Latest news with #JackWelch
Forbes
9 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
The Eight Virtues Of Great Leaders
A torn piece of paper with the word "Leadership" printed on it leans against a compass which is out ... More of focus in the background. I write on leadership (and a few other topics) because I'm supposed to be an 'expert.' Well, let me set the record straight. That word – expert – makes me nervous. At best, I'm a know-it-all, and so you know the difference, an expert knows it all; a know-it-all thinks he's an expert. But I've learned along the way since my career began 57 years ago, and leadership is one area in which I can share some value, as I've filled numerous leadership positions and consulted to many others across 25 industries. 'Leadership cannot be taught. It can only be learned.' So declared Harold Geneen, CEO of ITT when it was the world's largest conglomerate. That aphorism of his is so solid, so unassailable, and so universal, that all leadership theory and practice springs forth from it. Or at least, it should. Furthermore, it should support the axiom that it is not skills alone that will determine leadership in the 21st century and beyond. It's the humanity of the leader that will do it every time. Case in point, two prominent American CEOs of the 1980s and 1990s: Jack Welch of GE and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco. There's not enough room here for the story, but you should look it up. It's a good one. Although they were both hard-charging, blazingly smart, and brutally (uncomfortably) honest, Welch was virtuous and Kozlowski was a convicted criminal. Welch spent his retirement in glory; Kozlowski spent six years in jail. So, as I rest my case about leadership virtues being the differentiators, here's what I've learned along the way: The Eight Virtues of Great Leaders. Vision Great leaders know that the future did not just happen. It was created. They see it before the rest of us do, have unusual clarity in articulating it, and are unwaveringly committed to it. Forthrightness Great leaders are honest (to a fault), just, fair, unbiased, ethical, and moral. They say what they mean and mean what they say. They are consistent. Strong sense of self Great leaders are self-reliant, selfless, have a realistic view of the present and a comfortable relationship with it. They are strong but not at the expense of others. Just the opposite: in support of others. They are empathetic, and they use their strong self in service of, not in command of, others. Sphere of Awareness The world is growing every day and the provincial attitude that minding your own store is all you need to do – is failure waiting to happen. Great leaders are constantly enlarging their sphere of awareness – and yours along with it. Energy Great leaders exude strength and stamina. They have been generators with high output who now are ready to become fusion reactors that produce more energy than they consume. No, that's not impossible; it's been achieved in a laboratory setting in Livermore, California, and is the new model for energy. Great leaders don't suck up energy; they proliferate it. Creativity Creativity is the only sustainable asset that any person, organization, or nation will ever again have. Great leaders believe that you can steal their current assets but as long a they can continue to generate new ideas, they will win. They're right. Originality and adaptability are hallmarks here. Trust Thomas Edison was asked why he had 300 assistants, 'Because I can't do all this by myself,' said he. That, from the greatest idea creation genius in history. Aside from reading, the thing that has moved humanity forward more than anything else is humor. It is uniquely human, and as long as it is nonhostile, it is a key leadership virtue. My Observation From the first leader I ever coached to the last, not to mention my own leadership development, leadership virtues outplayed leadership skills every single time.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Govers hat-trick sparks Kookaburras comeback win
Blake Govers has fired a stunning match-saving hat-trick as Australia fought back to secure a remarkable Pro League victory over England in London. The Kookaburras, who had seven penalty corners in the first half, were given a flying start when Victorian Cooper Burns showed quick hands in the circle to net in the fourth minute. England were level nine minutes later when Zach Wallace scored via a scrappy field goal before home debutant Henry Croft put them ahead in the second quarter. And when Sam Hooper made it 3-1 just before halftime with a fierce drag flick, the match certainly looked to be going the hosts' way. But the final quarter became the Govers show in a dazzling two-minute spell, as the 28-year-old Wollongong star pulled one back for the Kookaburras with a 39th-minute drag flick, before equalising after blasting home from a penalty corner. Govers then completed the fightback with a diving deflection to wrap-up a fine win for the men in gold, which ensured they remain unbeaten in the European Pro League competition. It completed a memorable day for Tasmania's Jack Welch, who brought up his 50th Kookaburras cap. But also for his teammate Davis Atkin, one of Australia's openly gay athletes, as the Kookaburras donned rainbow socks on a day dedicated to celebrating diversity and inclusion. No lead is safe against the Kookaburras, especially when Blake Govers is firing like this with an 8-minute-hattrick 🔥We're up against England again Sunday 22 June from 11:30pm AEST - don't miss it live and free on 7plus — Kookaburras (@Kookaburras) June 21, 2025 "I said to the boys this morning that I just really appreciate everyone being as inclusive as they are, and this was as simple as wearing socks, but I'm able to flourish as much as I can," Atkin said. "It's hard to describe the feeling. I had this nervous, anxious feeling of butterflies before the match, that this really means something to me. It means something to so many people." Player-of-the-match Govers admitted England were a difficult nut to crack. "England at home is always a tough match, they really stuck it to us in the first half," Govers told 7plus. "We were lucky to bounce back and get those goals in the second half. They were team goals. Someone has to get the corners, and I'm just on the back end of great team play, but very happy to have done the job and gotten those in." The Kookaburras can defend their title if they win their remaining three matches against England and Germany, with game two against England also tonight in London. It was a tougher day for Australia's women, however, who suffered a tough 4-0 defeat to Germany in their penultimate Pro League match in Berlin. The Hockeyroos, who also wore rainbow socks in support of inclusion and visibility in sport, were confident following a victory over England but they were unable to contain the hosts who lifted themselves off the bottom of the table thanks to goals from Sara Strauss, Lynn Krings, Sophia Schwabe and Jette Fleschutz.
Forbes
30-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Elon Musk's DOGE: A Jack Welch Tactic That Could Break America
Musk's efficiency-fueled crusade mirrors Jack Welch's approach to managing GE—and that didn't go well. Elon Musk stepped into the Trump administration wielding a metaphorical chainsaw, promising to slash $2 trillion from federal spending through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). After 130 days, DOGE claimed $160 billion in savings—far short of his $2 trillion goal. But the real story isn't about disappointing arithmetic. It's about how Musk took a page from Jack Welch's playbook—a management philosophy that initially dazzled Wall Street but ultimately destroyed one of America's most iconic companies. Jack Welch, GE's legendary CEO from 1981 to 2001, pioneered what became known as "rank-and-yank"—forcing managers to fire the bottom 10% of employees annually, regardless of the often-immeasurable ways they contributed to their teams and the organization. His approach was seductively simple: systematically eliminate the weakest performers, and the organization automatically becomes stronger. Musk has applied this same logic to the federal government, orchestrating layoffs affecting more than 280,000 federal workers and contractors in over 30 agencies—potentially the largest mass layoff in U.S. history. Both leaders shared an obsession with dramatic, visible cuts. Welch earned the nickname "Neutron Jack" for eliminating over 100,000 people while leaving buildings intact. Musk's Musk literally brandished a chainsaw at the Conservative Political Action Conference, declaring it his tool for cutting bureaucracy. That's where 'Chainsaw Elon' channelled 'Neutron Jack.' Both Musk and Welch were trained as technicians: Musk in physics, engineering and economics, Welch in engineering. Both applied their technical skills to complex challenges, treating them as simple mathematical problems: subtract the "inefficient" parts, and performance automatically improves. Initially, both approaches appeared brilliant. Under Welch, GE's revenues grew five-fold from $26.8 billion to $130 billion, earning him Fortune magazine's "Manager of the Century" title in 1999. Business school professors were teaching GE as the gold standard. Companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Goldman Sachs were adopting similar forced-ranking systems, believing they too could mirror similar results. Musk's early DOGE victories were similarly lauded. The promise of streamlined government resonated with efficiency-minded executives and frustrated taxpayers alike. But Welch's approach contained a fundamental error that Musk is now repeating at a national scale. They assumed that by optimizing the individual components of an organization, they would optimize the whole system—what academics call an "atomistic fallacy. They treated organizations like machines where one can simply remove "inefficient" parts without considering the complex web of relationships, institutional knowledge, and collaborative dynamics that actually drive performance. At Microsoft, the forced-ranking system created internal warfare. One engineer reflected: "One of the most valuable things I learned was to give the appearance of being courteous while withholding just enough information from colleagues to ensure they didn't get ahead of me on the rankings." It was during this time that Microsoft lost ground to Apple and Google as employees focused on competing with their internal colleagues, rather than innovating with colleagues to beat the external competition. Musk's cuts reveal similar systemic blindness. After Musk fired about 1,000 park rangers, educators, and maintenance staff, he undermined the National Parks Service's ability to admit visitors, manage their safety, and prepare for and put out wildfires. All of these raise risks, add costs, and diminish revenues. Ed Welch, the 27-year ranger at Independence National Historical Park and President of AFGE Local 2058, put it starkly 'we aren't cogs, we're human beings.' Elon Musk, like Jack Welch, failed to understand how complex organizations work and the engines to their success. Both leaders fell into a measurement trap—believing that complex human contributions can be captured through simple metrics. Welch's forced rankings couldn't measure mentorship, collaboration, or innovation—the very capabilities that drive long-term organizational success. As well, it's easy to make mistake with numbers. There's the fact that the numbers are highly disputed. DOGE's claimed $160 billion in savings, but the Partnership for Public Service estimate that the cuts will actually cost taxpayers $135 billion this fiscal year due to productivity losses, rehiring mistakes, and operational disruptions. Further, DOGE's "wall of receipts" reveals the measurement problem in stark detail: while claiming $115 billion in savings, only $35 billion could actually be itemized. This was partly attributable to simple errors, including a contract erroneously listed at $8 billion that was actually worth $8 million. This isn't just sloppy accounting—it shows how easily numbers can be manipulated, made up, or simply mistaken. The real test of Welch's philosophy came after his departure. Despite GE's apparent success under his leadership, the company that emerged was fragile and over-leveraged. His successor, Jeffrey Immelt, inherited what looked like a powerhouse but was actually a hollowed-out shell optimized for short-term financial performance. During Immelt's 16-year tenure, GE's stock fell over 30%, representing roughly $150 billion in lost shareholder value. By 2021, GE announced it would split up the conglomerate into three separate companies—essentially dismantling Welch's empire entirely. The pattern is unmistakable: Welch's efficiency-first approach created the illusion of organizational health while systematically destroying the institutional knowledge, collaborative networks, and adaptive capacity that enable long-term resilience. The real impact of his work will only be known in the future. Musk could experience the same catastrophic outcome as Welch's GE strategy—short-term "efficiency" that destroys long-term capability. Culling IRS auditors, dismissing cancer researchers at the VA, and gutting cybersecurity staff might look efficient on a spreadsheet, but it dismantles decades of accumulated expertise and institutional memory. Unlike a private company, government failure has consequences that extend far beyond shareholders. Researchers estimate that without U.S. global health programs, an additional 1 million children will be infected with HIV over the next five years, with 500,000 dying from AIDS and 2.8 million becoming orphaned. These are expressed as numbers that appeal to technicians, like Musk, but they mask the costs to people. Pain can't be expressed by spreadsheets and balance sheets. Each person's pain is just one spark that can smoulder into a wildfire that erodes the very foundations of society. Efficiency-based cuts for a government are so much more costly for a government than a corporation. Whereas Welch could sell his lighting plant to another firm, the government does not sell the service to another firm. The government simply shutters the activity. When the National Park Service and Veteran Affairs are gutted, they will be gone for good. Musk is familiar with deep cuts in organization. His DOGE chainsaw simply mirrored the the theatrics of the kitchen sink he carried after he bought Twitter. The similarities do not end there. He applied his efficiency-first philosophy to Twitter, firing more than 6,000 Twitter employees--constituting around 80% of its workforce. Several departments were critically understaffed and staff morale critically damaged. Fidelity, which helped finance Musk's Twitter acquisition, now values X at 72% of the $44 million Musk paid. U.S. advertising revenue continues to remain at about 50% of pre-Musk days. Even Musk recognizes the challenges ahead. In a leaked email to The Wall Street Journal, Musk told X staff that 'Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we're barely breaking even.' Musk officially stepped down from DOGE on May 28, 2025, as his 130-day limit as a special government employee expired. But the damage may already be done. He had optimized for short-term metrics while systematically dismantling the government's long-term capabilities. It might take years to see the effects of these cuts, but by then, it will be hard to know on whom to pin the blame. There is one important lesson from Musk and Welch's strategies: complex systems—whether corporations or governments—cannot be optimized like machines. They require understanding of relationships, context, and emergent properties that simple efficiency metrics miss entirely. Musk may not be around to suffer the long-term costs of his cuts, but Americans most certainly will be.
Forbes
16-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
AI's Pace Of Change: Six Indicators You Are Too Slow
AI startups are setting a faster pace of change than ever before. You know you are in trouble, said the legendary CEO Jack Welch, when the pace of change outside the company is faster than that inside. If that's true, then the rate of growth of AI startups should be striking terror into corporate board rooms around the world. I have been skeptical of the pace at which AI will convert its potential into an economic revolution. However, I do not think that is a reason for complacency. Now is the time to ask if we are moving fast enough to ride the wave when it comes or if we will be washed aside. AI startups are converting ideas into revenue at 10X the speed of previous generations with a fraction of the cost and far smaller teams. The old logic was that it takes a software startup anything from 3 to 5 years to get to $50M of revenue and another 5 to 7, to go to $1B. The AI generation is making this look sluggish. Self-coding AI Lovable has posted $40M of annual recurring revenue in 5 months of trading on the back of just $7.5M of venture funding. Bolt's numbers are roughly the same, $30M in 4 months, with just $7.9M. Both of which look like slackers compared with image generation company Midjourney, which scaled to $200M ARR without any funding and an initial team of less than 10. [MK1] Given the billions of dollars corporations spend to keep up in the AI race, one would think they are keeping up. However, all the evidence is that most are struggling to convert playing with AI into tangible outcomes. Managers get ahead in large corporations by projecting confidence and certainty. You reassure the board and senior managers by demonstrating you have a plan, that there is 'alignment' between stakeholders, and that you will deliver 'unique' advantages. The problem with this traditional approach is that nobody is certain how AI will play out. Corporations have struggled to find solid use cases to convert the hype into revenue. Consumers have started to roll their eyes at promises of embedded AI in everything from mobile phones to personal computers. It is time to admit we don't know. We need to make a virtue of living with the uncertainty. That means lots of disciplined, small-scale efforts to learn what works, before converting it into the next big thing. Guessing how AI will deliver benefit and spending big on a master plan is a dangerous game. My colleague Michael Kaplun has been working on this problem. How do we know we are going fast enough? I converted his more thoughtful work into six ugly errors that we see companies committing. If any of these apply, it's time to get the skates on and figure out how to get to the head of the puck. This is just six big issues we are seeing out there as companies wrestle to turn AI's potential into commercial reality. Hype cycles have a predictable path, and we are headed for the moment at which we all draw breath, realizing that the change isn't as fundamental as we thought. Or at least we were before we saw what Lovable has achieved. The message is clear. We need to move faster.
CNBC
15-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Using options to trade the sell-off in UnitedHealth shares
The Fortune 500 index ranks the 500 largest companies in the nation by revenue. Third on the list, trailing only Walmart and Amazon, is the nation's largest health insurer, UnitedHealth. The company has had a tough go of it recently. Late last year, the CEO of the company's UnitedHealth subsidiary was shot and killed just as he was entering the Hilton in Midtown to present at a conference. The company missed earnings and reduced guidance in April. On Tuesday, the CEO resigned "for personal reasons," the company suspended guidance only a month after reducing it. The average of analysts' 12-month price targets, over $640 per share earlier this year, has fallen more than 30% to $438. Then, after the close on Wednesday, the fire responsible for all that smoke was revealed when The Wall Street Journal reported a criminal investigation for possible Medicare fraud by the Department of Justice. The stock fell another 15% on Thursday, making it the worst-performing stock in the S & P 500 this year. When a company with a long and successful track record falters this severely, we have to ask ourselves questions to help establish whether the crisis is existential, persistent, prolonged or temporary: Is a secular shift in the industry threatening the business? Think Blockbuster Video before Netflix entered the picture—existential. Was there an unusually strong cycle that is unlikely to repeat? A "pig in a python" scenario — think Pfizer and Moderna with Covid vaccines — persistent/prolonged. Was the company fraudulently cooking the books? Think Enron or Worldcom —existential. Was the company creatively "massaging" its financials with creative accounting? Consider General Electric during the Jack Welch/Jeff Immelt era —persistent/prolonged. Is this a valuation issue where the price and the fundamentals are diverging? Think of Amazon in the late 1990s and early aughts. The stock price fell 95%, peak to trough, while revenues doubled–temporary. Is the company facing massive legal or regulatory problems that will significantly impair the business? Think tobacco, PG & E or Boeing — persistent/prolonged. More bad news is possible. The company insists it has done nothing wrong and said the DOJ had not notified it of the reported investigation. While executives insisted on a conference call Tuesday that they intend and expect to get back to prior margins and growth targets, it seems unlikely all this damage can be erased in the near term, and options prices, already elevated on hefty volume this week, are likely to rise even further now. Uncertainty caused a sharp drop in the stock price, a spike in options prices. A possible criminal investigation compound the hazards facing contrarians looking to pick up a once great company on the cheap. It's always tricky to try and catch a falling knife. But as the two charts above reveal, 1) a 4% net income margin is a conservative baseline assumption, and 2) the only times UNH has traded much cheaper than it is right now were in the 1999/2000 time frame and during the great financial crisis. Could the stock fall to those multiples again or even lower? Of course, it shows how depressed the stock price is now. One way to take advantage of the depressed stock price combined with well-above-average options premiums is to perform a call/spread risk reversal, as follows. However, remember that this is a speculative long-term bet. The trade: Buy 1 June 27 $265 call Sell 1 June 27 $300 call Sell 1 June 27 $240 put Incidentally, if you own the stock and want a little kicker to upside without adding to downside risk, consider overlaying your long stock with zero-cost 1x2 call spreads. DISCLOSURES: All opinions expressed by the CNBC Pro contributors are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC, NBC UNIVERSAL, their parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, internet or another medium. THE ABOVE CONTENT IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY . THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND DOES NOT CONSITUTE FINANCIAL, INVESTMENT, TAX OR LEGAL ADVICE OR A RECOMMENDATION TO BUY ANY SECURITY OR OTHER FINANCIAL ASSET. THE CONTENT IS GENERAL IN NATURE AND DOES NOT REFLECT ANY INDIVIDUAL'S UNIQUE PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES. THE ABOVE CONTENT MIGHT NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUR PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCES. BEFORE MAKING ANY FINANCIAL DECISIONS, YOU SHOULD STRONGLY CONSIDER SEEKING ADVICE FROM YOUR OWN FINANCIAL OR INVESTMENT ADVISOR. Click here for the full disclaimer.
