Posted: May 7th, 2020
Jack Welch
Jack Welch was a CEO and chairman at General Electric for twenty years. During his time at GE he was able to transform the company into a very efficient and powerful company. His four E’s of leadership: energy, energizers, edge, and execute are keys to what made his leadership style work. Another part of his leadership style was getting rid of the people who did not work hard enough or meet expectations. Overall, Jack Welch’s leadership style changed GE and companies around the world for the better.
The first of Welch’s four E’s is energy. This is the characteristic which describes people who are always ready to go and to work hard at a moments notice. These are the people that are hate dull moments and prefer to always be busy. Normally these are good workers, which sometimes stray from their work because they are so energetic. The second E is energizers. These are the people that motivate others to perform. They are the ones that outline what is needed or wanted to succeed, and have other people carry it out.
In most cases, energizers are selfless and care about others before themselves. They care that the group succeeds and are quick to take ownership over something when it goes wrong. However, when someone in the group succeeds, they make sure the credit is given to the person. The third E is edge. This type of people is those who are extremely competitive. They make sure they do everything possible to succeed in whatever they do. People with edge are not slow to make a decision they believe will be beneficial.
For example, these people are usually the ones who have to make decisions like firing, hiring, and promoting. They also do not let anything stand in their way, no matter what the circumstance is. What it takes to succeed, they will do. The last E is execute. Without a person that is able to execute, the rest of the E’s will be of no use and will have no way of completion. Also, executers know the difference between activity and productivity. They realize a person can be working, but the work may be irrelevant to the betterment of the company.
For example, a person could be doing lots of work, but in reality unless the work is bettering the company it is completely unimportant and is basically just busy-work. The E’s are vital to how Jack Welch made his company run and how he viewed people in his workplace. Welch had a way of figuring out how people functioned in the workplace called differentiation. In this way of thinking, Welch described how people should be evaluated in their work, such as that of a teacher when she evaluates her students.
This model is used to “weed out” the twenty percent of workers that do not better the company. He knew nearly everyone worked hard at his company, but it was the people that accomplished productive work that he kept to work at his company. The bottom ten to twenty percent of people were actually hurting the company more than they were helping financially. This was a way Welch made his company successful. He did not make it successful by changing what was at the top and going right, he changed what was at the bottom and actually bringing the company down.
In conclusion, Jack Welch has a leadership style which was unlike the normal way of viewing efficiency. He looked to the people that were at the bottom rather than the top. Most people have a different way of viewing productivity, where they try to improve a part of the company which is already productive. Jack Welch was able to make GE a powerful company from a different perspective than most other leaders. Internet Sources 1. http://www. epinions. com/content_4565540996? sb=1 2. http://www. refresher. com/! svbfoures. html
