Lights Out
Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric
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Lights Out
Narrated by:
James Edward Thomas
Buy Now for ₹2,337.00
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Narrated by:
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James Edward Thomas
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Written by:
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Thomas Gryta
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Ted Mann
About this listen
"If you’re in any kind of leadership role—whether at a company, a non-profit, or somewhere else—there’s a lot you can learn here."—Bill Gates, Gates Notes
How could General Electric—perhaps America’s most iconic corporation—suffer such a swift and sudden fall from grace?
This is the definitive history of General Electric’s epic decline, as told by the two Wall Street Journal reporters who covered its fall.
Since its founding in 1892, GE has been more than just a corporation. For generations, it was job security, a solidly safe investment, and an elite business education for top managers.
GE electrified America, powering everything from lightbulbs to turbines, and became fully integrated into the American societal mindset as few companies ever had. And after two decades of leadership under legendary CEO Jack Welch, GE entered the twenty-first century as America’s most valuable corporation. Yet, fewer than two decades later, the GE of old was gone.
Lights Out examines how Welch’s handpicked successor, Jeff Immelt, tried to fix flaws in Welch’s profit machine, while stumbling headlong into mistakes of his own. In the end, GE’s traditional win-at-all-costs driven culture seemed to lose its direction, which ultimately caused the company’s decline on both a personal and organizational scale. Lights Out details how one of America’s all-time great companies has been reduced to a cautionary tale for our times.
Some memorable quotes and learning's I remind myself always,
"Chairman Jeff Immelt's success would be seen as his predecessor's, while the failure would be all his doing,...... in a job on which he never slowed down for 16 years."
"GE represented more than it made. It represented a capitalistic meritocracy. A locus of not just success but a virtue of targets made and goals surpassed....."
"The will to meet a target could supersede the math, even though the livelihood of millions hung in the balance."
I am left with the thought: does the business environment which breeds the same organizational culture elsewhere has no blame to share? Was it only the fault of the company?
A book written with conviction
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