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What About Welch's Successor?
It was announced today (November 27) that Jeffrey Immelt, 44-year-old president and CEO of GE Medical Systems, will succeed Jack Welch as CEO of GE. A CNN online news flash stated that he is "a natural leader," "ideally suited to lead GE for many years," possessing an imposing "physical presence," "intellectual strength," a "natural sense of humor," and the "ability to present himself well to both Wall Street and the average worker."
Given this, you may conclude that our discussion of the past several weeks about the important qualities and capabilities to be sought in a successor to Welch is moot. But as in any good Harvard Business School case discussion, hindsight provides neither a guide to the future nor necessarily the best response. With that as background, what was your advice (very timely, as it turns out) concerning GE's choice of a possible successor to Jack Welch?
In your responses there was little of the talk heard in the media about whether it will be possible for someone to successfully succeed Welch. The prevailing opinion was that the kind of leadership that Welch has provided and the values he has instilled in GE's management—speed, simplicity, self-confidence, and boundarylessness—are uniquely suited to the preparation of a successor who can take GE in new directions under the umbrella of the same set of values and the behaviors they inspire.
It was assumed that the successor would be named from within the organization. Only one respondent, who for some reason chose to remain anonymous, suggested that "new talent offers new perspectives and insights that insiders cannot see."
As for qualities and capabilities sought in Welch's successor, the discussion yielded mostly the usual suspects. For example, qualities cited (other than the ability to listen, learn, and teach; a vision of the future; and the ability to inspire confidence, which were mentioned in the article) included "energy, dynamism ... tremendous stamina ... a sound understanding of the principles of 'change,'" and a working knowledge of "new" economics, in the opinion of Devdip Ganguli. Roberto Rodriguez added "global thinking" and "entrepreneurial spirit" to the list.
While citing the need for qualities such as "a primal understanding of human nature" and "an intensely human soul that champions dignity and freedom of spirit," Arjun Balakrishnan also pointed out the need for someone with "a solid grasp of big-picture forces ... the ability to understand gender (and) generational diversity ... (who) seeks to surround herself/himself with competent people who are smarter than her/him ... (and who) wields power ... with responsibility and not ego."
In total, that's a tall order. Jeffrey Immelt, are you up to it?