Sonnenfeld, the school’s associate dean for leadership studies, named computer-assisted design and computer-assisted manufacturing, among other ventures, as diversions. “They got into the internet, the computer business, it made no sense,” he said. The executive suite of General Electric’s Connecticut headquarters was known as “carpet land”. Persian rugs and dense wool carpet covered every floor, creating an atmosphere of hushed probity. For almost a century, GE had stamped its curling blue logo on just about everything, from wind turbines to submarine detectors, fridges, televisions, toasters and lightbulbs. The office was a monument to the baronial power of its CEO. Jeff Immelt, the final chief to occupy this floor, enjoyed the use of a shoeshine station, a pantry and dining room. His two assistants also had their own private bathroom. When Immelt travelled by private jet, as he often did, a second, empty jet would often trail behind him in case of mechanical failures on the first plane. GE Capital, which comprises most finance-related items, including specialty insurance, as well as financing for airplanes, energy equipment or consumer appliances Probably a bit of all of these issues are at play but the story is a complex one and it is hard to pinpoint the time when the world appears to have passed GE by.

At times, it was a bit hard for me, as a former CEO, to read such harsh criticism of fellow leaders, including people I know and like. But I got a lot out of reading this book. Gryta and Mann gave me the detailed insight I was looking for into the culture, decisions, and accounting that eventually caught up to GE in a gigantic way. It’s true that CEOs need to have buy-in and loyalty from their team. Sitting in the executive chair watching riots break out around the table isn’t exactly good leadership. But Welch was reportedly much better at walking that tightrope of leadership and tolerating dissent than Immelt, and that could be seen in his results and decision-making. In 1957, GE supplied power to nearly 120,000 customers from the world's first commercial nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. Cordiner’s system worked when it came to meeting goals. Unfortunately, it also incentivized meeting goals however you could do it, no matter the ethics preached at the top. In the resulting pressure cooker environment, corruption took hold and managers with a strong sense of ethics sometimes had to find somewhere else to work.The day after the breakup news, longtime GE watcher Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management told CNBC — a former GE business — that the “strategic pile of businesses” GE got into in recent years “weren’t doing anything except diverting management time and attention.” In 2007, he published The Last Tycoons The Secret History of Lazard Frères Co., about Lazard Frères. It won the 2007 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. Author Cohan straddles both camps: he sees the built-in problems Immelt inherited while blaming Immelt equally for very poor decision making. General Electric, whose innovations range from X-ray machines and fluorescent lamps to television broadcasting, on Tuesday announced its plans to split into three public companies. On Nov.9, Culp brings GE's conglomerate era to an end with a plan to split it into three public companies that would focus on energy, healthcare and aviation.

General Electric. " A Shared Vision: GE and Alstom Continue Their Common History With Latest Acquisition." With GE announcing a breakup on Tuesday into three separate, publicly traded companies, after years of retrenching and selling off businesses, Grewal spoke with me about the end of a great American enterprise and what it was like to lead technology teams at the core of the most respected multi-industry conglomerate in history for 25 years. Welch was never satisfied with carrying “dogs”. They all had to be champions. And he used the phony profits from the financial industry to manipulate Wall Street. There are no business cycles in this paradigm, and maybe this is why GE missed the Internet Revolution. In a masterful re-appraisal of a company that once claimed to “bring good things to life,” pre-eminent financial journalist William D. Cohan argues that the incredible story of GE’s rise and fall is not only a paragon, but also a prism through which we can better understand American capitalism. Beginning with its founding, innovations, and exponential growth through acquisitions and mergers, Cohan plumbs the depths of GE’s storied management culture, its pioneering doctrine of shareholder value, and its seemingly hidden blind spots, to reveal that GE wasn’t immune from the hubris and avoidable mistakes suffered by many other corporations.The last chapters was about the CEO John Flannery, and his short tenure before being replaced by the present CEO Larry Culp. What I hadn’t realised was that John Flannery was pushed out by activist shareholders, bought in by Jeff Immelt to provide expertise to the board. Also, the plan to break GE apart was originally put forward by Flannery, but did not gain the support of the board to push it through. The present CEO, Larry Culp was basically placed as CEO by a shareholders and board putsch as the person most likely to realise shareholder value, something he has so far totally failed to do. In October 2018, Culp took his first step https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ge-results-idUSKCN1N41BJ in reviving the conglomerate as it slashed its dividend to a penny from 12 cents to preserve cash. In its early and peak stages, General Electric valued careful financial management that enabled it to survive and grow early on. Contrary to my expectations, I really enjoyed reading Power Failure. Despite its length, it is not a difficult read and the story that it weaves is, at least as far as sagas about the corporate world can be, fascinating. One thing that may surprise many American readers is unlike in the US, where GE is almost a national champion and represents the US capitalist might, in Europe it does not have the same respect or authority. If you ask someone in the street about GE in Europe, most would not of heard about it or even care. However, in the USA, Cohan charts the rise of a company that pretty well had fingers in every possible industry, from lighting to appliances, from credit cards to banks, from plastics to media and from jet engines to power generation.