[protomyth]

Well, maybe their "rank and yank" fostered a low teamwork environment or they fired the people who would actually of helped them with the next big thing. Frankly, their management contribution to American business has to be one of their darkest legacies.

[tinkerteller]

My employer is famous for hiring folks at executive levels from GE and I can tell you without doubt that most of them had been some of the the worse execs I have came across. I can easily see GE as frothing with some of the worst senior level clueless "talent" out there.

I think GE used to be great under Jack Welch because he ruthlessly demanded results. When you operate in that mode virtually anything works because everything other than success gets brutally weeded out. You can start any number of new businesses and the evolution system implemented by ruthless pruning eventually will yield successful species. After Welch left, GE decided to use most of his principles as blueprint except one: demand top notch results and ruthlessly weed out everything else. One company that operates like GE under Welsh these days is Amazon. It would be very hard for any exec to spend 5 years at Amazon without showing amazing results. On the other hand I know plenty of execs at big 5 tech who have sailed through for as much as decade by simply "managing up".

[raverbashing]

This seems like a "darned if you do, darned if you don't" mentality

Allowing managers to coast and play office politics sucks but also squeezing them doesn't seem very positive (though I'm sure it's great for results)