Founder connections
- Ed CatmullExplicit praise in an original interviewCatmull names Gelles’s book and calls it a great book while discussing quality, GE and the costs of short-term financial targets. This is explicit praise, not a verified claim about which edition he read.Source
Summary
David Gelles offers a critical account of Jack Welch’s leadership of General Electric and the wider influence of his methods. He argues that the pursuit of shareholder returns encouraged layoffs, acquisitions and financial activity at the expense of workers, manufacturing and long-term investment. The book follows how managers trained at GE took related ideas into other companies, including Boeing, Home Depot and Kraft Heinz. It also considers leaders who have taken a different approach to business and its duties. Gelles’s account is an argument about the costs of a celebrated management model, not a neutral handbook or an endorsement of Welch’s methods.
Why read it Our view
Use this to test whether a growth target is improving a product business or consuming its future. Read the author’s argument about investment, quality and financial measures alongside the evidence he presents, then examine which measures your own team rewards.