Lights Out cover art

Lights Out

Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric

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Lights Out

By: Thomas Gryta, Ted Mann
Narrated by: James Edward Thomas
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About this listen

How could General Electric—perhaps America's most iconic corporation—suffer such a swift and sudden fall from grace?

This is the definitive history of General Electric's epic decline, as told by the two Wall Street Journal reporters who covered its fall.

Since its founding in 1892, GE has been more than just a corporation. For generations, it was job security, a solidly safe investment, and an elite business education for top managers.

GE electrified America, powering everything from lightbulbs to turbines, and became fully integrated into the American societal mindset as few companies ever had. And after two decades of leadership under legendary CEO Jack Welch, GE entered the 21st century as America's most valuable corporation. Yet, fewer than two decades later, the GE of old was gone.

Lights Out examines how Welch's handpicked successor, Jeff Immelt, tried to fix flaws in Welch's profit machine, while stumbling headlong into mistakes of his own. In the end, GE's traditional win-at-all-costs driven culture seemed to lose its direction, which ultimately caused the company's decline on both a personal and organizational scale. Lights Out details how one of America's all-time great companies has been reduced to a cautionary tale for our times.

©2020 Thomas Gryta (P)2020 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Economic History Economics Business Banking Management Wall Street Leadership Manufacturing History
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What ever Jeff Immelt did to the author he shouldn't have. This entire book is about making him look like a dummy. He may have been. However, in a company of this size it is unlikely to be all his fault.

The story is a sad one about how businesses can kill themselves. It was interesting and worth a listen although the perspective is clearly one of trying to highlight the flaws of one leader and the way they compounded a companies bad habits all the way to the end.

Jeff must have did him wrong.

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