◼ BUSINESS Bloomberg Businessweek March 9, 2020171996: COURTESY BACKISSUES
● Welch was a frequent
cover subject over
the decadesTHE BOTTOM LINE Byrne, former executive editor of
BusinessWeekand editor-in-chief ofFast Company, has written
extensively about management and leadership for decades.reminding me that it was his book and he would
damn well decide what he wanted in it.
We went through every draft, word for word,
comma for comma, over and over again. During one
of our sessions that led to hundreds of changes scrib-
bled on every white space of the manuscript, Jack
grabbed my arm, looked me in the eye, and said,
“You’re going to f--- this up, aren’t you?” I laughed.
What else could I do? It was Jack being Jack.
There were tender moments as well. Jack grew
misty-eyed recalling the night he washed his
mother’s back in a hospital room, hours before her
death in 1965. And he was hilarious in recounting the
details of his heart attack in 1995 that led to bypass
surgery. (He dashed through a crowded hospital
emergency room at 1 a.m., jumped on an empty gur-
ney, and began shouting: “I’m dying! I’m dying!”)
But Jack became most animated when reflect-
ing on the ideas that formed the core of his man-
agement philosophy. We explored the origins of
many, from the dictum that a company be No. 1
or No. 2 in every business it remained in to the
concept of a “boundaryless” organization. (The
word came to him on a beach in Barbados when
a guy dressed up as Santa Claus popped out
of a submarine.) Those ideas, among others,
made him one of the most influential—and
sometimes controversial—corporate leaders of
the 20th century.
It’s a rare week when I don’t think about or
remind someone of what Jack taught me. To a
friend considering dismissing a poorly perform-
ing employee, I recently repeated Jack’s insis-
tence that anyone who is fired should never be
surprised, and it’s a manager’s responsibility to
make sure an employee knows his performance
is wanting. And I’m continually reminded of his
beliefs that people always trump strategies and
that hiring the best people and giving them what
Jack called “stretch assignments” was also a
responsibility of leadership. That’s why he consid-
ered GE not a conglomerate operating in multiple
businesses, but a people factory. Those ideas and
many more have stood the test of time.
Jack’s passing has brought much commentary
on his legacy, his many accomplishments, and
his perceived flaws. Yet what I remember and
admire most are not the results of the corporation
he so smartly led, but the extraordinary, imper-
fect human being behind it—the man who called
late one night to offer an unneeded apology to a
friend. �John A. Byrnein me, I want to apologize to you,” he said. “I want
you to know that the story is true. I fell in love, and
I don’t want you to feel betrayed in any way.”
Of course I didn’t. I already knew his second
marriage was in trouble, and I would never judge
two people who had clearly fallen in love. This was
the Jack Welch I had come to know and respect. It
was Jack, straight from the gut. In that call, he was
deeply human and openly accountable, willing to
own up to the painful consequences of his actions.
The obituaries faithfully chronicle GE’s nearly
fivefold rise in revenue and soaring market value
that made it the most valuable company in the
world under his leadership from 1981 to 2001. What
they often fail to fully capture is the real-life fig-
ure who was my friend. He was wickedly intelli-
gent, with a dogged curiosity that combined a deep
intellect with street smarts. He was laugh-out-loud
funny, never turned his mind off, and squeezed
every precious moment out of every day. And he
was never short of opinions or perspective. After
I obtained a leadership role in one editorial oper-
ation, for instance, he mentored me on how to
cautiously deal with a powerful superior. “He’s a
snake,” Jack told me, “and he’s the worst kind of
snake: He’s a smart one.”
Contrary to many accounts, Welch didn’t seek
the limelight and was never comfortable in it. It
took me almost a year to persuade him to sit for the
on-the-record interviews for a BusinessWeek cover
story I wrote in 1998. Two years later, that story
would lead to our book collaboration as Welch
approached his last year as CEO. Our relationship
never really ended. Shortly after becoming executive
editor of BusinessWeek in 2005, I asked Jack and his
new wife, Suzy, to write a weekly column. It quickly
became one of the magazine’s most read features.
Throughout the year working with him on the
memoir, the goal was to create an intimate conver-
sation between Jack and the reader, a dialogue that
might occur at a bar over a drink. Jack insisted that
there could be nothing in the book that might be
considered “pompous” or “preachy.” He wanted
to address the small and big mistakes of his career,
from his acquisition of Kidder Peabody to hir-
ing Japanese employees on their ability to speak
English. If anything, he was tough on himself—but
drew a line when it came to hurting someone else’s
feelings or reputation. He didn’t want a book that
settled scores or dished dirt.
It wasn’t easy to work closely with Jack. He was
the most demanding and relentlessly challenging
person I ever met. We fought over what to include
and what to omit. He sometimes grew frustrated
with my reluctance to change a draft, one time