I was around 15 or 16 years old when I first read ‘Straight From the Gut’ by Jack Welch. I will admit that I LOVED the book . I mean his story was just amazing – a working class boy from suburban America, making it up to the highest echelon of the corporate world: The great American dream, isn’t it?
I genuinely thought his business philosophy was brilliant i.e. eliminating ‘low’ performers. It was all about working hard and slaying harder. If you are not number 1 or number 2 in a space – Get out! The 15 year old Indian middle class me, thought he was a genius and aspired to be the business leader he was (All the people thinking -’ Ah now we know what happened to you as a child’ – you’ve got it right!)
But life had other plans for me!
In the last few years I could not have gotten further away from what Jack preached and for that, I am grateful! Even early on in my career, when I was being ‘groomed’ to be a partner in the consulting firm I was working in right after business school, (way before my awareness journey) my intuition told me that this was not my path. I think I got lucky to be in roles that challenged me and made significant impacts on my learning and added value to all the parties involved. Of course, I was getting paid very well and I didn’t need to traverse the management hierarchy either!
Fast forward 25 years from getting (ahem) ‘inspired’ by Jack, I have achieved every corporate success on my bucket list. I led and delivered some incredible projects. In fact, some tools and processes I built are still in use at some of the companies I worked with and the stock prices of the companies have certainly done well.
Truth be told, it isn’t the success that I am proud of, but the relationships that I have built throughout my decade and a half career that truly delights me. Knowing my colleagues (now friends), their families, their interests and thereby being able to support them outside of work while having a joyous relationship at work, is more than what I could have asked for!
I left the corporate world to answer the calling of my destiny: to help high level performers who live the kind of high stress lives I used to live; find fulfillment and greater authenticity through mindfulness practices and more conscious living. And yes, you will be pleasantly surprised to know that an increase in your happiness directly increases your productivity (the latter is not what I help you with but it is a happy consequence!).
Let’s go back to Jack. In my opinion, he has caused multi-generational trauma starting with the people who worked for GE when he was leading it – high performers with burnouts, their kids having lost quality time with their parents, their partners with broken hearts, and many other fractured relationships. Not to mention, his ‘rank and yank’ style was replicated at many companies. Why did he and other managers do this? Just for stockholder value, right? But what about employee value? Heck, what about human values? How would it have mattered if GE grew 15% vs. 20% ? Well I will tell you how – The environment would have been better for sure (look it up)!
Welch was the kind of business leader who was only interested in being Mr. RIGHT NOW! All he wanted was to push the stock value which he was doing to inflate his fragile EGO. I am not going to comment on his moral or personal choices since there isn’t much to say as he was cheating on his wife by having an affair with his biographer (Whatta sound guy!).
This brings us to his legacy: The measurable part of who he was is of course the company’s performance – his most cherished achievement. Do you want to know how that’s been doing since his departure?
GE’s market cap went from $450 billion to $200 billion. That is more than 50 percent drop in 20 years. What is immeasurable, sadly, is his human toll – the cost of extreme duress faced by his employees pursuing his megalomaniacal dreams.
All things aside, have you heard of any new top college grad saying, ‘Yes, I want to work for GE’ ? I think if not for the Defense contracts, GE would have been an irrelevant company by now!
Here’s a flashback – In 1999 he was named “Manager of the Century” by Fortune magazine. While I consider him nothing less than a “Monster”, I’m glad a lot has changed in the last 20 odd years (not counting yours truly). The most important amongst them is – the definition of success of a company that is now beyond the ‘Shareholder Value’.
If the pandemic has shown us something in this regard, it is that the companies that take care of their employees the most have the highest employee retention and experience stellar growth.
I’m glad we live in a world where we don’t want to be Jack Welch ever. But the truth is, there exists a Welch in all high performers. Heck, it did in me! It is buried deep in our subconscious. We get so caught up with whatever we are doing with work that we don’t realize not only are we pushing our team to the brink but we are also destroying ourselves and who we fundamentally are.
The truth is, we are all inherently good people and this goodness could be hidden because of societal conditioning and predetermined norms or circumstances.
At calmcorporate we believe in transforming (already) compassionate business leaders and high performers to be a better and more authentic version of themselves.
How?
We first start by bringing awareness within you. So, ask yourself – What do you want to be remembered for? Do you want your grandkids to call you Neutron Jack or do you want your employees to remember you as an ‘asshole’ of a boss or team leader?
I’m sure the answer to neither of these questions is a yes. But if you want your legacy to be something like – ‘What a lovely person! And s/he knew how to run a business!’ – Drop us a note.
Much love, raja sampathi
P.S. If you want to know the kind of leader I am, here goes (a message from an old colleague reconnecting!)
