Part of the difficulty derived from GE’s structure. As division managers, Immelt and his peers had set and tried to beat aggressive sales and profit targets for their units. But the other side of the ledger, making the tough financial decisions facing businesses every day, wasn’t part of their job leading business units. Unit leaders didn’t have to worry about their strategy for investing capital to ensure growth, or come up with the money to fund development of new products, or build new factories to handle demand. Some of the basic decisions made by children setting up a street corner
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