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Ge's Two Decade Transformation: Jack Welch's Leadership

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GE’s Two Decade Transformation:
Jack Welch’s Leadership

1.

Jack Welch was hired to take on the role as the CEO at General Electric (GE) and responsible for rebuilding the organization. Jack was faced with several obstacles prior to taking on this position at GE. One obstacle was that prior to his assignment a powerful leader had a great impact on reorganizing GE’s business strategy. Another obstacle was that several companies were moving towards globalization and GE now had to compete in this market. Therefore, Welch had to react rather quickly before foreign companies replaced GE or any other company. The last challenge was that during 1981, the economic markets were experiencing a recession. Welch’s vision of reconstructing GE was that it became the most competitive, diversified, branded and profitable company in the near future. He suggested an effective strategy to help the company by fixing, selling or closing it. Therefore, he chose to make changes to the business strategy by doing away old culture and adapting effective new ways. First, he began by restructuring the company’s current departmental managers. These managers had to agree and commit to doing away with the old GE culture and accepting new ways. Second impact was that the company’s revenues increased by 9 billion dollars from 1981 through 1986 (Exhibit 1). However, GE’s operating earnings increased from 0 in 1981 to $36 billion in 1986 drastically during the same period (Exhibit 1). Therefore, the new strategy was already effective and improving GE’s economy. It was then the time for GE to enter the global markets while remaining profitable.
In order for Welch to compete in the global markets he knew that GE would have to become a diversified company in order to remain competitive. There were several factors that were significant prior to globalizing GE. The primary goal was to allow

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