eventually GE Plastics to name just a few, were all successful, and all profitable.
Jack Welsh publicly stated his goal was to get GE "out of manufacturing" and make it a "service" company. That is why he sold divisions to get the money to buy his financial service and insurance companies.
GE Finance was his obsession and put most of his efforts into it. Never mind the fact that GE's infrastructure and experience for over a hundred years had been electrical manufacturing.
That is why he ordered the words "General Electric" to be taken off of most of GE's products with only the logo "GE" to appear....to disassociate GE with electricity and electrical products in the public's eye. He dictated the corporate name be changed from "General Electric" to "The GE Company."
His reason for the division he first sold, HVAC, as he told in his autobiography was, "I didn't like HVAC." GE held the lion's share of residential HVAC and a very large percentage of the commercial HVAC market as well.
No Jack did not use analysis teams to decide when and which divisions were to be sold off. Jack would never stood to to others advice He did did what he wanted. He wanted cash to purchase banks and insurance companies. The first thing he did upon purchasing RCA, was to terminate it as a company and sell off it's individual components. Then he licensed out the RCA name to anyone who wanted to pay to use it. At that time he purchased NBC/Universal and GE became the operator of the Universal Theme Park in Orlando Florida. The creator and builder of nuclear reactors, jet engines and steam power turbines was now running roller coasters at an amusement park.
No Welsh, was a man who was trying to make a company into his own image. He grew up as a boy who was picked-on because of his severe stuttering and his small physical stature. Many of those who worked under him described his as having "short man's syndrome." An intense drive to build his ego.
If someone disagreed with Jack, he would often get enraged. After the yelling, if his raged continued to build, he reverted back to his childhood stuttering and had to force out each word one by one.
If you, as an underling, provoked this rage in Jack, the next day you often found GE Security guards at your side as you emptied your desk, and then escorted you out the front door.
Don't attribute any sense of loyalty for GE to Jack. He was there to make a company in his own image and show other CEO's he was a force to be reckoned with. He wanted to prove he was in the big leagues too.
He even changed the GE logo, in the early nineties, to the italicized block letter GE logo you saw on top of the GE corporate tower. I am sure that built his ego even more, now that he got rid of 100 year old logo and replaced it by one that Jack personally made himself.
Public outcry at the loss of the beloved 100+ year old GE logo forced Welsh, in one of his extremely rare reversals, to reinstated the old GE logo. He refused to take it off the GE Tower, though. No doubt each night he looked up at his electrically lit, self-designed giant GE logo lighting the sky and his ego burst with pride.
I tell you the personal things about Welsh so you can understand his behavior and most of all, his motivations.
GE was a rock solid company. It could weather virtually any storm. Even during the Great Depression, GE was one of the only companies to continue to pay dividends.
It had short cycle profit industries such as small appliances. Profits were smaller, but the time from production to profits was measured in days and weeks. Even in times of economic hardships there are weddings, birthdays, Christmas and people buy gifts as well as appliances for their home use.
Even in times of economic crisis people have to heat their homes (GE HVAC), they have to eat (GE stoves, GE refrigerators), they still have dirty clothes (GE washers, dryers, irons)
GE locomotives and power generation were long cycle profit divisions. Profits cycles times may run months to years, but they brought in huge profits. Even in times of economic downturn, the U.S> still needs electricity, we still needed X-ray units, we still needed aircraft engines, and train engines. People still get sick and people still need transportation regardless of the economy. GE had them covered both ways.
Ge's short cycle profit industries leveled out the profit curve in between the arrival of the profits for the GE long cycle industries. A perfect balance. Jack took away those industries.
GE built generators and they built appliances and industrial equipment to utilize the power that they themselves created. How many companies create a demand for their own product? GE did and it served them well for over 100 years.
GE could weather any storm, and did. Until Jack Welsh destroyed GE. When you cut off too many limbs, a tree will die. Jack Welsh cut off most of GE's manufacturing limbs and tried to graft onto the GE tree, banking and insurance limbs.
You can't graft apple tree limbs onto a Magnolia tree. You can't rebuild a company from the ground up and destroy all its present infrastructure and over 100 years of operating expertise.
No, I am no picking on Jack Welsh. I am holding his responsible for his actions. Whether I or anyone else has sentimental value for GE is an irrelevant point.
GE is dying and Jack Welsh is the cause. GE weathered every storm, WWI, WWII, the Great Depression, but the one thing it couldn't weather was Jack Welsh. The man who destroyed it from the inside out.[this post was last edited: 11/24/2021-19:35]