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Jack Welch, the former chairman and CEO of General Electric who was once dubbed the “Manager of the Century,” died Sunday at his home,CNBCreported. He was 84.
“More than anything else — leader, business icon, management genius — more than those things, although they are all true too — Jack was a lifeforce made of love,” Suzy Welch, whom he married in 2004, told CNBC in a statement. “His irrepressible passion for people, all people, his brilliant curiosity about every-single-thing-on-earth, his gargantuan generosity of spirit toward friends and strangers alike — they added up to a man who was superhuman yet completely human at once.”
PresidentDonald Trumpalso paid tribute to Welch on Twitter, calling him a “business legend.”
“There was no corporate leader like ‘Neutron’ Jack,” Trump wrote. “He was my friend and supporter. We made wonderful deals together. He will never be forgotten. My warmest sympathies to his wonderful wife & family.”
Born in Massachusetts in 1935 to a homemaker mother and a Boston & Maine Railroad conductor father, Welch got his start with GE in 1960 as a chemical engineer.
He became the company’s vice president in 1972, and worked his way up the ladder over the next decade, eventually earning a promotion to chairman and CEO in 1981, according to CNBC.
His leadership earned him the title ofFortunemagazine’s “Manager of the Century” in 1999, which he held in addition to nicknames like “Neutron Jack,” a nod to his penchant for cutting jobs.
Jack Welch.Mike Coppola/Getty
“Neutron Jack” stemmed from Welch’s so-called “vitality curve,” which ranked workers into three different groups depending on their productivity and value to the company.
The curve made managers identify their top 20 percent of performers, who were to be “nurtured,” and their bottom 10 percent, who were fired, according to a 2001New York Timesop-ed written when Welch retired.
Welch retired from GE two days before the Sept. 11 World Trade Center terror attacks, and was praised in theTimesop-ed at the time as a “white-collar revolutionary” who left a lasting impact not just on his company but on “American corporate ethos, one that prizes nimbleness, speed and regeneration over older ideals like stability, loyalty and permanence.”
source: people.com
