Jeff Immelt gives his side of the GE story

Good morning.

The collapse of GE is one of the most spectacular business stories of our times. At the turn of the century, it was the most valuable company in the world, and its leader—Jack Welch—was dubbed “Manager of the Century” by Coins2Day. Today, the company is a shadow of that. And investors lost hundreds of billions of dollars on the ride down.

So why, if you served as CEO for 17 of those sad 21 years, would you write a book about it? That’s the question Ellen McGirt and I ask Jeff Immelt on this week’s episode of Leadership Next. I won’t give away his answer here, but it is worth listening to (on Apple or Spotify). And for that matter, the book is worth reading. Immelt has always been a good storyteller. And while most business memoirs tell the story of success, Immelt’s Hot Seat is the rare tale of what went wrong.

Immelt admits some mistakes. He believes, for instance, he should have moved more quickly to address the problems at GE Capital. He wishes he had restructured his company to be more nimble. “Instead of eight big P&Ls, I wish we had 100 small P&Ls.” He rejects some of the common criticisms—for instance, the notion he was unwilling to take bad news from his team. “For 15 years, I heard nothing but bad news.” He also pushes some of the blame back onto his predecessor, forward onto his successor, and aside on a few former colleagues along the way. 

But the real lessons of the book are the downsides of complexity—GE was such a behemoth, that he never really got his arms around it—and the unpredictable role of luck. “I never viewed myself as a victim and I never wanted Hot Seat to be a victim story,” he told us. “But to do what we needed to get done, I couldn’t have the global financial crisis.  It was a torpedo right in the middle of the boat…. GE is a fun company to run when you have tailwinds. It was a bitch to run” in a financial crisis.

More news below. And check out this essay by Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and Ford Foundation President Darren Walker on what business can do to help bring the pandemic to an end.

Alan Murray
@alansmurray
[email protected]

TOP NEWS

Facebook in Australia

Facebook has reversed (for now) its ban on Australians sharing news, after meeting with the government about the imminent law that will force online giants to pay news publishers for displaying fragments of their articles. The government has agreed to give the platforms more time to negotiate with publishers before calling in the arbitrators. Meanwhile, Microsoft has teamed up with EU media groups to call for similar rules to be introduced there. Coins2Day

Bitcoin tumble

The price of one bitcoin fell as "low" (in the context of the last couple weeks) as $45,750 this morning, as the cryptocurrency continued a slide that was originally sparked by Elon Musk hinting at its overvaluation. The latest drop, however, may have also been the result of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying bitcoin is an "extremely inefficient" way to conduct monetary transactions. CNBC

Tesla tumble

Tesla's share price fell more than 12% since the start of the week. The drop seems to be partly down to bitcoin's slide, as Tesla recently invested bigtime in the cryptocurrency. But it may also have something to do with Musk confirming that Tesla's Model Y Standard Range SUV is no longer on the company's online configurator. Either way, Musk lost $15.2 billion, and Jeff Bezos is once more the world's richest person. Coins2Day

Neumann settlement

WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann is reportedly close to a settlement with SoftBank that would see the Japanese conglomerate buying out the shares of early WeWork investors and employees for $1.5 billion-ish. That's about half what was originally agreed, and Neumann would only get half of the nearly-$1 billion that he was previously in line for. Wall Street Journal

AROUND THE WATER COOLER

Bear necessities

With many indicators now flashing, Wall Street analysts are increasingly expecting a meaningful market decline. As Ally Invest's Lindsey Bell put it: "The bears are getting louder." However, many also warn against panicking. Bell again: "Any sort of pullback would most likely be a buy-on-the-dip type of opportunity." Coins2Day

Jay-Z and LVMH

Jay-Z's Armand de Brignac "Ace of Spades" champagne brand is now half-owned by LVMH's Moet Hennessy. Financial terms have not been disclosed, but the rapper apparently has connections with Alexandre Arnault, the son of LVMH founder Bernard Arnault. Coins2Day

Xinjiang cotton

The Washington Post has an interesting piece on how the fashion industry's supply chain was instantly splintered by the U.S.'s blacklisting of Chinese cotton that is picked and processed in Xinjiang province, in some cases by Uighur Muslims who have no other choice. Most Chinese cotton comes from the province and it is difficult to know for sure if a batch of the stuff does not contain Xinjiang cotton, so Western brands have suddenly shied away. WaPo

Spyware danger

Civil liberties activists often say it's dangerous for even friendly spy agencies to develop and use cyber weapons, and here's why. According to cybersecurity firm Checkpoint, recently-discovered Chinese cyber tools known as Jiang are in fact copies of U.S. Weapons. And what's more, their development preceded the notorious "Shadow Brokers" leak of NSA spy tools a few years ago (an event that led to the massive WannaCry attack). Which means the NSA has repeatedly lost control of its own malware. Reuters

This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.