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Speaker 1: This is Mesters in Business with very Renaults on Bluebird Radio.

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Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.

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Speaker 1: His name is Jeff Immelt and he is the former

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Speaker 1: chief executive officer of General Electric, one of America's biggest

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Speaker 1: and best known companies. I was really impressed not only

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Speaker 1: with his book Hot Seat, but with our conversation. He's

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Speaker 1: absolutely fourth right. He takes complete ownership of the errors

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Speaker 1: that were made at General Electric. I mean, by and

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Speaker 1: large they got more right than wrong. And to be blunt,

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Speaker 1: I think he inherited a mess from Jack Welsh, who

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Speaker 1: I've described as the most overrated CEO in history. There

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Speaker 1: was an accounting scandal lurking there. Uh Jack paid himself

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Speaker 1: an obscene amount of money, a four hundred and sixty

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Speaker 1: million dollar seven paths package and just you know, manipulating earnings,

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Speaker 1: pulling a magic penny out of g capital. And I

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Speaker 1: gave himilt every opportunity of the throw well show under

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Speaker 1: the bus, and he refused to. In fact, he could

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Speaker 1: not have been more generous to his predecessor, who um

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Speaker 1: not only gave him a company with a ticking time

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Speaker 1: bomb in it um, but a big conglomerate industrial company

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Speaker 1: with a fifty pe how is it not inevitable that

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Speaker 1: ge stock price was going to come back to earth

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Speaker 1: a fifteen or is reasonable for a industrial conglomerate, not fifty,

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Speaker 1: And so the stock performance was more or less, you know,

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Speaker 1: out of his hands. He is super knowledgeable, really just

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Speaker 1: a tremendous guy. Under different circumstances. I think his reputation

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Speaker 1: as a CEO and a leader would be up there

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Speaker 1: amongst the best in the world. But because of the

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Speaker 1: situation he stepped into. Literally his first day of work

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Speaker 1: was September tenth, two thousand and one, and he tells

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Speaker 1: him fascinating stories about it. I found the book to

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Speaker 1: be really interesting, totally transparent, very honest, and very educational.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot to learn from his experiences and uh,

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Speaker 1: just really a fascinating person with an incredible work history

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Speaker 1: and and just a lot to share. Uh. He now

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Speaker 1: is teaching at Stanford Business School and his adventure partner

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Speaker 1: at one of the larger venture capital funds. So, with

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Speaker 1: no further ado, my conversation with former g E CEO

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Speaker 1: Jeff Emilt, this is Mesters in Business with very renults

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Speaker 1: on Bluebird Radio, my extra special guest this week is

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Speaker 1: Jeff Emilt. He joined General Electric in n in the plastics,

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Speaker 1: appliances and healthcare division. He eventually led Gees Medical system

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Speaker 1: Dam's division from nine seven to two thousand, rising to

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Speaker 1: the role of CEO, where he led General Electric from

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Speaker 1: two thousand and one to two thousand and seventeen. His

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Speaker 1: new book is Hot Seat, What I Learned Leading a

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Speaker 1: Great American Company. Jeff Emmilt's welcome to Bloomberg. Hey, Barry, Thanks,

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Speaker 1: It's great to be here. So tell us a bit

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Speaker 1: about your path to becoming the CEO of one of

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Speaker 1: America's crown jewels. Your dad was an employee at ge,

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Speaker 1: wasn't he, Yeah, Berry, I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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Speaker 1: My dad was a career kind of manufacturing guy in

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Speaker 1: our aviation business. So I kind of grew up in

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Speaker 1: the shadow of the company, if you will. Um, I

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Speaker 1: you know, went away to school and uh and went

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Speaker 1: to a business school and I graduated in two And

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Speaker 1: it wasn't necessarily that my father had worked there. But

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Speaker 1: what I thought I'd do is go someplace where I

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Speaker 1: can learn to be a man for you know, kind

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Speaker 1: of learned what general management was like. G had a

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Speaker 1: great reputation. So I went to work in two in

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Speaker 1: the plastics business. I thought i'd stay five years, and

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Speaker 1: I ended up staying thirty five years. So you know,

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Speaker 1: I would say careers are based on performance and luck,

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Speaker 1: and my career had both of those. I started in

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Speaker 1: the plastics business really commercially, selling in Detroit and in

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Speaker 1: the western half of the US, and that was really

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Speaker 1: interesting and fun. I learned so much by selling two

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Speaker 1: big companies like General Motors and Ford, which at that

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Speaker 1: time we're kind of the giants of American industry, and

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Speaker 1: they were really a challenge. And then I had my

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Speaker 1: first real break when I was in my early thirties.

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Speaker 1: I was moved to our appliance business to run the

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Speaker 1: service business during a major act recall, and so I

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Speaker 1: was at a very high profile job at a very

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Speaker 1: young age. That was extremely difficult. I had lots of

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Speaker 1: exposure to Jack Walsh early in his UH CEO tenure,

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Speaker 1: and you know, I think getting noticed at an early

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Speaker 1: age is actually, you know, one of the things that

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Speaker 1: helps people push them along in their career. I later

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Speaker 1: went back to the plastics business, and then right before

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Speaker 1: I became CEO, went to our healthcare business, and that

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Speaker 1: was just a perfect fit. It was relatively small business,

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Speaker 1: but it was very technical, very global. It played to

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Speaker 1: a lot of my strengths, and that was the platform

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Speaker 1: that ultimately I moved from to become CEO of the

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Speaker 1: company in two one. So before we moved to your

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Speaker 1: tenure as CEO, I have to ask when you started

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Speaker 1: the medical systems division was relatively small, but that eventually

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Speaker 1: became a pretty substantial growth driver. Tell us a little

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Speaker 1: a bit about the general electric medical systems division you ran, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So you know, I went there again. I had been

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Speaker 1: really in the appliances and plastics, and I went there

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Speaker 1: in I remember I had been there for about two

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Speaker 1: months and I was talking to Jack on the phone

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Speaker 1: and I said, you know, Jack, this is a huge industry.

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Speaker 1: You know, trillions of dollars. Uh. It seems to me

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Speaker 1: like we've got a pretty good footprint. A lot of

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Speaker 1: people respect us, but our business as a peanut, it's

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Speaker 1: three billion dollars. You know. We we need to be

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Speaker 1: more adventurous, we need to be uh, taking more risks.

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Speaker 1: And I think he it just resonated with him. It

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Speaker 1: was kind of the right comment at the right time,

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Speaker 1: and he became quite encouraging right right after that to

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Speaker 1: both do acquisitions but also to help grow globally and

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Speaker 1: invest in organic growth and technology. So, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: to your point, and so that from three billion became

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Speaker 1: a one billion dollar business by the time I retired,

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Speaker 1: and you know, yep, today it's still you know, there's

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Speaker 1: plenty of opportunities in healthcare. So it played to my strength.

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Speaker 1: I would say in my career, I was a good

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Speaker 1: product manager. I was good at you know, kind of

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Speaker 1: marketing and sales. I knew how to strategically think my

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Speaker 1: way through a business problem, and all of those things

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Speaker 1: kind of came to the forefront when I was in

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Speaker 1: gee healthcare business. So you become CEO. Your first day

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Speaker 1: on the job is September two thousand and one. Tell

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Speaker 1: us about your second day on the job. What was

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Speaker 1: that like? Yeah, so, you know what, you have to

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Speaker 1: kind of understand the era a little bit. You know,

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Speaker 1: the nineties, we're just a moment of tranquility, the U.

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Speaker 1: S economy, the economy was growing, the US was the

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Speaker 1: dominant player in the world. The world was at peace,

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Speaker 1: and so that was kind of the let's say, the

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Speaker 1: environment which I grew my career, at least the last

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Speaker 1: part of my group before it became CEO. And so

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Speaker 1: September eleventh happened, and it was just a horrible tragedy,

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Speaker 1: and to a certain extent, even though we didn't know

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Speaker 1: it at the time, it really marked a change in

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Speaker 1: the world, right it It marked to change in globalization,

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Speaker 1: how companies were viewed, what tail risk was. So there's

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Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff that actually happened. But from a

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Speaker 1: practical standpoint, you know, here I was. I had run

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Speaker 1: let's say, seven billion dollar healthcare business, and all of

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Speaker 1: a sudden, I'm running a hundred whatever billion dollar conglomerate.

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Speaker 1: And a day into my job, I had to start

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Speaker 1: making decisions. There was no honeymoon, there was no prep time.

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Speaker 1: I had to start making important decisions like do we

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Speaker 1: land airlines money? What do we do we restructure our

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Speaker 1: aviation business, how should we think about insurance? And I'm

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Speaker 1: doing that in real time in the first, second, third,

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Speaker 1: fourth week on the job. I had to communicate now

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Speaker 1: to several hundred thousand people who kind of looked in

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Speaker 1: horror at what was going on in New York City.

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Speaker 1: I had to employees that died tragically in the in

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Speaker 1: the event, so you know, kind of there was just

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Speaker 1: no warm up and no prep to get ready for

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Speaker 1: making billion dollar decisions late at night that you had

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Speaker 1: to be made under pressure. And you know, I just

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Speaker 1: grew up quite quickly, and that and that in that context,

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Speaker 1: like like most crises do you know, it's um you

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Speaker 1: just don't have a chance. You know, it's kind of

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Speaker 1: like life gets lived forward, not backward. And so I

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Speaker 1: was experiencing that in real time that I had the

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Speaker 1: kind of you know, there was no way to kind

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Speaker 1: of say, Okay, I'm gonna sit this one out. You

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Speaker 1: were just living life as it as it came at you.

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Speaker 1: So I like the way you use the chapter structure,

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Speaker 1: the titles of each chapter to go into a deep

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Speaker 1: dive about all sorts of broad topics in leadership. And

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Speaker 1: one of your chapters is leaders Persevere in a crisis.

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Speaker 1: Give us a little details about how you persevered. Let's

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Speaker 1: start with September eleven, and then we could go on

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Speaker 1: to what you learned about crisis management at Fukushima. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so I think very maybe we'll take three of them.

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Speaker 1: Let's take nine eleven um, and then let's take the

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Speaker 1: global financial crisis and will take Fukushima because I had

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Speaker 1: all of those, let's say between two thousand and one

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Speaker 1: and two thousand eleven. I think in the in the

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Speaker 1: in nine eleven, you know what you learned is is

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Speaker 1: really two things. I would say one was that during

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Speaker 1: a crisis, you have to hold two truths. And one

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Speaker 1: is that the worst thing that you know can happen.

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Speaker 1: And the other thing is that you shouldn't give up

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Speaker 1: hope that a better future is out there once you

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Speaker 1: make it to the other side. So we had to

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Speaker 1: restructure our commercial aviation business because clearly airlines are gonna

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Speaker 1: be traveling less. But in two thousand and two, Alan Malally,

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Speaker 1: who isn't gooing at the time, he launched the idea

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Speaker 1: of the Dreamliner, which was a revolutionary new aircraft that

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Speaker 1: was going to take a billion dollars to make the engine,

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Speaker 1: and we won that that that order in that commitment,

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Speaker 1: So we made a billion dollar decision at the absolute

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Speaker 1: worst time in the history of the industry. And so

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Speaker 1: you need to hold two truths at the same time.

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Speaker 1: I think the other one is just the need for communication.

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Speaker 1: I think so much changed around nine eleven, and what

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Speaker 1: you really find is that, uh, in a crisis, you

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Speaker 1: have to be willing to talk about what you know

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Speaker 1: and what you don't know, and people just want to

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Speaker 1: hear your voice. So those were the two things I

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Speaker 1: learned during the financial crisis. The financial crisis, I think

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Speaker 1: just if you're in financial services, probably the three months

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Speaker 1: after Layman Brothers went bankrupt, there's just no describing how

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Speaker 1: every day brought a new challenge, every day brought fear,

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Speaker 1: and it was just you just really had to be

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Speaker 1: on your toes, you know, kind of twenty four hours

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Speaker 1: a day. And what I learned in that crisis was

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Speaker 1: that you needed to have contingencies. You needed to have

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Speaker 1: like I'm gonna try this one day, I'm gonna do

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Speaker 1: something else the next day doesn't work, and so you

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Speaker 1: just had to take wave after wave of contingencies. You

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Speaker 1: learned that leaders have to absorb fear. I mean, one

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Speaker 1: of the things that unique about g and Times that

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Speaker 1: were half our company was in financial services, but the

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Speaker 1: other half was doing fine. It was in healthcare and

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Speaker 1: aviation and a whole series of different businesses. So you know,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't coming on me not to allow anything that

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Speaker 1: was going on in financial services to spill over into

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Speaker 1: the other parts of of the company. So you really

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Speaker 1: learned that you have to stay flexible and you have

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Speaker 1: to absorb fear. And then when I moved to Fukushima,

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Speaker 1: you know when I learned in Fukushima is the importance

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Speaker 1: of risk management. So Fukushima was a It was a

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Speaker 1: tsunami in Japan and it impacted seven nuclear reactors forward

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Speaker 1: Ge that were installed in the nineteen sixties and early

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. And I was in Australia when it happened.

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Speaker 1: I was traveling, and I had my assistant send me

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Speaker 1: the contract that was from the nineteen sixties that we

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Speaker 1: had signed with the with TEPCO, who is the big

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Speaker 1: Japanese utility, just to kind of read what it said

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Speaker 1: and and meet, you know, what our liabilities might be

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Speaker 1: and things like that. And I was so impressed by

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Speaker 1: the work that our lawyers and engineers had done in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties to envision all kinds of natural disasters

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Speaker 1: and all kinds of contingencies. And you know, I would say,

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Speaker 1: unlike the other terrorist events, in the case of Fukushima,

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Speaker 1: that just was a very robust risk manager process and

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Speaker 1: even foresaw a horrible natural disaster like the one in Fukushima.

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Speaker 1: So every crisis is different. I think a little bit

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Speaker 1: about COVID today and what's similar and what's different. But

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Speaker 1: I think the things that are always true are the

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Speaker 1: leaders necessity to absorb fear, to hold two truths, to

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Speaker 1: make timely decisions, and to be a good communicator even

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Speaker 1: if what you're communicating is you don't know so And

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Speaker 1: as one of your chapters is titled, leaders also have

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Speaker 1: to maintain optimism. Yeah, I think again it's there's a

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Speaker 1: lot that gets written today about it's better to be

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Speaker 1: a pessimist than an optimist. But I think I think

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Speaker 1: you always have to understand that what you know, you

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Speaker 1: have to lead people through the toughest times, but you

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Speaker 1: need to show them what the future could look like

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Speaker 1: if you if you really work well together. Yeah. There's

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Speaker 1: a wonderful book about quote, The Triumph of the Optimists,

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Speaker 1: that just explain why the pessimistic perspective in the twentieth

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Speaker 1: century was really the wrong side of the trade. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Before we leave your career and start delving more into

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Speaker 1: general electric I have to just ask a couple of

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Speaker 1: questions about what you're doing post g E. How do

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Speaker 1: you enjoy teaching at Stanford. Yeah, so I teach a

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Speaker 1: class at Stanford on what we assistants leadership, but it's

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Speaker 1: really leading through disruption. And I'd say I always wanted

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Speaker 1: this will be my fourth year. I always wanted to

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Speaker 1: kind of try my hand at teaching. By the way,

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Speaker 1: it's a lot harder than I ever thought it was

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Speaker 1: going to be. But I think students, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: they're so smart today. They keep you young. They're very

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Speaker 1: hungry for not just the theoretical but the practical experience.

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Speaker 1: And I think one of the things that you know

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Speaker 1: when you're when you're a business school student, you think

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Speaker 1: you know it all. And one of the things that

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Speaker 1: that I always hearkened back to them is, look, every

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Speaker 1: job looks easy to you're the one doing it right.

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Speaker 1: You may have read a case and you think the

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Speaker 1: CEO is a dumpy, but someday you're going to be

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Speaker 1: that dummy. Right, Someday you're gonna be in those shoes

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Speaker 1: and you're gonna have to make the decisions and you

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Speaker 1: can't judge them, and someone working some won't. And so

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Speaker 1: your ability to persevere through that kind of criticism is

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Speaker 1: really key to who you are and what you'll do.

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Speaker 1: And then I also do venture capital. I always wanted

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Speaker 1: to work when I retired with small companies, with innovators,

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Speaker 1: with founders, mainly in healthcare, but a little bit in

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Speaker 1: techt I have to say, between the teaching and my

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Speaker 1: venture work, I really like it. I really enjoy it.

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Speaker 1: I think it's a way for me to stay fresh,

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Speaker 1: but it's also a way for me to get back

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Speaker 1: two leaders of the future and hopefully help them through

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Speaker 1: their through their journey. So you're a venture partner at

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Speaker 1: New Enterprise Associates, which is one of the larger venture

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Speaker 1: shops out in California. How different is it thinking about

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Speaker 1: companies that are tiny really at the conception with the

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Speaker 1: potential of of changing the paradigm, versus running behemoth conglomerate.

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Speaker 1: You know, that's a really great question. In some ways,

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Speaker 1: it's extremely different, right because you know it, e we

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Speaker 1: just had massive scale and massive diversity, and and when

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Speaker 1: you're in a startup, you're small and you really focus

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Speaker 1: on one thing. I mean, most startups so narrow and deep,

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Speaker 1: and that's what makes them successful and then they begin

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Speaker 1: to grow. So on one hand that those are very different.

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Speaker 1: On the other hand, whether you're going from ten employees

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Speaker 1: to a hundred or a hundred to a thousand. Learning

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Speaker 1: to scale is an important trade. There's an important skill

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Speaker 1: and something that every startup has to do, and that's

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Speaker 1: something that I can be very helpful with. You know,

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Speaker 1: how do you how do you hire first line managers?

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Speaker 1: How do you put in performance systems? What does a

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Speaker 1: good human resource leader look like? Those are a lot

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Speaker 1: of the questions that many of the founders I work

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Speaker 1: with are asking, and I can be extremely helpful in

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Speaker 1: that regard. So, you know, what, what you're trying to

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Speaker 1: do when you're in a role like mine is find

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Speaker 1: what is most useful but the company you're working with

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Speaker 1: and play that role. I guarantee there's something I can

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Speaker 1: be helped with on every company. But there's some things

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Speaker 1: that my skill set doesn't play as much for and

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Speaker 1: I don't try to overdo it. I try to just

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Speaker 1: find my niche and play it as well as I can.

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Speaker 1: Quite interesting, let's talk a little bit about some of

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Speaker 1: the challenges of running such a big company. What was

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Speaker 1: it like managing three hundred thousand employees? Well, I think

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Speaker 1: that you know, you've got to think about several things

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Speaker 1: when you manage its size. You know, one is you've

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Speaker 1: got to divide the company up into what I would

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Speaker 1: call both vertical and horizontal cohorts. Right, So in the

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Speaker 1: case of a conglomerate, you've got many different businesses and

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Speaker 1: ultimately from most of the people in the company, the

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Speaker 1: business is who they identify with. So that's that's what

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Speaker 1: I call a vertical group. You have to create a

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Speaker 1: hor as on a network. So you basically look at

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Speaker 1: you know, kind of officers of the company or senior

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Speaker 1: vps or business leaders, and you want them to be

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Speaker 1: part of a collective whole. You want them to drive

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Speaker 1: common initiatives. You want them to be accountable for each

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Speaker 1: other in terms of in terms of mission and metrics

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Speaker 1: and things like that. You've got to instrument the company

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Speaker 1: in a way that you know whether you're doing well

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Speaker 1: or doing poorly. So some metrics are important. And lastly,

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Speaker 1: you know very you know, if you if you go

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Speaker 1: through change, there's probably two or three or four initiatives

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Speaker 1: that you want to embrace across the company because your

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Speaker 1: unique scale can really drive substantial change. Right. So so

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Speaker 1: it's it's really about communication, It's about creating good cohorts.

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Speaker 1: It's about metrics, and it's about one or two were

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Speaker 1: three really good initiatives that can leverage your scale. But

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Speaker 1: you work it every day because the you know, size

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Speaker 1: can be an awesome advantage, it also could be a

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Speaker 1: huge disadvantage, and you're always teetering right between making an

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Speaker 1: advantage and letting it be a disadvantage. Interesting, So, becoming

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Speaker 1: um public is less and less popular these days than

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Speaker 1: it used to be. How do you balance the various

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Speaker 1: constituencies between your employees, your customers, your shareholders, and your

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Speaker 1: board of directors. That seems like a lot of balls

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Speaker 1: to keep in the air while at once, Yeah, look

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Speaker 1: it's this is you know, I've heard this question asked,

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Speaker 1: you know, in many different ways, over many different eras,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's still you know, the answers change over time.

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Speaker 1: They're never totally satisfying. But that's part of the paradox

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Speaker 1: of running a public company. So I would say, you know,

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Speaker 1: the answer is that investors own the company and unless

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Speaker 1: you're you're doing something that that is aligned with them, um,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna get in trouble. Right, So, so there there

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Speaker 1: is a sense that if you're a public company investors

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Speaker 1: have a huge say increasingly, and particularly when I compare

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Speaker 1: with let's say two thousand one, the intersection between companies

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Speaker 1: and society has in government has never been greater than

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Speaker 1: it is today. Right, Government is a big actor in

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Speaker 1: every industry and that's not going to change. So so

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Speaker 1: investors are key. Government and society hugely important today versus

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Speaker 1: the past. And then you know, having led through a

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Speaker 1: couple of three or four crises, in a crisis, the

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Speaker 1: people that matter most of your employee, you know, some

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Speaker 1: other words like like when you're when you're taking incoming

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Speaker 1: every day. The only way to get out of a problem,

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Speaker 1: The only way to get out of a mess is

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Speaker 1: if your team is aligned and if you can help

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Speaker 1: bring them with your help them, you know, have them

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Speaker 1: help you solve the problem. So it's complicated. Uh, it's

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Speaker 1: more complicated to be honest with you today than it

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Speaker 1: was twenty years ago. But there's never going to be

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Speaker 1: a nice, simple, easy answer to your question. So in

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Speaker 1: the book, I I found your criticism of the under

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Speaker 1: investment at GE for the decades that preceded your tenure

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Speaker 1: was pretty legitimate, considering this is the company founded by

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Speaker 1: Thomas Edison, how much under investment in R and D

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Speaker 1: took place at General Electric prior to your tenure, and

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Speaker 1: what were the ramifications of that under investment. Yeah, so,

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Speaker 1: you know, I I took over for a really good

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Speaker 1: CEO who was extremely well known and who was I

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Speaker 1: would say in the in the decade of the nineties.

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Speaker 1: You know, it was really kind of leveraging that decade

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Speaker 1: where I would say financial services and management practices were valued,

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Speaker 1: and what most general managers worked on were those two things.

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Speaker 1: And so when we got to the end of the

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Speaker 1: nine nineties, GE was a company that had let's say,

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Speaker 1: a relatively stale industrial portfolio, a very vibrant and fast

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Speaker 1: growth financial services set of businesses, and a market multiple

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Speaker 1: that exceeded a tech company. So we were just imbalanced. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't that our industrial businesses all had

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Speaker 1: high market share, but they weren't necessarily technical leaders. And

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Speaker 1: we had not been in testing as robustly in in

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Speaker 1: R and D and innovation as we should have. And

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Speaker 1: you know, if you looked at let's say, you know,

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Speaker 1: the top uh D fifty people in the company that

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Speaker 1: are called vice presidents or officers, only three were engineering leaders. Right,

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Speaker 1: So if you think about the size of GE, and

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Speaker 1: that's kind of symbolic of what was valued in terms

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Speaker 1: of the organization and the functions. You know, that's kind

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Speaker 1: of where we were in two thousands. So we had

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Speaker 1: a strong balance sheet, We had many good things. We

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Speaker 1: just we just hadn't spent enough time thinking about how

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Speaker 1: to be an innovator in the twenty one century. Interesting.

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Speaker 1: I love the story early in the book of You,

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Speaker 1: after you've been named as the incoming CEO, but before

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Speaker 1: you actually start the job. Out golfing with some college

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Speaker 1: buddies and you're getting dressed in the locker room and

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Speaker 1: some random person comes up to you. You start chatting

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Speaker 1: and uh, you're wearing something with a GE logo, and

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Speaker 1: he says to you, um, well, at least you're not

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Speaker 1: that poor bactor to ask to follow Jack Welsh, it was.

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Speaker 1: It was a funny story. So I'm in the locker

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Speaker 1: room and I just met him, and I would ask

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Speaker 1: him for directions and he says, well, what do you do?

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Speaker 1: I said, I said, I'm playing with some friends, but

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Speaker 1: I work at g And he said, gee, huh, Well,

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Speaker 1: I feel sorry for that poor son of it that's

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Speaker 1: gonna follow Jack. So I went out to the first

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Speaker 1: team and we just spent the day laughing. But you know,

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Speaker 1: when you replace the famous guy, you're always going to

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Speaker 1: have a certain you know, you know, kind of a

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Speaker 1: complicated path. And I would say, you know, the main

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Speaker 1: difference barriers just that the era of the two thousand's

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Speaker 1: were just so different in the air of the nineties.

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Speaker 1: The company had to change, no doubt about that. And

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Speaker 1: Jack Welch certainly was a tough act to follow. What

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Speaker 1: specific challenges did you encounter after he left the CEO

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Speaker 1: and did he set you up to succeed? Oh? Gosh,

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Speaker 1: I think um. I think the challenges were to reframe

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Speaker 1: the company's portfolio and rejuvenate the industrial businesses, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: for the century, and so I think that was kind

431
00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:40,840
Speaker 1: of job number one. Job number two was to maintain

432
00:27:41,119 --> 00:27:45,040
Speaker 1: sustain as many of the key leaders inside the company

433
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:47,840
Speaker 1: as as we could. There's always going to be a

434
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:50,960
Speaker 1: moment of time when people have a certain comfort with

435
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:53,400
Speaker 1: how one CEO did it, and they're gonna they're gonna

436
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,520
Speaker 1: kind of wait and see are they on the new

437
00:27:56,600 --> 00:28:01,280
Speaker 1: guys team? And then I'd say the third thing was

438
00:28:01,800 --> 00:28:06,280
Speaker 1: to find a way to bring our investors with us.

439
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:08,760
Speaker 1: One of the things that you know, Jack and I

440
00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 1: did a few transition meetings with investors while he was

441
00:28:13,200 --> 00:28:17,440
Speaker 1: still chairman and I was coming in, and I just

442
00:28:17,640 --> 00:28:21,840
Speaker 1: felt like investors didn't really understand the company. He just

443
00:28:22,119 --> 00:28:28,680
Speaker 1: had such command, such charisma, such presence. Um, there just

444
00:28:29,040 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of questioning and depth. And uh, you know,

445
00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:34,639
Speaker 1: when you're the new guy, you're not going to be

446
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:37,720
Speaker 1: accorded the same level of trust, if you will. So

447
00:28:38,360 --> 00:28:41,160
Speaker 1: I said, those are the three challenges that faced me

448
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:44,080
Speaker 1: taking over the company. You know, the good part is

449
00:28:44,120 --> 00:28:45,880
Speaker 1: we had a we had a strong balance sheet for sure,

450
00:28:46,920 --> 00:28:50,400
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, we had we had good leaders,

451
00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 1: even though those leaders were going to have to change

452
00:28:55,120 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 1: for what I felt like the company was going to

453
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:02,280
Speaker 1: face in the twenty one century. Interesting, some people have

454
00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:07,320
Speaker 1: called him the best CEO in America. What are some

455
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: of the more important lessons you learned from Jack? Yeah?

456
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:14,920
Speaker 1: So when I so when in the year two thousand,

457
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:18,520
Speaker 1: Jack was named the best manager by Fortune of the

458
00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:24,840
Speaker 1: previous century. So that's a pretty tall shadow. Um, I'd

459
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:30,360
Speaker 1: see what Jack did better than anybody I've seen before

460
00:29:30,400 --> 00:29:34,440
Speaker 1: or after which he knew to me. He really knew

461
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:37,840
Speaker 1: how to manage scale. He knew how to manage at size,

462
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:44,920
Speaker 1: and he was incredibly skilled at that. So he created

463
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: an aura. So let's say, in a company of three people,

464
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:52,440
Speaker 1: everybody thought they worked for Jack. Everybody felt like you

465
00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 1: could intersect in their world any at any moment of

466
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 1: the day. He was a great communicator. He knew how

467
00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 1: to communicate to hundreds of thousands of people, to a

468
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:10,960
Speaker 1: thousand people, to five people, to twenty people, to one person,

469
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:16,400
Speaker 1: and almost every size. He knew how to communicate. He

470
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:19,640
Speaker 1: built horizontal cohorts Bury what I talked about earlier. Of

471
00:30:20,200 --> 00:30:23,960
Speaker 1: he knew how to kind of segment organizations and and

472
00:30:24,240 --> 00:30:28,080
Speaker 1: and how to motivate different groups of people. He did

473
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:31,760
Speaker 1: a great job of creating the right kind of instrumentation,

474
00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 1: the right kind of metrics that drove a good behavior.

475
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: He prioritized. And the last thing is he and this

476
00:30:40,800 --> 00:30:43,000
Speaker 1: is going to sound funny today, but I think he

477
00:30:43,160 --> 00:30:47,240
Speaker 1: was the first manager of his era. They really understood

478
00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:51,840
Speaker 1: the power of people. He treated human resource leaders with respect.

479
00:30:52,760 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 1: He spent a lot of time on people. You know,

480
00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:58,320
Speaker 1: if you go back in the let's say seventies, eighties,

481
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:02,960
Speaker 1: and even nineties, most of the human resource professionals had

482
00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:06,520
Speaker 1: come out of union relations. Based on where the US

483
00:31:06,760 --> 00:31:10,719
Speaker 1: was at that moment in time, he kind of recognized

484
00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:13,800
Speaker 1: it was all about the professional workforce, and he spent

485
00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:16,800
Speaker 1: a lot of time in that. So I really think

486
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: I've never seen a CEO before after that could manage

487
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:24,440
Speaker 1: its size the way Jack could. He was just awesome

488
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 1: at test. So you inherited a bunch of taking time

489
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:34,560
Speaker 1: bombs um, whether it was the accounting scandal or the

490
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:37,960
Speaker 1: message ee capital. You could have very easily in the

491
00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:41,240
Speaker 1: book thrown well shown to the bus, but you chose

492
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:45,000
Speaker 1: not to. In fact, you were very very generous to

493
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:48,480
Speaker 1: Jack in the book. Tell us about your thought process.

494
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:51,920
Speaker 1: A lot of the headaches you were dealing with you

495
00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:55,080
Speaker 1: inherited from him, you know. So period we think about

496
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:59,120
Speaker 1: the book is, you know, kind of for twenty years,

497
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 1: I've more or less kept my mouth shut, and and

498
00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 1: I generally felt like the reason to do that was

499
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:12,480
Speaker 1: that nobody at GE would benefit by me squabbling with

500
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 1: Jack Um. What I try to do in this book

501
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:20,640
Speaker 1: was be truthful to what was to talk about h

502
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 1: the things I learned from the things I loved being

503
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:28,480
Speaker 1: around him for. But some of the places where the

504
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: company had blind spots that needed to be fixed, like

505
00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 1: the ones we talked about earlier, was uh, you know,

506
00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:42,120
Speaker 1: kind of lack of investment in technology, lack of globalization, Uh,

507
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:47,040
Speaker 1: not a good track record on diversity, you know, things

508
00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:50,320
Speaker 1: like that, right as it as it pertains to where

509
00:32:50,400 --> 00:32:54,000
Speaker 1: G was. So I wanted the book to be, you know,

510
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:56,080
Speaker 1: kind of an accurate perception of what it felt like

511
00:32:56,200 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 1: to follow a guy who is a really great leader,

512
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:03,840
Speaker 1: but in a time that was very different. And that's um,

513
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 1: that's really what I tried to do. And and again

514
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:12,200
Speaker 1: I loved working for the guy, but he was a complicated.

515
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:14,960
Speaker 1: He was a complicated leader to follow. He was a

516
00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:18,880
Speaker 1: great leader to work for, you know, and maybe your listeners,

517
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:23,840
Speaker 1: maybe your listeners in their own workplace, you know, I

518
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:26,840
Speaker 1: have had similar experiences where sometimes people are great to

519
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 1: be a colleague with, are great to learn from, but

520
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:32,200
Speaker 1: they're not as much fun to follow. And that was

521
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:35,760
Speaker 1: kind of the the experience I have with Jack. Interesting.

522
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 1: When you were in the healthcare division, you identified what

523
00:33:39,480 --> 00:33:43,680
Speaker 1: you thought could be a really significant acquisition accu Son,

524
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:49,719
Speaker 1: which Jack passed on, saying, oh, cal it's in California.

525
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:52,920
Speaker 1: The people out there are crazy. Siemens ended up buying

526
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:56,440
Speaker 1: it and it was hugely successful for them. Was this

527
00:33:56,560 --> 00:34:00,000
Speaker 1: a case of a little political bias clouding his judge

528
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 1: what was around some of those missed opportunities? So so

529
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:09,600
Speaker 1: the book that Jack wrote and the expression he used

530
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:13,600
Speaker 1: while he was CEO is control your destiny, right, control

531
00:34:13,640 --> 00:34:18,239
Speaker 1: your destiny? And I think his feeling about kind of

532
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:23,759
Speaker 1: the entrepreneurial systems in California was that you could never

533
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:27,880
Speaker 1: control them, right. And this was kind of a nineties

534
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:32,000
Speaker 1: perspective you see here today. If you're a CEO of

535
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:34,960
Speaker 1: any kind of company, you really recognize you can't control

536
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:38,600
Speaker 1: much of anything and that and that what you really

537
00:34:38,640 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 1: need to be talking about is you know, what are

538
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:43,959
Speaker 1: the right investments, what are the right risks to take?

539
00:34:44,800 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: How do you grab the future? You know, those kinds

540
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:51,480
Speaker 1: of things are more operational than than controlling your destiny.

541
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 1: So I remember the discussion that he and I had.

542
00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:58,400
Speaker 1: This was a very early two thousand and I was

543
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 1: in the g boardroom pitching this deal and I thought

544
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:04,640
Speaker 1: I had it done, and he said, you can't do

545
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:08,400
Speaker 1: it because it's in California. And I just looked across

546
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:11,239
Speaker 1: the table and said, you gotta be Kidney. Really this

547
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:14,239
Speaker 1: is really like California is part of the world. I

548
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:17,200
Speaker 1: think that's an important part of the world. But you know,

549
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:20,160
Speaker 1: that's just I think in some ways it's a generational difference.

550
00:35:20,200 --> 00:35:24,399
Speaker 1: It certainly was a philosophical difference. Yeah, to say, say

551
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 1: the least. I think in the nineties, California, if it

552
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 1: was its own country, would have been the eighth largest

553
00:35:30,640 --> 00:35:32,920
Speaker 1: economy in the world something like that. I just think

554
00:35:32,920 --> 00:35:35,759
Speaker 1: if everything that's happened since then, you know, this is

555
00:35:35,840 --> 00:35:39,879
Speaker 1: only more true, not less true. So in the book

556
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:44,319
Speaker 1: you you mentioned the infamous G E. Chase plain tell

557
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:48,200
Speaker 1: us about that. There were always rumors and stories about it. Um,

558
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:52,800
Speaker 1: what what was that about? Oh gosh, you know that

559
00:35:54,000 --> 00:35:57,239
Speaker 1: this was something that was put in place by security.

560
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:00,600
Speaker 1: It was really you know, for particularly for will travel,

561
00:36:01,520 --> 00:36:05,960
Speaker 1: it was really a bad practice. Um. You know, to

562
00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:08,840
Speaker 1: be honest, I never spent one minute talking to the

563
00:36:09,120 --> 00:36:12,520
Speaker 1: people that ran our corporate travel, you know, a corporate

564
00:36:12,560 --> 00:36:16,560
Speaker 1: air group. I should have, but you know, it's it's

565
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:19,000
Speaker 1: you know, there's no way to explain it other than

566
00:36:19,080 --> 00:36:21,400
Speaker 1: say it was a bad practice, and I wish we

567
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:25,239
Speaker 1: hadn't done it. Chapter eleven you right, leaders are accountable,

568
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:30,440
Speaker 1: and again, given the problems and g capital, given some

569
00:36:30,560 --> 00:36:34,399
Speaker 1: of the issues you inherited, why not call Jack out

570
00:36:34,520 --> 00:36:38,719
Speaker 1: too account You know again, Barry, I wanted this to

571
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:44,800
Speaker 1: be really my story, if you will, and the ability

572
00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:49,400
Speaker 1: that that I would have to put more context around

573
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:54,719
Speaker 1: the company that I love, and so I really focused

574
00:36:54,800 --> 00:37:00,120
Speaker 1: on the the issues I had and wanted to it.

575
00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:04,080
Speaker 1: Let's say a finer point on um. One of the

576
00:37:04,120 --> 00:37:06,640
Speaker 1: reasons why I wrote the book is that I I

577
00:37:06,719 --> 00:37:08,840
Speaker 1: spent three or four years after I retired kind of

578
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:12,560
Speaker 1: watching the way the story was covered, and I just

579
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:16,360
Speaker 1: felt like it had lacked any perspective in any context.

580
00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:20,520
Speaker 1: And actually in chapter twelve, I kind of go through

581
00:37:20,719 --> 00:37:23,840
Speaker 1: the four or five things that I clearly would have

582
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:27,080
Speaker 1: done differently had I had I thought about them differently

583
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:32,320
Speaker 1: or had more time, uh to reflect. And what I

584
00:37:32,600 --> 00:37:36,000
Speaker 1: talked about in that chapter is I would have I

585
00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:39,400
Speaker 1: would have more dramatically changed the shape of the company

586
00:37:39,480 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 1: right after nine eleven. I think any time the crisis

587
00:37:42,320 --> 00:37:47,279
Speaker 1: takes place, a leader has an opportunity to really reshape

588
00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:53,439
Speaker 1: the situations that they're in. I talked about the lack

589
00:37:53,600 --> 00:37:57,600
Speaker 1: or our inability to get more value out of g capital.

590
00:37:59,200 --> 00:38:01,759
Speaker 1: I said I would have on the company differently to

591
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:05,680
Speaker 1: produce a different kind of leader. That I gave my

592
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 1: board too many things to work on, and I wish

593
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:12,359
Speaker 1: I had said I don't know more, and I talked

594
00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:15,319
Speaker 1: about that in chapters eleven and twelve. So I really

595
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:17,719
Speaker 1: wanted to focus on my role and just let the

596
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:21,399
Speaker 1: story play out around Jack and let readers draw whatever

597
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:24,520
Speaker 1: conclusions they want. That's fair enough, That's all anyone could

598
00:38:24,560 --> 00:38:27,360
Speaker 1: ever ask. So, Jeff, I love what you did with

599
00:38:27,560 --> 00:38:32,719
Speaker 1: the structure of your chapter titles. Leaders learn every day,

600
00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: Leaders investing growth, leaders are transparent. Tell us a little

601
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:40,400
Speaker 1: bit about how you came up with this structure. It

602
00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:43,120
Speaker 1: really worked well for this sort of book. Yeah, you know,

603
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:45,360
Speaker 1: So I decided to write a book in the second

604
00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 1: half of two eighteen. I hired a co writer, a

605
00:38:48,280 --> 00:38:53,840
Speaker 1: woman named Amy Wallace. She spoke the seventy five people.

606
00:38:54,440 --> 00:38:57,000
Speaker 1: We decided to write the book more or less chronological,

607
00:38:58,040 --> 00:39:00,480
Speaker 1: and I had a few of my colleagues writing it

608
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:04,080
Speaker 1: side by side contemporaneously. So I took kind of an

609
00:39:04,120 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 1: outside end view. And what it basically is, if you

610
00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 1: read the book, is a series of stories that happened

611
00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:14,680
Speaker 1: more or less chronologically from two thou really from two

612
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:16,960
Speaker 1: but really from two thousand one to two thousand seventeen.

613
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:20,840
Speaker 1: And then we sat back and said, Okay, what's the

614
00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:25,080
Speaker 1: what's the message in and in each one of these stories? Right,

615
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:29,960
Speaker 1: so you know nine eleven leaders show up right? Uh,

616
00:39:30,800 --> 00:39:33,719
Speaker 1: my career leaders learned every day. You know, early on,

617
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:37,360
Speaker 1: leaders invest in growth. At the end, leaders are optimist.

618
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:41,520
Speaker 1: So so we basically did the chapter titles last after

619
00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:46,120
Speaker 1: really seeing sure all the stories and and and you

620
00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:48,000
Speaker 1: know what I try to do very for the reader was,

621
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:50,440
Speaker 1: you know, kind of put them in my shoes on

622
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:54,319
Speaker 1: how we made the decisions we made, what decisions we made,

623
00:39:55,320 --> 00:39:59,400
Speaker 1: also how I felt, you know, like when I was uncertain,

624
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:01,879
Speaker 1: when I was certain, when I was wrong, those kinds

625
00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:06,040
Speaker 1: of things. So I think we basically told the story

626
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:09,239
Speaker 1: and then we sat back and said, Okay, here's what

627
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:12,960
Speaker 1: people can benefit from, here's what people can learn interesting.

628
00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:15,560
Speaker 1: So there are a couple of headings I want to

629
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:18,120
Speaker 1: give you an opportunity to go into a little more details.

630
00:40:18,920 --> 00:40:22,200
Speaker 1: One that I thought was interesting was leaders make big

631
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:28,160
Speaker 1: companies small. Explain. Yeah, so right after the financial crisis,

632
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:35,200
Speaker 1: I was really kind of burnout, and I was trying

633
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:40,880
Speaker 1: to uh remotivate myself. And one of the things I

634
00:40:41,040 --> 00:40:44,840
Speaker 1: decided to do was just been more time connecting with people.

635
00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:51,040
Speaker 1: So I began kind of a weekend, uh one weekend

636
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:54,120
Speaker 1: every month, I would fly a leader in and we

637
00:40:54,200 --> 00:40:56,760
Speaker 1: would have dinner on a Friday night and then spend

638
00:40:56,840 --> 00:40:59,400
Speaker 1: five or six hours on a Saturday without phones ringing.

639
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:02,120
Speaker 1: And I did this for eight years, and it was

640
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:06,440
Speaker 1: just a way to connect. We we retooled a lot

641
00:41:06,520 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 1: of our training programs and systems and the ways we

642
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:15,440
Speaker 1: communicated just to focus on connection. And really what we

643
00:41:15,520 --> 00:41:19,960
Speaker 1: were trying to do was beef up the let's say,

644
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:23,560
Speaker 1: the software around the company so that we we we

645
00:41:23,719 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 1: felt like we were getting more fluid communication, that that

646
00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:31,640
Speaker 1: people were attached to each other. And and so that's

647
00:41:32,120 --> 00:41:35,600
Speaker 1: I think what's chapter six in the book, which is

648
00:41:36,640 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 1: really talking about it. At the core of any culture

649
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:43,560
Speaker 1: is connection and the extent to which people feel connected

650
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:47,160
Speaker 1: to their leaders or feel connected to each other. That's

651
00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:49,040
Speaker 1: how you make a big company small. You make you

652
00:41:49,120 --> 00:41:52,359
Speaker 1: make a big company small by by having people see

653
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:56,560
Speaker 1: other people and not or charts or financial metrics or

654
00:41:57,160 --> 00:42:00,239
Speaker 1: advertisements or other things and that's what we try to

655
00:42:00,320 --> 00:42:03,759
Speaker 1: describe in chapter six. So now let's take the opposite

656
00:42:03,840 --> 00:42:07,000
Speaker 1: of small leaders compete around the world. That's about as

657
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:10,320
Speaker 1: big as it gets. So I try to describe this

658
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:14,400
Speaker 1: in the sense of a big change initiative, but a

659
00:42:14,520 --> 00:42:17,400
Speaker 1: change initiative that basically was one where we had to

660
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:22,560
Speaker 1: kind of rewire our frame of thinking. And and this

661
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:27,480
Speaker 1: is a place where size and scale actually can be helpful,

662
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:31,160
Speaker 1: but only if you're empowering the front line. And so

663
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:33,800
Speaker 1: we went through a real change process inside the company

664
00:42:33,880 --> 00:42:39,400
Speaker 1: to empower frontline leaders around the world, gave them capability

665
00:42:39,440 --> 00:42:41,800
Speaker 1: and investment to win in the countries that they're in.

666
00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:46,320
Speaker 1: And I also talk in that and that chapter just

667
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:49,520
Speaker 1: about the way globalization was changed. That that you know,

668
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:52,719
Speaker 1: in two thousand, everybody talked about doing trade deals. By

669
00:42:52,800 --> 00:42:55,440
Speaker 1: two ten, there were no more. There was no more

670
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:59,279
Speaker 1: discussion about trade deals. Protectionism was everywhere. I always tell

671
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:02,920
Speaker 1: people that. And Trump didn't invent protectionism, he just americanized it.

672
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:05,960
Speaker 1: And so and so global leaders had to be changing

673
00:43:06,560 --> 00:43:11,719
Speaker 1: in order to in order to make progress. And one

674
00:43:11,800 --> 00:43:14,520
Speaker 1: of the parts of that chapter is the discussion on China.

675
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:17,440
Speaker 1: And probably you know, there may be people that are

676
00:43:17,480 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 1: more experienced in Asia than I am, but not many.

677
00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:21,960
Speaker 1: So I have a point of view on China, and

678
00:43:22,040 --> 00:43:24,680
Speaker 1: I talked about that as well, in terms of how

679
00:43:24,760 --> 00:43:27,719
Speaker 1: to think about it in a global setting. Yeah, you right,

680
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:31,239
Speaker 1: China matters most. To explain that a little bit, Yeah,

681
00:43:31,320 --> 00:43:35,480
Speaker 1: just just say you know, again, there's a military context

682
00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:39,160
Speaker 1: that's important that that I'm not necessarily the best to

683
00:43:39,360 --> 00:43:43,080
Speaker 1: speak about. But from an economic standpoint, there's no going back.

684
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:45,040
Speaker 1: You know, China is going to be as big as

685
00:43:45,080 --> 00:43:49,360
Speaker 1: the US there. Their economic influence is huge. Our allies

686
00:43:49,600 --> 00:43:51,600
Speaker 1: trade with them as much as they trade with us.

687
00:43:52,320 --> 00:43:55,759
Speaker 1: The market is vasked for most things American companies do,

688
00:43:57,280 --> 00:43:59,040
Speaker 1: and we have to learn learn how to compete there.

689
00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:03,160
Speaker 1: We learn how to compete against them. But they're a factor.

690
00:44:04,120 --> 00:44:06,600
Speaker 1: And one of the things that worries me is that

691
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:09,040
Speaker 1: when I see my students at Stanford or I see

692
00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:12,560
Speaker 1: young people, they feel like they don't have to compete

693
00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:16,960
Speaker 1: in China. They feel like that the American government can

694
00:44:17,040 --> 00:44:20,120
Speaker 1: protect them, or China doesn't played by the right rules,

695
00:44:20,360 --> 00:44:24,440
Speaker 1: and and all this conversation. I think that's bad. Right.

696
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:27,000
Speaker 1: My generation had to learn how to compete in China.

697
00:44:27,120 --> 00:44:30,800
Speaker 1: It was our only path, and in many ways G

698
00:44:31,080 --> 00:44:33,759
Speaker 1: did it as well as anybody. So let's address some

699
00:44:33,880 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 1: of those student concerns. You have issues in China with

700
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:45,040
Speaker 1: them hacking and stealing intellectual property really all the way

701
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:49,560
Speaker 1: down to things like the design of of an aircraft engine.

702
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:54,719
Speaker 1: And you also have a structure that is not exactly

703
00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:58,800
Speaker 1: a level playing field for any foreign competition that wants

704
00:44:58,880 --> 00:45:02,440
Speaker 1: to come in. The forced partnerships, they forced the sharing

705
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 1: of of data and processes. Isn't it a legitimate complaint

706
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:10,560
Speaker 1: by students, Hey, I don't want to go to China.

707
00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:14,000
Speaker 1: They don't play by the rules. Sure, I think I

708
00:45:14,120 --> 00:45:16,840
Speaker 1: think there's everything to be said that in the past,

709
00:45:17,040 --> 00:45:25,440
Speaker 1: certainly intellectual property was critical and and uh they're challenges

710
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:28,640
Speaker 1: that are put in front of you for sure. Uh,

711
00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:34,520
Speaker 1: But you know, Berry G had a four billion dollar

712
00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:38,360
Speaker 1: healthcare business in China. There was more profitable than it

713
00:45:38,600 --> 00:45:41,960
Speaker 1: was in the US. We had higher market share in

714
00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:45,080
Speaker 1: turbines in China than we had in Germany. We had

715
00:45:45,840 --> 00:45:49,879
Speaker 1: market share of aircraft engines in the country where more

716
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:52,800
Speaker 1: planes are being purchased in any other country in the world.

717
00:45:53,280 --> 00:45:57,000
Speaker 1: So I'm not saying to be naive and I'm not

718
00:45:57,160 --> 00:46:01,520
Speaker 1: saying not to be careful, but if you're gonna stay

719
00:46:01,600 --> 00:46:05,719
Speaker 1: out of the largest market in the world for many

720
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:09,080
Speaker 1: of the things we do, including tech, um, this is

721
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:11,480
Speaker 1: gonna be a different place and ten or fifteen or

722
00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:14,239
Speaker 1: twenty years and it is right now. In other words,

723
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:16,400
Speaker 1: they're gonna They're going to continue to be a country

724
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:20,520
Speaker 1: on the move. The European Union does more trade in

725
00:46:20,719 --> 00:46:23,920
Speaker 1: China than they do in the US. Uh. You know,

726
00:46:24,120 --> 00:46:26,600
Speaker 1: there's just all kinds of statistics you can look at.

727
00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:30,080
Speaker 1: So my hope is for the Biden administration to be

728
00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:35,480
Speaker 1: very forceful on creating a level playing field. But my

729
00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:39,839
Speaker 1: hope is that we don't disengage fair enough. You mentioned turbines.

730
00:46:40,040 --> 00:46:43,520
Speaker 1: For a while g E power was booming. Um, you

731
00:46:43,560 --> 00:46:46,840
Speaker 1: would think the move to renewables would be right in

732
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:51,920
Speaker 1: their sweet spot. What has that division done right and

733
00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:55,040
Speaker 1: why are they not bigger? You would think this is

734
00:46:55,080 --> 00:46:57,840
Speaker 1: a perfect environment for them. Oh, look, I agree. I

735
00:46:58,239 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 1: I I still think our our business is a good business.

736
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:05,399
Speaker 1: I think it's being well run today. But it wasn't

737
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:07,640
Speaker 1: well run. We we we had some of the wrong

738
00:47:07,760 --> 00:47:09,920
Speaker 1: leaders in place for a while, and I own that.

739
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:13,160
Speaker 1: But my sense is there there it's a good team.

740
00:47:13,200 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 1: Now um with wind energy, they've built, you know, an

741
00:47:17,200 --> 00:47:21,200
Speaker 1: excess of a fifteen billion dollar business with gas turbans,

742
00:47:21,239 --> 00:47:25,279
Speaker 1: they still have a very strong position as well as

743
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:28,840
Speaker 1: a new grid technologies. I think I think the challenging

744
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:33,640
Speaker 1: place in the power space today is solar because the

745
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:38,640
Speaker 1: equipment makers in solar lose money and the only people

746
00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:41,400
Speaker 1: that earn money are kind of in the project finance side,

747
00:47:41,719 --> 00:47:45,239
Speaker 1: and so I think in order to be more successful there,

748
00:47:45,320 --> 00:47:48,640
Speaker 1: G has to kind of invest more in the project

749
00:47:48,719 --> 00:47:51,239
Speaker 1: finance side and solar. But look, a third of the

750
00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:54,600
Speaker 1: world still doesn't have electricity, and and there's going to

751
00:47:54,680 --> 00:47:59,880
Speaker 1: be a real transition from hydrocarbons to renewable to the

752
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:02,040
Speaker 1: takes place over decades, it's not going to take place

753
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:05,920
Speaker 1: in a year or two, and G should participate in that.

754
00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:09,840
Speaker 1: Very interesting. Let's talk about consultants. They play such a

755
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:14,120
Speaker 1: large role in so many businesses. What do you think

756
00:48:14,239 --> 00:48:18,200
Speaker 1: of the role of consultants in strategy? Did Ge use

757
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:21,560
Speaker 1: a lot of consultants, whether it was Arthur Anderson or

758
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:26,440
Speaker 1: Mackenzie or you know, insert your favorite consultancy here. What's

759
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:28,600
Speaker 1: your views on this? Look? I think we used our

760
00:48:28,640 --> 00:48:30,640
Speaker 1: fair share. I always think it's good to get an

761
00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:35,640
Speaker 1: external perspective. They shouldn't be here to operate the company.

762
00:48:35,680 --> 00:48:38,880
Speaker 1: They're here to give you a perspective. I never like

763
00:48:39,040 --> 00:48:41,560
Speaker 1: to rely on one group or another. I like to

764
00:48:41,840 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 1: mix of different perspectives. But I think there's always there's

765
00:48:46,040 --> 00:48:49,840
Speaker 1: always room to get an outside of view. You know,

766
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:54,160
Speaker 1: My sense today is the largest clients for consultants are

767
00:48:54,200 --> 00:48:57,360
Speaker 1: really private equity and and you know some of the

768
00:48:57,400 --> 00:49:01,759
Speaker 1: people that are in kind of serial acquisition business, and

769
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:04,560
Speaker 1: I think that's a place where consultants can be of

770
00:49:04,719 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 1: most use. Where you basically have a financial firm that

771
00:49:08,760 --> 00:49:11,920
Speaker 1: has capital that wants to make an investment. They want

772
00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:15,080
Speaker 1: to get market data and insight, and consultants can really

773
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 1: provide tremendous value there. So the their their business model

774
00:49:20,680 --> 00:49:25,560
Speaker 1: has evolved as well. Um. But again, I think extraal

775
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:29,800
Speaker 1: perspectives are always good and terms like Mackenzie, you know,

776
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:32,319
Speaker 1: they just have good people and they can bring good

777
00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:37,560
Speaker 1: perspectives to to your decision making. Talk a little bit

778
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:42,480
Speaker 1: about succession planning. It was a factor in the transition

779
00:49:42,560 --> 00:49:47,040
Speaker 1: from your predecessor to you, and you describe in the

780
00:49:47,160 --> 00:49:53,600
Speaker 1: book grooming various candidates and prepping the transition process, what

781
00:49:53,840 --> 00:49:58,960
Speaker 1: went right at GE during various transitions, and what went wrong? Yeah, Look,

782
00:49:59,000 --> 00:50:01,759
Speaker 1: I mean my my changes. He clearly didn't go the

783
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:05,719
Speaker 1: way any of us had planned. It was. It was

784
00:50:05,760 --> 00:50:10,280
Speaker 1: a little bit rushed. I would say there were certainly

785
00:50:10,440 --> 00:50:15,160
Speaker 1: problems in markets that that I left behind, that that

786
00:50:15,320 --> 00:50:17,800
Speaker 1: I wish I hadn't taken place, and that made my

787
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:23,320
Speaker 1: successor's job tougher. But I'd say two other things, you know,

788
00:50:23,480 --> 00:50:30,040
Speaker 1: kind of hurt that process. Um. One was my successor.

789
00:50:30,120 --> 00:50:31,840
Speaker 1: It was a good a good guy guy that I

790
00:50:31,960 --> 00:50:35,200
Speaker 1: supported and really thought I could do the job. He

791
00:50:35,320 --> 00:50:37,240
Speaker 1: had to come in and make a lot of fast

792
00:50:37,320 --> 00:50:41,719
Speaker 1: decisions and that didn't play to his strength. And I

793
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:43,800
Speaker 1: would say the board was in a little bit of

794
00:50:43,920 --> 00:50:47,200
Speaker 1: disarray as well. So if you had in tough markets,

795
00:50:47,960 --> 00:50:50,279
Speaker 1: not playing with somebody's strengths and a little bit of

796
00:50:50,320 --> 00:50:55,239
Speaker 1: disarray on the board, that's that's a chemistry that that

797
00:50:55,520 --> 00:50:59,719
Speaker 1: just doesn't work. I go back to when I took over, Look,

798
00:50:59,800 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 1: I had fast decisions to make. For sure. I was

799
00:51:04,840 --> 00:51:07,759
Speaker 1: probably a little bit more skilled or more willing to

800
00:51:07,880 --> 00:51:11,200
Speaker 1: make those decisions. But I had a really stable and

801
00:51:11,280 --> 00:51:15,720
Speaker 1: mature board, And and and that wasn't the case probably

802
00:51:15,880 --> 00:51:18,480
Speaker 1: seventeen years later. So I owned my share of the

803
00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:21,920
Speaker 1: blame and all those and it's it's hard to get

804
00:51:21,960 --> 00:51:26,200
Speaker 1: it right, particularly given you know, kind of the complicated

805
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:29,600
Speaker 1: world we live in today. Well, well, you own up

806
00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:31,799
Speaker 1: a lot of errors in the book, and you take

807
00:51:31,880 --> 00:51:36,280
Speaker 1: responsibility for your tenure. What do you think the company

808
00:51:36,600 --> 00:51:39,279
Speaker 1: doesn't get enough credit for? And what do you think

809
00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:42,920
Speaker 1: you don't get enough credit for? Considering you spent a

810
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:48,080
Speaker 1: few hundred pages essentially accepting blame for so much. Yeah, look,

811
00:51:48,120 --> 00:51:50,600
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, I think what I what I

812
00:51:50,719 --> 00:51:53,400
Speaker 1: wanted to do again in the book was to provide

813
00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:58,200
Speaker 1: you know, context. So over over sixteen years, we generated

814
00:51:58,280 --> 00:52:03,120
Speaker 1: more earnings in cash flow then the previous years combined.

815
00:52:04,920 --> 00:52:09,400
Speaker 1: We were leaders in the industries we were in. We

816
00:52:09,480 --> 00:52:13,239
Speaker 1: developed good, good team. You know, there's probably more than

817
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:17,880
Speaker 1: thirty people that worked for me that went on to

818
00:52:17,960 --> 00:52:22,759
Speaker 1: run fortune companies, public companies and were good initiatives, whether

819
00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:25,840
Speaker 1: it's globalization and or digitization. I could go down the list.

820
00:52:27,160 --> 00:52:30,520
Speaker 1: On the flip side, are our praise earnings ratio went

821
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:35,320
Speaker 1: from fifty to fifteen. So the stock didn't work the

822
00:52:35,400 --> 00:52:39,839
Speaker 1: way any of us wanted we didn't get value as

823
00:52:39,880 --> 00:52:43,800
Speaker 1: we went through the transition of g capital, and the

824
00:52:43,920 --> 00:52:48,360
Speaker 1: succession didn't worked away any of us wanted. So you know, I,

825
00:52:48,400 --> 00:52:51,120
Speaker 1: I guess what I wanted to do with the book

826
00:52:51,400 --> 00:52:55,959
Speaker 1: is show that we got more right than we got wrong.

827
00:52:56,280 --> 00:52:59,360
Speaker 1: We we did a lot of good work as a team,

828
00:52:59,640 --> 00:53:02,359
Speaker 1: and I didn't want that to get lost. And at

829
00:53:02,400 --> 00:53:07,320
Speaker 1: the same time, I think in this generation, all leadership

830
00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:11,759
Speaker 1: as crisis leadership, and Lord knows, we worked through more

831
00:53:11,800 --> 00:53:15,080
Speaker 1: than our fair share. So I felt like other readers

832
00:53:15,200 --> 00:53:18,200
Speaker 1: and other leaders could get something out of the book.

833
00:53:18,640 --> 00:53:22,880
Speaker 1: That's an interesting line. Um, all leadership is crisis leadership

834
00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:27,440
Speaker 1: these days. You know you mentioned the pe ratio. I

835
00:53:27,640 --> 00:53:31,320
Speaker 1: think that what happened to you was more or less inevitable,

836
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:35,600
Speaker 1: given that you came in with a fifty PE that

837
00:53:35,800 --> 00:53:40,160
Speaker 1: was pumped up by both the nineties bullmarket. You arrived

838
00:53:40,320 --> 00:53:45,400
Speaker 1: just as as that was deflating. Jack played the media

839
00:53:45,600 --> 00:53:51,040
Speaker 1: better than anybody and never hesitated to show up on CNBC,

840
00:53:51,239 --> 00:53:55,680
Speaker 1: which was a General Electric owned property, and burnished his

841
00:53:56,080 --> 00:54:00,800
Speaker 1: his reputation. So you showed up. Wasn't it all but

842
00:54:00,920 --> 00:54:05,719
Speaker 1: inevitable that the pe multiple had to return back to

843
00:54:06,120 --> 00:54:11,040
Speaker 1: something resembling normal. A fifteen to twenty price earnings ratio

844
00:54:11,680 --> 00:54:16,600
Speaker 1: for a giant conglomerate. That's still pretty much what what

845
00:54:16,760 --> 00:54:19,440
Speaker 1: the average is, isn't isn't that what a typical conglomerate?

846
00:54:20,960 --> 00:54:23,719
Speaker 1: It's um, yeah, I mean what I'm saying asking is

847
00:54:23,960 --> 00:54:26,719
Speaker 1: it wasn't an inevitable that g had to come back

848
00:54:26,800 --> 00:54:31,680
Speaker 1: down to earth following the prior twenty years? Sure, and

849
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:35,560
Speaker 1: again that's um. You know. What I try to do

850
00:54:35,640 --> 00:54:37,680
Speaker 1: is tell the story, you know, in the words, what

851
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:41,839
Speaker 1: I wanted to do is just start on day one

852
00:54:42,280 --> 00:54:44,120
Speaker 1: and then the day I walked out the door, and

853
00:54:44,239 --> 00:54:48,719
Speaker 1: talk about my colleagues, the decisions we made, and lets

854
00:54:48,760 --> 00:54:51,360
Speaker 1: and let people just have a full set of facts.

855
00:54:51,640 --> 00:54:53,840
Speaker 1: You know. Look, there's there's not a day that doesn't

856
00:54:53,880 --> 00:54:56,040
Speaker 1: go by that I don't think about the company. I

857
00:54:56,160 --> 00:54:59,040
Speaker 1: know some people feel like I let them down. I

858
00:54:59,160 --> 00:55:03,719
Speaker 1: get that, but but I by the same token. Look,

859
00:55:04,040 --> 00:55:06,560
Speaker 1: I worked with some great people. We we always did

860
00:55:06,640 --> 00:55:09,400
Speaker 1: our best. And what I try to do in the

861
00:55:09,440 --> 00:55:12,640
Speaker 1: book is just tell a complete, a complete story, and

862
00:55:12,800 --> 00:55:16,839
Speaker 1: let other people judge who was good who was bad,

863
00:55:17,560 --> 00:55:20,000
Speaker 1: you know, and just let it speak for itself. That's

864
00:55:20,000 --> 00:55:21,839
Speaker 1: really what I tried to do with the book. Well,

865
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:24,640
Speaker 1: I think you succeeded. The book was not only fair,

866
00:55:24,719 --> 00:55:27,960
Speaker 1: I thought it was generous. Before we let you go,

867
00:55:28,239 --> 00:55:32,080
Speaker 1: Let's jump to some of our favorite questions that we

868
00:55:32,320 --> 00:55:35,879
Speaker 1: ask all of our guests, starting with, given that we're

869
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:40,640
Speaker 1: all working from home and under pandemic conditions, what are

870
00:55:40,640 --> 00:55:44,360
Speaker 1: you streaming these days? Tell us your favorite Netflix or

871
00:55:44,520 --> 00:55:49,120
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime show? Yeah, so we're doing Amazon Prime show

872
00:55:49,200 --> 00:55:52,080
Speaker 1: called tell Me Your Secrets. My wife and I like mysteries,

873
00:55:52,200 --> 00:55:55,279
Speaker 1: and this is really a mystery and it's a fun

874
00:55:55,360 --> 00:55:58,440
Speaker 1: watch for about halfway through. But that's kind of what

875
00:55:58,600 --> 00:56:02,360
Speaker 1: we do on podcast, you know. I like, um not

876
00:56:02,520 --> 00:56:07,120
Speaker 1: like Stan mccrystal's podcast No Turning Back. I did Free Economics.

877
00:56:07,160 --> 00:56:09,400
Speaker 1: I've always been kind of I've always liked the different

878
00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:13,520
Speaker 1: angle the Free Economics uh takes place. And I think

879
00:56:13,560 --> 00:56:15,600
Speaker 1: in the course of watching the book, I've I've I've

880
00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:17,759
Speaker 1: found some new podcasts that I'm going to go back

881
00:56:17,920 --> 00:56:22,160
Speaker 1: and and listen to. So yeah, that's But to your point,

882
00:56:22,719 --> 00:56:25,200
Speaker 1: there's probably nobody that's benefited more from the pandemic than

883
00:56:25,280 --> 00:56:29,640
Speaker 1: Netflix has. It's Netflix Intelevince world. We just live in

884
00:56:29,680 --> 00:56:32,600
Speaker 1: it exactly. Tell us about some of your early mentors

885
00:56:32,680 --> 00:56:35,920
Speaker 1: who helped shape your career along the way. Yeah, I

886
00:56:35,960 --> 00:56:39,960
Speaker 1: had two mentors. The first one was was the leader

887
00:56:39,960 --> 00:56:43,000
Speaker 1: of the plastics business when I was young. When I

888
00:56:43,080 --> 00:56:45,800
Speaker 1: was a young manager was a gentleman named Glenn Hiner

889
00:56:46,719 --> 00:56:49,960
Speaker 1: and and he was you know, what it showed me,

890
00:56:50,040 --> 00:56:52,040
Speaker 1: but Glenn showed me was that the leader could be

891
00:56:53,400 --> 00:56:55,880
Speaker 1: you know, respectful and tough at the same time. And

892
00:56:56,000 --> 00:56:59,040
Speaker 1: it was good to see in him. And then later

893
00:56:59,080 --> 00:57:01,280
Speaker 1: in my career, one of the chairman was a gentleman

894
00:57:01,360 --> 00:57:05,920
Speaker 1: named John Opie. And John was really operationally, really sharp.

895
00:57:06,280 --> 00:57:10,560
Speaker 1: And I love both those guys and learned so much

896
00:57:10,600 --> 00:57:14,840
Speaker 1: from them. On the board, I always liked Chilly Lasters

897
00:57:14,960 --> 00:57:16,840
Speaker 1: was a board member for a long time, and I

898
00:57:16,960 --> 00:57:20,880
Speaker 1: always very much enjoyed talking with her and if I

899
00:57:20,960 --> 00:57:23,640
Speaker 1: had a problem or something on my mind. Let's talk

900
00:57:23,680 --> 00:57:26,240
Speaker 1: about some of your favorite books. What are your all

901
00:57:26,320 --> 00:57:29,920
Speaker 1: time favorites and what are you reading now? So, um,

902
00:57:30,600 --> 00:57:34,960
Speaker 1: let's see my My all time favorite as Truman by McCullough,

903
00:57:36,800 --> 00:57:40,440
Speaker 1: because of you know, it's kind of this great American

904
00:57:40,640 --> 00:57:45,520
Speaker 1: story that that any person could be president and and

905
00:57:45,720 --> 00:57:49,240
Speaker 1: I thought that was remarkable. I love that one I

906
00:57:49,360 --> 00:57:52,200
Speaker 1: read a lot of military history because I think it's

907
00:57:52,280 --> 00:57:57,400
Speaker 1: the best corollary of business, because military history is a

908
00:57:57,480 --> 00:58:01,560
Speaker 1: subject of failure, like whoever feel the least wins, and

909
00:58:01,680 --> 00:58:06,760
Speaker 1: sometimes business feels like that. I've read. I've read over

910
00:58:06,840 --> 00:58:10,800
Speaker 1: the last oh gosh, six months, a few books on

911
00:58:11,760 --> 00:58:14,560
Speaker 1: the reconstruction in the US after the Civil War, just

912
00:58:14,760 --> 00:58:17,800
Speaker 1: as you know, some of the seeds of some of

913
00:58:17,960 --> 00:58:22,520
Speaker 1: the racial challenges we have today. Those have been good.

914
00:58:22,680 --> 00:58:25,480
Speaker 1: And uh, I still read novels. I'm reading all of

915
00:58:25,600 --> 00:58:28,800
Speaker 1: the There's a guy named C. J. Box that writes

916
00:58:28,840 --> 00:58:32,040
Speaker 1: about a game board in Wyoming called Joe Pickett. So

917
00:58:33,000 --> 00:58:36,320
Speaker 1: I mixed history and novels and and try to learn.

918
00:58:36,400 --> 00:58:39,480
Speaker 1: But I'm an avid reader, and I like to like

919
00:58:39,680 --> 00:58:42,720
Speaker 1: to you know, I love to love to read. If

920
00:58:42,800 --> 00:58:45,680
Speaker 1: you liked mccullus Truman, if if you haven't read his

921
00:58:46,120 --> 00:58:51,080
Speaker 1: Right Brothers, it's really quite really good, you know, very spectacular.

922
00:58:51,360 --> 00:58:53,640
Speaker 1: Somebody can't have worked at g and not read Wright Brothers.

923
00:58:55,360 --> 00:58:57,560
Speaker 1: What sort of advice would you give to a recent

924
00:58:57,760 --> 00:59:00,960
Speaker 1: college grad who was just being getting their career and

925
00:59:01,120 --> 00:59:05,840
Speaker 1: thinking about working either for a large conglomerate or a manufacturer.

926
00:59:06,520 --> 00:59:12,000
Speaker 1: I think stay curious you know again, I think curiosity

927
00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:15,960
Speaker 1: is this is the sole attribute that every successful person

928
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:19,920
Speaker 1: I've ever met has, or whether it's Jeff Bezos or

929
00:59:20,000 --> 00:59:22,160
Speaker 1: Fred Smith or you know, I could go down the

930
00:59:22,240 --> 00:59:25,800
Speaker 1: list of great people I've known. I just think curiosity

931
00:59:26,120 --> 00:59:30,240
Speaker 1: is such an important part of being a lifelong learner,

932
00:59:30,520 --> 00:59:35,320
Speaker 1: And being a lifelong learner is really critical. I say

933
00:59:35,320 --> 00:59:37,120
Speaker 1: in my class, you know when when I when I

934
00:59:37,200 --> 00:59:40,960
Speaker 1: teach a business school, I said, like, everybody in that

935
00:59:41,200 --> 00:59:44,840
Speaker 1: room has the capability to be CEO of a fortune

936
00:59:44,880 --> 00:59:48,200
Speaker 1: five in our company. Right, But but you have to

937
00:59:48,280 --> 00:59:53,000
Speaker 1: ask yourself kind of three questions, how fast can I learn?

938
00:59:54,240 --> 00:59:57,480
Speaker 1: How much can I take? And how much will I give?

939
00:59:57,920 --> 00:59:59,720
Speaker 1: Like by how much can I take? Is like you're

940
00:59:59,720 --> 01:00:02,800
Speaker 1: going to it punched into those so many times some

941
01:00:02,920 --> 01:00:05,080
Speaker 1: people just give up. Right, It's not because I'm not

942
01:00:05,200 --> 01:00:07,920
Speaker 1: smart enough, They just give up. But you also have

943
01:00:08,080 --> 01:00:10,120
Speaker 1: to be willing to give back to others if you

944
01:00:10,200 --> 01:00:13,080
Speaker 1: want people to follow you. So how much can you learn?

945
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:15,040
Speaker 1: How much can you take? How much will you give?

946
01:00:15,760 --> 01:00:19,960
Speaker 1: Answer those three questions and you can start your career interesting.

947
01:00:20,360 --> 01:00:23,080
Speaker 1: And our final question, what do you know about the

948
01:00:23,160 --> 01:00:27,760
Speaker 1: world of leadership running a big company? The entire industrial

949
01:00:27,880 --> 01:00:31,040
Speaker 1: process today that you wish you knew thirty or so

950
01:00:31,280 --> 01:00:34,400
Speaker 1: years ago early in your career. Oh, I think the

951
01:00:34,440 --> 01:00:37,840
Speaker 1: importance of speed. I think the importance of speed. I

952
01:00:38,000 --> 01:00:40,120
Speaker 1: just think sometimes when you work at a big company,

953
01:00:41,080 --> 01:00:45,800
Speaker 1: you never feel the urgency the way you need to.

954
01:00:46,960 --> 01:00:49,320
Speaker 1: And what I see in Silicon Valley, what they get right,

955
01:00:49,720 --> 01:00:52,240
Speaker 1: is they just they just move quickly. They make mistakes,

956
01:00:52,360 --> 01:00:56,760
Speaker 1: but they don't wallow in their mistakes. They just keep moving.

957
01:00:57,080 --> 01:01:01,880
Speaker 1: So I think I wish sometimes, you know, Barry, that

958
01:01:01,960 --> 01:01:06,920
Speaker 1: I had worked for like twenty years and before I

959
01:01:07,000 --> 01:01:10,400
Speaker 1: became CEO, I took maybe a three year sabbatical in

960
01:01:10,520 --> 01:01:14,920
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley and then came back and became CEO. I

961
01:01:14,960 --> 01:01:17,120
Speaker 1: would have run the place differently than I did. I

962
01:01:17,240 --> 01:01:20,320
Speaker 1: think it's easy to move fast and break things when

963
01:01:20,400 --> 01:01:22,800
Speaker 1: it's a three person shop as opposed to a three

964
01:01:23,120 --> 01:01:27,240
Speaker 1: D person shot. We have been speaking with Jeff m

965
01:01:27,280 --> 01:01:31,080
Speaker 1: alt Is, the former CEO of General Electric and author

966
01:01:31,120 --> 01:01:33,960
Speaker 1: of the book Hot Seat What I Learned Leading a

967
01:01:34,040 --> 01:01:38,240
Speaker 1: Great American Company. If you enjoy this conversation, well, be

968
01:01:38,360 --> 01:01:41,360
Speaker 1: sure and check out any of our previous four hundred

969
01:01:41,480 --> 01:01:45,480
Speaker 1: or so. You can find those at iTunes Spotify, wherever

970
01:01:45,560 --> 01:01:49,200
Speaker 1: you get your podcast fixed. We love your comments, feedback

971
01:01:49,240 --> 01:01:53,120
Speaker 1: in suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at

972
01:01:53,120 --> 01:01:56,200
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot net. Give us a review on Apple iTunes.

973
01:01:57,040 --> 01:02:00,439
Speaker 1: You can sign up for our free daily eating list.

974
01:02:00,840 --> 01:02:03,439
Speaker 1: You can see that at rid Halts dot com. Check

975
01:02:03,480 --> 01:02:06,840
Speaker 1: out my weekly column on Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion.

976
01:02:07,360 --> 01:02:10,640
Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at rit Halts. I would be

977
01:02:10,760 --> 01:02:13,480
Speaker 1: remiss if I did not think our crack team that

978
01:02:13,560 --> 01:02:17,960
Speaker 1: helps put this conversation together each week. Tim Harrow is

979
01:02:18,080 --> 01:02:22,560
Speaker 1: my audio engineer. Atico val Brund is my project manager.

980
01:02:23,160 --> 01:02:26,440
Speaker 1: Michael Boyle is my producer. Michael Batnick is my head

981
01:02:26,480 --> 01:02:30,080
Speaker 1: of research. I'm Barry Rit Halts. You've been listening to

982
01:02:30,200 --> 01:02:32,680
Speaker 1: Master's in Business on Bloomberg Radio