CommonWealth Magazine - Summer/Fall 2005
Jack Welch Visits the Isenberg School
“I got a great start and had a terrific time at UMass,” observed retired General Electric Chairman and best-selling author Jack Welch ’57. “During my undergraduate years, the chemistry department was fabulous and the university was known for its outstanding engineering and turf schools. And at $50 a semester, it was a real deal,” recalled the former chemical engineering major.
During his visit to the Isenberg School, Welch fielded questions from student panelists and an audience of 300 students and faculty members. The UMass Amherst alumnus had accepted an invitation to speak at the School by students in Professor Anurag Sharma’s senior-year honors course, Business Policy and Entrepreneurial Strategy. Coauthor with his wife Suzy of the current business best seller, Winning (HarperBusiness), Welch discussed the book’s origins and prescriptions. The visit was also the occasion for a significant announcement: the GE Foundation has given the Amherst campus $5 million to create the Jack Welch Scholars Program, which offers four full-ride annual scholarships earmarked for students in engineering and management. At $5 million, the program is the largest scholarship endowment in the history of the University of Massachusetts.
During his hour-long presentation, Welch exuded many of the energizing, tough-minded leadership qualities that for twenty years had made him one of America’s most admired chief executives. “I’m the ultimate learner. New things turn me on,” he told the students. “Cultivate a thirst for knowledge. Read widely and seek out the collective best knowledge from everyone around you. If you act like you’re the smartest person in the company, you’ll get zippo.” To secure a culture of learning and winning you must match rewards to employee behaviors, Welch continued. “Rewarding idea sharing is crucial. Reward in both the soul and in the wallet. Show me a company’s pay and bonus plan, and I’ll show you how that company works.
“At General Electric, we give employees the tools to keep learning and growing. We guarantee them employability, not employment. Only customers guarantee employment, Welch insisted. So-called “kind” managers who fail to give their employees constructive criticism are not doing them or their companies a favor,” he emphasized. “My people always knew where I stood. It’s outrageous when “wonderful,” “kind” managers fail to face their employees critically and then years later they say, sorry, we have to let you go. That’s cruelty.” On the other hand, “When you see others flourish, it’s the greatest turn-on of all time. A manager is a gardener, doing occasional weeding but growing people and businesses. For me it’s been the thrill of a lifetime.”
“My first book was all about me; Winning is about what we learned from our visits with 300,000 people all around the world,” Welch remarked. “Globalization is good. Markets have become bigger and speed and response times faster. There’s so much excitement. Would you rather be in a slow moving economy? Competition is great.”
We can’t be victims of the world economy; we must capitalize on it, Welch continued. China and India are competitive threats but they represent opportunities. America must capitalize on its own strategic advantages—its information and high technology economy. Better to follow the win-win example of GE’s Medical Systems division, which expanded high-tech jobs in Milwaukee while simultaneously creating low-paying manufacturing jobs in China.
Entrepreneurial energy and cut-rate costs of doing business in Eastern Europe, Welch added, are energizing Western Europe as well. “Siemens moved thirty thousand jobs to Eastern Europe last year. We recently talked to a Polish businessman who had just moved his plant to the Ukraine. In Eastern Europe, there are no 50-year-old managers; the senior managers are all in their thirties,” Welch observed. Ironically, he continued, it’s Western Europe that has 12 percent unemployment and faces state-supported obstacles, he noted. But Eastern Europe’s entrepreneurial energy will ultimately serve to ‘rip the shackles off socialism’ in the EEC’s founding countries.
“How did you slow down?” a student asked Welch toward the end of his presentation. After a bemused pause, Welch responded, “I pray to God that I haven’t.” Welch’s legendary prowess as a motivator was not lost on his audience. Following his presentation, a long line of well-wishers snaked through the Isenberg School atrium into an executive case room where Welch autographed their newly purchased copies of Winning.