Jack Welch is a renowned personality in the business world because of his leadership strategies and innovative management style. Welch turned the fate of the General Electric (GE) into a dynamic growth company during his 20 years of leadership at GE.
Welch was born in Massachusetts, USA in 1935. His father was a Boston & Maine Railroad conductor. Welch is a Chemical Engineering graduate from the University of Massachusetts and then received his M.S. and PhD degrees (as a Chemical Engineer) at the University of Illinois.
In the year 1960 after finishing his degree Welch joined General Electric as a Chemical engineer. Later he moved up the ranks to become vice president of GE in 1972, senior vice president in 1977 and vice chairman in 1979 and finally he became GE’s youngest chairman and CEO in 1981 succeeding Reginald H. Jones. In 1982, Welch changed much of the earlier management put together by Jones and came up with innovative strategies.
GE saw great growth and expanded dramatically from 1981 to 2001 under Jack Welch’s leadership. The major changes include streamlining operations, acquiring new businesses, expanding the broadness of the stock options program, adopting Motorola’s Six Sigma quality program in late 1995, destroying the nine-layer management hierarchy and bringing a sense of informality to the company and many more to increase the market capital drastically.
He wanted to ensure that each business in GE should be the best in its field. Many business leaders imitated his leadership style and management skills. During his 20 years tenure GE is named for its constant change. In making business decisions he became hard, ruthless and fired managers who are resistant to change and replaced them with someone who could change. Company had huge revenues in his reign and gained the reputation of most valuable and largest company in the world.
Jack Welch is an exceptional manager with his innovative ideas and leadership strategies. The fortune magazine named him as “manager of the century” in 1999. After retiring from GE in 2001 he has written a best selling book “Jack, Straight from the Gut.”