But while Jack’s personal leadership and focus on performance made for a tremendous upside in terms of discipline and loyalty and stock price, it also created a top-down, parent-child relationship between Jack and GE employees. Having 300,000 employees working in lockstep is powerful, but it’s hard to enlist risky new ideas from people who are expected to do everything perfectly. A society that glorifies numbers—and fears mistakes—leaves little room for human imperfections.
