Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric

by Thomas Gryta

The GE of the late twentieth century and the fitful first two decades of the twenty-first has stood for more than what it made. It has represented a capitalistic meritocracy, a locus not just of success but of a certain version of virtue—the virtue of targets made, goals surpassed, earnings earned, markets won. And it has stood for a vague but well-marketed notion that, in the unapologetic pursuit of a company’s fortunes, and one’s own, there is a certain uprightness—and a lesson for others. But GE has stood for a well-bred hubris as well. Under Immelt, the company believed that the will to hit a target could supersede the math, even when hundreds of thousands of livelihoods—those of investors, customers, and suppliers, to say nothing of workers, retirees, and their families—hung in the balance. GE became synonymous with the idea that all that stood between a company and an arbitrary $2 earnings target was drive—simply wanting it bad enough. Here the company’s aggressive accounting, macho culture, and reliance on competitive metaphor converged. Immelt’s greatest asset as a manager, even in his staunchest allies’ telling, came down to a football coach’s insistence on the prevailing power of gumption and guts. Even numbers were supposed to give way, like a tackle sled on a football practice field, if you cared enough, lowered your shoulder, and wanted it more than the next guy in line. Where, Jeff Immelt used to ask from behind the dais in the Pit, is the guy I used to know?...