[wnissen]

So I've read the big GE management book written by the folks at Crotonville, and concluded that Welch did a lot right, like moving responsibility within the company to the level where the knowledge is, and shedding units that were fundamentally unprofitable. I think you're right that as manufacturing shifted toward globalized supply chains that a certain amount of pain was inevitable and necessary.

However, it seems like a lot of his financial results came from "shaping" the quarterly earnings and various unsustainable practices. And for whatever reason his the culture he brought to the company has left his successors overseeing a company that has performed as one of the worst in the whole S&P over the last 15 years. Even if you take a pure industrial company like US Steel, which I don't think anyone would point to as being on the vanguard of management or product, GE is not doing all that well. I dunno. My pet theory is that "leaning" an organization is really a one-time thing, and that it's very challenging to do so without also removing the "seed corn" of research and even development of the next big thing. Though, to be fair, Edison himself had a wildly inconsistent financial record.