ABSTRACT
Jack Welch, who retired as head of General Electric late in 2001, was one of the most admired business leaders of the 1990s. Opinion polls of businessmen regularly named him as the most successful CEO in America, or even the world. GE itself was one of the world’s most admired companies. Ruthless, talented, ambitious and pragmatic, Welch seemed the archetypal American industrialist. His successes over nearly thirty-five years with the corporation can be ascribed not to a talent for innovation, or to strategic genius-Welch has by common consent neither of these virtues-or even to his own leadership style, but rather are down to simple managerial competence. What Welch did he did well, usually better than his competitors. His career shows us that the ability to focus on basics and work hard may itself be a source of powerful competitive advantage in a world of business dominated by confusion and fad.
