Few under the age of 30 might remember, but General Electric Co. was once a model of corporate greatness.
Back in 1999, when Steve Jobs was still fiddling with iMacs, Fortune magazine proclaimed Jack Welch, then GE's chief executive officer, the best manager of the 20th century.
Few people — of whatever age — would lavish such praise on the manufacturer these days.
GE, that paragon of modern management, has fallen so far that it's scarcely recognizable. The old GE is dead, undone by an unfortunate mix of missteps and bad luck. The new one now confronts some of the most daunting challenges in the company's 125-year history.
The numbers tell the story: This year alone, roughly $100 billion has been wiped off GE's stock market value. With mounting cash-flow problems at the once-mighty company, even the dividend is at risk of being cut. The last time GE chopped the payout was in the Great Recession — and before that, the Great Depression.
And yet the hit to the collective psyche of generations of investors and managers is incalculable. For decades, GE-think infiltrated boardrooms around the world. Six Sigma quality control, strict performance metrics, management boot camps — all that and more informed the MBAs of the 1970s, '80s, '90s and into this century. GE, in turn, seeded corporate America with its executives.
Anxious Investors
Now, John Flannery, GE's new CEO, is struggling to win back the trust of anxious investors. He's set to detail his turnaround plans on Monday — and has said he'll consider every option.
"There's nothing less than the fate of a once great, great company on the line," said Thomas O'Boyle, the author of "At Any Cost: Jack Welch, General Electric, and the Pursuit of Profit." "Some of the fundamental notions about its status as a conglomerate and whether it can succeed in a world of increasing complexity are really being challenged right now."
In hindsight, the seeds of this struggle were planted decades ago. Welch expanded and reshaped GE with hundreds of acquisitions and demanded every GE unit be No. 1 or No. 2 in its industry. He also culled low-performers ruthlessly, earning the nickname Neutron Jack. By the time he retired, in 2001, GE's market value had soared from less than $20 billion to almost $400 billion.
But all that maneuvering, plus GE's increasingly complex financial operations, obscured the underlying performance and put the company in peril during the 2008 financial crisis. Welch's successor, Jeffrey Immelt, soon embarked on a plan to undo much of the House that Jack Built. He would sell NBC and most of the finance operations — two of the businesses that defined Welch's tenure — along with units such as plastics and home appliances.
The moves narrowed GE's focus, yet it remains a collection of somewhat disparate manufacturing businesses, ranging from jet engines to oilfield equipment.
Out of Favor
