The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘YOU CARRY YOUR WEIGHT’
Jack Welch leaves imprint on state, corporate America
In recollecting the legacy of legendary General Electric boss Jack Welch, the company’s current CEO reflected on his most recent visit with the man who many regard among the most influential business leaders in history.
“When I last saw him, what I remember most vividly was when he asked me, ‘So how exactly are you running the company?’ ” GE CEO Larry Culp Jr. reflected on Monday, in a statement forwarded by GE. “Jack was still in it — committed to GE’s success. And to have Jack Welch ask me how I am running GE is pretty humbling.”
Welch died Sunday of renal failure at 84, with his imprint on America’s corporate corridors reflected in tributes flooding websites and social media on Monday.
Leading GE during its heyday as a Fairfield-based conglomerate, Welch received the nickname “Neutron Jack” for a zealous drive — ruthless in the eyes of some — to vaporize jobs in the interest of building shareholder value.
Welch not only bolstered the stature of the American
CEO and the size of General Electric — to more than $130 billion a year in sales — he helped make Fairfield County a financial powerhouse. Under his tenure, GE Capital became one of the half-dozen largest entities in the U.S. financial industry with assets of more than $500 billion, with its loans reaching into aviation, energy, real estate and consumer finance among other areas. GE Capital generated half or more of GE’s total profits, with much of the business managed from offices in Norwalk, Stamford and Danbury, unlike GE’s other divisions, which had the bulk of operations located elsewhere.
“He created thousands of jobs for our state and showed the value of a leader willing to make tough choices and to stick with them,” said Bob Stefanowski, a former GE Capital executive who ran for Connecticut governor in 2018.
Welch’s vision influenced numerous executives, such that in 1999 Fortune magazine awarded him the title of manager of the century for shaping how a new generation of corporate boards viewed shaping the value of their enterprises, “in a time of hidebound, formulaic thinking” in Fortune’s words.
During the Welch era, GE squared off each year with Microsoft as the world’s most valuable company, with Fortune crediting him with recognizing the leaps by Japan and Germany in honing the quality of their manufacturing output while controlling costs, and positioning GE to catch up.
“Welch was hardly the first person to see the new world coming. His great achievement is that having seen it, he faced up to the huge, painful changes it demanded, and made them faster and more emphatically than anyone else in business,” Fortune wrote. “He led managers into this new world, which we still inhabit, and just as important, he showed business people everywhere a method of attacking change of any kind.”
In an interview last year posted by Strayer University, an online program that runs the Jack Welch Management Institute, Welch reflected on his philosophies, both leading the company with a timeline dating back to Thomas Edison and ideas Welch has been building on since.
“This game we’re in is all about self confidence,” Welch said. “And not arrogance — you gotta fight arrogance — but confidence to try things new, to do things that you wouldn’t have [dreamed].
“Luck plays a big part in all of this, you get the right bounce or the wrong bounce and you don’t make out,” he added. “But I think it’s all about confidence. You go into new situations, and you carry your weight.”
Outside the norm
Welch had a major influence on another educational institution, providing Sacred Heart University’s business school with an endowment that prompted the Fairfield school to rename it the Welch College of Business & Technology.
“Not only did he contribute to student scholarships, he also committed to regular visits here to share his advice and guidance with students — a commitment he lived up to,” stated John Petillo, president of Sacred Heart, as quoted in a statement forwarded by a spokesperson.
Dan Haar contributed to this report.