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DELIVERING THE MESSAGE
CHAPTER 8
Ph.D. in chemical engineering, then went to work for GE Plastics. He rose
through the ranks, becoming a general manager at 33, then rising to a vice
presidency and later to vice chairman of GE Credit. At age 45, he was named
.1
CEO. According to Welch, his tenure at GE was focused on “three funda-
mental things”: hardware, behavior, and work processes. By hardware, Welch
means business priorities, i.e., being first or second in every market segment.
Behavior refers to “boundarylessness, open idea sharing” among business
units. Work processes concerns finding ways to improve the way the work gets
done. 2
These fundamentals coincide with the three phases of Welch’s career in
the top slot. During phase 1, he was called “Neutron Jack,” getting into and out
of businesses and engaging in heavy layoffs. Phase 2 was called “Work-Out”;
managers worked with their people to determine strategies and tactics. Senior
leaders sketched the issues and left teams to “work out” solutions; the boss
could reject or accept these solutions on the spot or ask for more inform-
ation—but always with a timetable. Phase 3 was Six Sigma, a quality-centric
approach to business and people, or, as Welch put it, “transforming everything
we do.” 3
USING COMMUNICATIONS TO LEAD
Each of these phases required a “sell-in” period, and that’s where Welch
earned his stripes as a communicator, getting the word to GE’s vast multidis-
ciplinary business operations throughout the world. His secret? Simplicity.
Welch intuitively understands how to break things down into simple parts to
make them understandable by all.
Welch repeats himself purposely. “In leadership you have to exaggerate
every statement you make. You’ve got to repeat it a thousand times. . . . Over-
4
statements are needed to move a large organization.” Welch is careful to point
out that you need to back up the overstatements with action. For example,
when he spoke of getting rid of people who achieved but in the process tram-
pled on other people, he meant it, and those people were systematically rooted
out of the organization. 5
An additional method for getting buy-in is to give the audience a reason
to believe. Welch tells the story of the time he asked people to cut travel
expenses by 30 percent. To forestall a backlash, Welch wrapped the message
in the context of integrating work and life. “Look, you’ve [managers] been
telling me your biggest problem is that you don’t see your families enough.
6
Now you’re going to be seeing your families 30% more.” Linking the leader-
ship message to a strategy, or, better yet, an individual benefit, helps overcome
resistance. Such linkage may require some clever thinking, but as Welch