Cordiner wasted little time in laying out his plan for massive decentralization as a way to empower a greater number of GE executives to run their own businesses. He split the behemoth that GE had become into twenty-seven independent divisions comprising 110 small companies, each the perfect size “for one man to get his arms around.” Each leader would run his own show, would make day-to-day decisions, would propose his (rarely her) own budget and marketing strategies, would be able to approve capital expenditures up to $200,000, and would basically be “freed up,” as Cordiner liked to say, to
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