Bornstein quickly saw that the company’s operations, which increasingly ranged widely around the world, were riddled with clutter, duplication, waste, inefficiency, and complexity. Raised in the GE culture of Welch, with little tolerance for bullshit, he saw pent-up profit that could be gleaned from simply cutting. Releasing the synergies that would come from eliminating redundancies—that is, people GE didn’t need anymore—would lead to higher earnings. As renewed attention led them to try to whip the industrial businesses into shape, Bornstein, Immelt, and the rest of the GE top brass soon
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