GE Part II

Red Queen Podcast

We are back for part two of the GE story. In the first episode, we covered GE as a company that effectively embraced research and invention within a broader organization.

In this episode, we're going to talk about everyone's favorite or least favorite topic: Capital M Management.

How did GE develop a practice of management that was copied by every CEO at the time? Why did companies like Honeywell, Boeing, 3M, ABB, Medtronic, Home Depot, Twilio, and almost Uber, come to GE for their CEOs? And what was GE doing to provide endless fodder for 30 Rock jokes?

How did Jack Welch grow GE into a ~$450B company? And how–and why–did GE become one of the worst-performing stocks on the Dow Jones under Jeff Immelt?

Have we already witnessed the beginning of the end for GE? Or are we about to witness a corporate phoenix rise again?

We’ll take you through 50 years of modern GE history and share our takeaways from studying GE’s most iconic leaders and their biggest strategic bets.

(2:18) Jack Welch: The Management Era

(33:19) GE Capital

(43:35) Jeff Immelt: Bad or Unlucky?

(1:06:45) Larry Culp: GE’s first outsider CEO

(1:12:46) Operator Playbook: what tactics will we borrow from GE?

(1:17:21) The Future of GE?