What Makes Jack Welch an Effective Leader, Business, College Term Papers.com


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What Makes Jack Welch an Effective Leader

What Makes Jack Welch an Effective Leader What Makes Jack Welch an Effective Leader? ---ideas from the article “Will Legacy Live On?” Before I talk about what makes Jack an effective leader, I want to explain briefly why I chose him as my study subject. Jack Welch created a new model for business leaders everywhere. His genius leadership and management techniques are an example to anyone aspiring to a successful career. Why is he so famous? He became the youngest CEO and Chairman of one of America's biggest and most respected companies (General Electric) at age 44, and successfully rewrote the rules of what an incredibly profitable and successful company should be, and had fun in the process. To know what makes an effective leader, one must know what leadership is. According to our textbook, the definition of leadership is the ability to influence a group towards the achievement of goals. In this case, the group is General Electronic Corporation. For a big business empire like GE, obviously, the final goal is to make as much profit as it can to please its shareholders. Let’s see what the article describes about how Jack influences his team to achieve this goal: “Growing a company that was valued by the market at $13 billion when he took it over in 1981 to a behemoth worth more than $400 billion when he retired last year is what is called wealth creation – big time.” Without Jack, GE couldn’t have today’s accomplishment. According to the “trait theories of leadership” in the textbook, six traits have been identified as being consistently associated with leadership: 1) ambition and energy; 2) the desire to lead; 3) honesty and integrity; 4) self-confidence; 5) intelligence; and job-relevant knowledge. Let’s look at Jack now. In the article, the author mentions that what he remembered most about those two interviews has nothing to do with Welch’s strategy or business ideas, though they were all clearly present. What stays with him was the personality of the man: his passion, his intensity, his energy, his need to engage. It’s not hard for us to find out that Welch has most of the personality which are included in the trait theories of leadership. What we should notice is that the author strongly emphasizes one of his characteristics---his extraordinary passion. It’s what has animated and motivated hundreds of thousands of workers across one of the most complex portfolios of business and engaged them in constructive activity. Jack didn’t use his tremendous passion to control his employees to get things done. Instead, he motivated them and empowered them to achieve the goals of the entire organization. Again, according to the textbook, this is one of the major distinguishing factors between managers and leaders. The author of the article describes the “Welch Management Religion” through what he calls “two trinities of management” which are: Trinity 1: Self-Confidence, Simplicity, Speed; Trinity 2: People, Dollars, Ideas. Here, I just want to analysis two elements of them---people and ideas. When Jack was in charge of GE, he wasn't afraid to change. His efforts streamlined the company. However, in doing so, over 100,000 GE employees lost their jobs. For this, Welch earned the nickname "Neutron Jack", after the Neutron bomb, which kills people but leaves buildings standing. He continuously streamlined operations, and thanks to smart management and acquisitions, successfully expanded the company. Why did Jack’s crude decision not affect his team negatively, on the contrary, make the organization’s performance more effective? To answer this question, we should apply the “Fiedler Contingency Model” from our textbook. The model suggests that the stronger the position power, the more control the leader has; and the task-oriented leaders perform best in situation of high control. Did Jack have high position power? Certainly! Otherwise, he wouldn’t fire so many people or get his famous nickname “Neutron Jack”. Jack is definitely a task-oriented guy. In the article, it says, “He is the classic single-agenda leader: his primary interest is to make GE a profitable and idea-driven company that will generate value for everyone”. Now the answer to the question is very clear: Jack’s high power position led to his strong control; and highly task-oriented Jack performed well in the highly controlled situation. Jack is the first CEO to admit he openly borrows ideas from anyone, anywhere, anytime and makes them his own. GE was also one of the first global companies to appoint a chief knowledge and learning officer, reporting directly to Welch. From these two facts, we can see that Jack considers ideas as important elements of the process of running a company. I think that’s one of the crucial factors for Jack’s success, especially nowadays. As everybody knows, since the influence of the Information Technology industry, the business world has become extremely fast and full of change. If the leader can’t adapt to changing conditions, it is very possible for his firm to be kicked out of the game. How can the firm change, though? The most effective way is to go through new ideas. Here, it reminders me Welch’s famous saying: "Change before you have to." At last, I want to quote my favorite part in this article, which the following, Leadership is not a science. It’s not a recipe. It’s not the five rules about this or the six effective habits of that. It’s an art, and as Georges Braque wrote, the only thing that matters in art is the part that can’t be explained.” The only reason that I like this part is that I don’t need to apply any leadership theory here. My conclusion is that he is a very effective leader. If I were to become a successful CEO, I would follow his example. Bibliography:

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