The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 8 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Immelt: GE's classic management toolkit was best suited for private equity
“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…”
Immelt: Listing 45 risk factors means a company effectively has none
“If you pick up a, an annual report for any company or a 10 K or 10 Q, they'll have 45 risk factors, right? If you have 45 risk factors, you really have none. I would much rather see a company list. Here are the three biggest risk factors and make the CEO, not …”
Immelt: CEOs who dismiss investors inevitably face activists and play defense
“Every time you say that, look, I don't care what the investors think, and then you don't own the company and an activist investor shows up, you end up backpedaling on all the things you said, like, I don't care what investors think. And you end up spending, yo…”
Immelt: Generalist managers struggle to succeed today without deep technical expertise
“And I think that there is a role for generalists, but it's harder to be successful in the world today, unless you're kind of deep domain, particularly technically”
Immelt: In leadership, timing when to act is harder than execution
“Actually, knowing what to do isn't that hard. Knowing how to do it isn't that hard. Knowing when to do it is really hard.”
Immelt: Canceling meetings in a crisis induces panic across large companies
“The second you start canceling meetings, particularly in a big company, you worry 300,000 people. You say to them, man, we aren't, you know, we are really in trouble.”
Immelt: Indecision is a worse failure mode than making wrong decisions
“I think in a crisis, maybe the time we live in today, maybe it's always been true, but I actually think it's a bigger mode of failure when people don't know, won't make a decision than when they make decisions and some of them are wrong. I weigh those two unev…”
Immelt: Amazon is complex but not complicated; Walmart is simple not simplistic
“There's a difference between being complex and being complicated. And there's a difference between being simple and simplistic. You know, I would say Amazon is complex, but it's not complicated. It's a software company, right? They have certain things they sta…”