Jack told me he “flipped his lid” when Jeff missed the first quarter 2008 earnings guidance. He said “to shoot” someone if they missed their numbers was “a common phrase around GE at that time, as in ‘We’ll shoot him if he doesn’t do it.’ ” He said he “blew my top” but that Jeff had “overpromised,” adding “and you can put that on his gravestone: overpromised and underdelivered.” He then quoted from the letter he had written Reg Jones in 1979 as he was campaigning to become CEO. He wrote that GE needed earnings consistency: “Make the numbers. Make the cash flow if we’re ever going to be
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