GE CEO Jeff Immelt

This CEO perspectives class just gets better and better. Last week, when I walked out the class after Strauss talk, I told myself that is the reason that I took risk to come here, in the middle of my professional path, taking a break to recharge. Tonight we have Jeff from GE. where should I start?? I learned GE Through my undergraduate case study, learning Jeff's leadership style after Jack Welch during my UW graduate school case study, now I sat on the front row, seeing this man, listening his talk, just marvelous!

He started with what current situations means, risk -- the same risk/crisis we faced before, reality -- deficit, slow growth.

--- Financial restructure
--- emerging growth, robust than financials, e.g. Turkey, Korea
--- need to resolve healthcare, reform between government and business
--- if you run a big firm through crisis, what do you do? calm the market, prioritize needs ---> safety first(keep large cash flow, priority, keep competition)
--- his philosophy "make hard decision fast, get complicated things away, people will eventually love you again"
--- Reset company to Renew company, which he analyzed multiple times about how to reset and how to renew, those are hand in hand, want to keep profolio supper consistent, close to the core business, and simplify profolio with 20% up for R&D in business, 80 core spaces to fill out
--- regulation tends to fix past problems, not now
--- bring technology, business model and practice to healthcare, public and private problems
--- hard to figure out nuclear business, last project(huge money lost) is in Finland (quite linked to the project I am working now)
--- he spent his time 30% on people, 30% on company growth, 30% on company's issue and 10% on governess
--- use business school study to find what you like to do, learn to be a good learner, how much you learn leads to how much you can give, "self-relective" is key!
--- you are your worst critics, learning to give yourself personal freedom. Mean to work with confident, not having fear. Do not manage career from fear, but from confidence.
--- his future successor should maintain social strong, a globalist, and good at technology
--- current students are studying past, not ready for future. The best advices he tried to give to students are: use past to learn, find the way, but not trap in the old fashion thinking(I am glad that I am at MIT, where your conventional thinkings are broken constantly.), try new thing, proactive, find out what is next, be part of next.

After class, I chatted with instructor who told me that Jeff has been so great, trying to make his schedule work out to come here. During the talk, he talked about how GE handles the political situations for the business, culture adjustment to keep global business, but he did not let this two hours become one of routine meeting, really challenge us to think hard and deep.