[ghaff]

For any successful company, you can probably find ex-employees who think that some "fat trimming" was excessive and unnecessarily cruel or that they pushed some line or another in excessive ways.

The Jack Welch case (and I'd add Mark Hurd at HP) was an example of financial engineering looking great for a time--until it wasn't.

[rkhassen9]

ghaff. you said the first part well well. Welch "looked great" its the second part "until it wasn't." that stands out to me...because his approach, to kill the goose to get the golden eggs, so to speak, was doomed from the beginning. Its just hard to tell early on if you don't know what to look for. People in his orgs knew what was happening, but hard to go against the "hero".

I don't know a solution to these kinds of scenarios except for having a more wise and educated populace. Perhaps trusting the people at the bottom. Big issues. Hard to solve. And in today's world, harder than ever.