Jack Welch, dead at 84

[athena53]

Zero remorse cashing my fat pension checks.

I wish mine were fat! I was with a GE sub from 2002 to 2006 when it was sold- for some reason I squeaked by and managed to vest in a $900/month pension- maybe because I was over 50 and special vesting rules apply? I didn't question them.

Agreed on what's been said about him so far but surprised it's so widespread given his image in the media.

He once said that his accomplishments at GE would be measured by how well his successor did. Enough said.

 

[ERD50]

Ah yes, Six Sigma. That overhyped load of BS. I went through that in the factory I worked at back in the 90s. We made great improvements at our plant AFTER we convinced management to stop wasting so much time training employees on the wonders of R bars, bell curves, PONC status, standard deviation, flow charts, etc.
and get back to basics!

What we did was simple. Identify a problem area, get a group of 4 or 5 people who worked in that area, meet once a week, & follow the steps posted on a plaque in our cafeteria since 1975.

1: Identify root cause.
2: Take corrective action.
3: Follow up/monitor

No BS like Six Sigma required.

I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. The basics/principals of the Six Sigma approach were valid and could reap big rewards. Of course, any place might go about it badly, use it blindly, etc. Like anything, it's about the implementation, and your specific needs.

In our case, applying statistics to each of those three steps made it much more powerful and effective. You don't just identify/correct/monitor, but you analyze the variation and attempt to keep the values centered and minimize variation to the greatest extent practical, and identify what might be standing in the way. You identify the root causes of the variation (long term drift, random drift or drift with a bias, short term noise, temperature, time, etc?). All that forces you to understand the process, rather than just putting in corrective action, seeing good results, declaring it 'fixed', when you may have missed some of the other causes that, if corrected, might keep the problem from coming back over time. It was good discipline, IMO.

No love for Mr Welch though. I've heard enough about his destructive ways.

I'm reminded of a quote from the TV show "The Office", the usually awful boss, Michael Scott said, in one of his occasional bits of insight when one of his employees screwed up and thought he'd be fired: "A good boss doesn't fire people, he inspires people".

-ERD50

 

[athena53]

I saw a post this morning on LinkedIn that was "Liked" by one of my contacts, noting Welch's passing. Wow. The comments that followed were so saccharine they made my teeth hurt. I did not contribute.

I can say that the people who understood my business (insurance) and used Six Sigma, including some of the techniques for meeting facilitation, were very good. Others were clueless. I remember one recommending that we insure smaller buildings because they had smaller average losses.

The Bloomberg article cited earlier was very perceptive. One of the major items in an insurance company balance sheet is the reserve for future claims, either incurred but not yet reported, or in the process of settlement, since the current estimates may be too high or too low. Naturally this estimate is subject to great deal of judgment and changes in assumptions can turn a profitable year into a losing one- or vice versa.

Warren Buffet said years ago in an annual meeting letter that if an insurance company would be thrown into insolvency by correctly estimating their reserves, it was up to the company to volunteer that information. This, he said, was comparable to expecting the corpse to file the death certificate. "Frequently", he noted, "the corpse gives itself the benefit of the doubt."

 

[indiajust]

neutron jack earned the reputation he deserves. Manipulating earnings with internal bank was a serious error.

 

[ychuck46]

He Doesn't Deserve Any

Hmm, it seems there is no love for him here.

He was one of the worst things to ever happen to American business. He almost singlehandedly championed the breakdown in relations between companies and employees, to the long-term detriment of both. All while enriching himself tremendously at the expense of both employees and stockholders. Neutron Jack was the right moniker for him.

 

[arch57]

I worked as an engineer for United Technologies Pratt & Whitney division, which was a competitor of GE in the aircraft engine business so GE was kicking our butt in the 80's and 90's with engines for the Boeing 737.

I recall at least a dozen times an announcement would come out on a new hire from GE who was supposed to be a hot shot and shake things up. Well I had the chance to work closely with a couple of these GE "experts" and boy we were not impressed. A few were quietly moved to other non-critical jobs (i.e. management did not want to admit mistake in hiring) or they flamed out and left UTC.

Well I read Jack's book like many of us and when I got to the chapter on how GE never let the "good employees leave" showering them with stock options and promotions but would always drop the bottom 10-20% I realized that many of these bottom feeders likely were forced out of GE and made their way to our company. Oh the good old days of corporate BS...things never change.

 

[foxfirev5]

Yup. Definition of POS and I've never said that in my life about anyone alive or dead.

 

[travelover]

I think someone musta dug up the corpse.

 

[albireo13]

Overrated.