Former GE CEO Jeff Immelt explains why the operational playbooks developed under Jack Welch translated effectively to private equity rather than modern product-driven companies.
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“You know, if you look at the basic GE toolkit that I grew up with, it was almost the perfect match for private equity where
You took a company, you had five years to turn it around. You didn't have to make big bets on products and technology. And so I think to a certain extent, some of the people who left GE did best in private equity versus going to run other companies.”
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More from Jeff Immelt
Opinion
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Immelt: Washington Mutual's collapse was worse for 2008 than Lehman's
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AssertionNot checkable as stated
Immelt: GE suffered in 2008 from aggregate size, not toxic assets
“Think about the financial crisis, what did we get wrong? We were too big in aggregate size. It wasn't that we were, we had a lot of toxic assets. It wasn't that we're redlining risk and things like that. We were too big.”
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Immelt: US and Canadian manufacturing costs now equal Mexico and China
“My hunch is you could go through product after product and making it in Canada or the U S is probably just about the same as making it in Mexico or China today.”
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PredictionNot checkable as stated
Immelt: Next-generation leaders must maintain manufacturing jobs where they sell
“If I sell in the US, I better have a certain amount of jobs in the US. If I sell in Germany, same thing. If I sell in China, same thing. And my generation didn't have to think that way, but the next generation is going to have to think that way.”
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Disclosure
Immelt admits he helped cause GE's rock bottom during the 2008 crisis
“During the financial crisis, We were at rock bottom, and I helped cause that, and my board knew that, but my team was always with me.”
Jeff ImmeltJul 27, 2021▶ 44:00#116 Jeff Immelt: Leadership In A Crisis
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