Jack Welch. Welch has been the leader who embraced change all the time and who helped GE make an outstanding turnaround when it was going down.

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Lefei Tong

Leadership Analysis Paper

03/28/12

Jack Welch

        Talking about the most famous and competitive business enterprises in the world, we can never omit GE, and talking about the success of GE, we always have to mention its leader, Jack Welch. Welch has been the leader who embraced change all the time and who helped GE make an outstanding turnaround when it was going down. He joined GE in 1960 and became the youngest General Manager of GE in 1968. In 1980, Welch was announced to be the eighth CEO of GE, and started to implement all his leadership ideas into the company. During his 20 years of work at the CEO level, he has made a complete revolution to every aspect of GE’s origin. GE has shifted from a highly bureaucratic corporation to a highly productive machine with high speed of production and no complexity of hierarchy. Jack Welch’s successful leadership style includes several aspects, which are as follows.

        First and foremost, Jack Welch has always been able to seizing the initiatives to make changes, which resulted in revolutionary progress of the entire corporation. The study of leadership is the study of how men and women guide others through adversity, uncertainty, hardships, disruption, transformation, transition, recovery, new beginnings, and other significant challenges. When Welch took over the CEO position, GE was already one of the strongest companies, and he aimed to make the company to be either first or second in the industry. He did a series of things that no leaders in the business world had ever done before. He used a “fix, close or sell” strategy to get rid of unproductive segments of the business and to focus on solid and profitable parts of GE. Then he successfully cut down GE’s bureaucracy by downsizing, and achieved a clean, simply and effective arrangement of human resources. In addition, he eliminated the boundaries in the corporation and made every employee have his or her own voice, thus made GE an open, informal and boundaryless company where employees felt free to move around within the company as well as to connect the outside world. In late 1990s, Welch successfully made GE a global and diversified corporation, and launched E initiative business on every level of GE’s business. Since Welch always aimed to change before bad things happened, he took the initiatives proactively to make GE keep moving forward in the changing environment. Proactivity consistently produces better results than reactivity or inactivity. Proactive people tend to be more hard working, confident in what they are doing, and sensitive to external environment. Welch had all these traits to be a proactive leader to lead the changes in the corporation. Therefore, Jack Welch’s ability to “change before it’s too late” contributed to GE’s success in the unstable business environment and brought GE to the leading position in the industry.

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        In addition, Jack Welch has successfully used his charismas to align his people and to encourage them to achieve much more than they believed. In the presence of charismatics, followers can experience inspiration, empowerment, and even awe. Jack Welch has done numerous acts to make this happen by leading a transformation of attitudes at GE. Welch has released “emotional energy” at all levels of the organization and encouraged creativity and feelings of ownership and self-worth. His ultimate goal was to create an enterprise that can tap the benefits of global scale and diversity without the stifling costs of bureaucratic controls and ...

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