美国最伟大的公司之一 GE： "熄灯"《Lights Out》

2021年11月9日，GE宣布拆分为三：

• 新GE = GE Aviation

• 新公司1 = GE Healthcare

• 新公司2 = GE Renewable Energy, GE Power, GE Digital

这家 129 年历史的公司，从此分崩离析。让人不胜唏嘘。

它曾是全球市值第一的公司。它是美国最伟大的公司之一。它代表了美国工业的辉煌。

我一直对 GE 有浓厚的兴趣。

例如，向在 GE 工作的朋友讨教六西格玛。把 GE 和 Jack Welch 作为企业管理学的经典，奉为圭臬。甚至还有幸现场听过一次 Welch 如巨星般辉煌绚烂的演讲。

但是一直不能理解 GE 不可抑制的跌落。

《Lights Out》可能是第一本“揭露”GE 衰落内幕的书。

作者是两位华尔街日报的记者。

本书是 2020 年出版，即在 GE 今年宣布分拆之前。

下面从几个角度总结本书：

（下面内容根据书本内容，可能有偏差）

Jack Welch (1981–2001) 

• 无须讳言，GE后来的组织问题、弊病，Welch 的职责应该要占一半。

• 主要的管理手法：通过收购（增加资产、砍掉成本、提升利润），同时通过 GE Capital 做账（发行短期票据补充现金等）

• 强压管理、强烈的业绩数字导向，每个季度、每年均能达标，满足“投资人”要求的数字，但比如导致执行层面弄虚作假

• Welch's core mission was to attack complexity ripping out layers of bureaucracy that had built up inside the company and making the massive company nimble. Welch would do his best to kill anything that slowed GE down.

• Welch 是一个进攻性非常强的领导者。这在管理大型组织时确实发挥了重要作用。

  
  

• Welch pushed middle managers to stop writing long memos and to lose their thick planning books. "I don't want planning. I want plan." He would say.

• 强压式管理的一个侧面。非常好的一个方面。

  
  

• Welch famously gave a speech in his first year as CEO titled "Growing Fast in a Slow-Growth Economy."

• 这个思维贯穿了Welch的管理生涯。

  
  

• Welch's greatest innovation, as greatest as his much-advertised embrace of management training and efficiency, was this embrace of finance.As its height, GE Capital produced more than half of GE's total profits. This most famous industrial company in America had essentially become one of its largest and most inscrutable banks.

• 这句话可能说到了根本点之一。GE一直是顶着制造企业的帽子，通过金融挣钱，并使得数字平稳好看。

  
  

• Unions and other opponents started calling him "Neutron Jack" because he removed the people while the building were left standing.

• Welch对于砍成本（包括砍人）毫不留情的。

  
  

• GE managed to thrive in a world where its peers couldn't survive. GE's success only reinforced to its dogma: it was the exception to the rule because of its people, cultrure, and tradition.

• 这句话是对应GE同期的大型组织，例如西屋破产了。

  
  

• Even more galling were the questions, as the stock price swooned from its peak under Welch, about whether the very best of the golden years hadn't been driven by creative accounting rather than his genius.

• “creative accounting”这个说法太贴切了！想起的“Corporation Accounting”老师的经典名句：Accounting is an art.

Jeff Immelt (2001–2017) 

• 销售和市场导向的人格。未达成项目不计成本

• 主要推行大规模收购（继续 Welch 的策略），和数字化创新

• 但是，数字化创新（GE Digital）只是市场营销的神话，和PPT吹牛的产品，连他自己也被PPT演示的DEMO骗了

• Coming from blue-collar roots, their parents taught the boys to solve their own problems, to head and not be victims, to "think big" and be comfortable in their own skins.

• 说的都非常好，特别是最后一句话：be comfortable in their own skins

  
  

• He went to work at consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, where he cubicle with the future Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

• Immelt 和 Ballmer 确实有类同之处，特别是在强烈的销售性格，冲劲十足。

  
  

• His experience was anchored in marketing and sales. In Immelt's thinking, if he could capture the market now, it barely mattered how he did it, because tomorrow he would own the world.

• 销售出身，也特别注重营销，但是，最后发现大家实际都不相信营销的内容 -- 梦想没有成真。

  
  

• In winning the deal in the end, Immelt "did not give an inch on price, but threw in some extra services and features." This was the traditional way to close a deal -- the car salesman throwing in the floor mats. But the addition of extra services and features to the deal also had a cost for GE.

• 销售的冲劲会带来一地鸡毛，到最后无法收场。

  
  

• When deciding on a deal or a more into a new line of business, he rarely strayed from his initial position, and being presented with contrary evidence by internal analysts often visibly annoyed him.

• 非常固执，坚持己见。作为领导人，这有时候是好的。

• 
  

• The board tacitly blessed Jeff Immelt's digital dreams and his plans to stand up a software company inside General Electric, but never decided, a critical question about such massive experiment: how much money were they going to spend on this?

• 最核心的问题是Immelt倾力推进数字化，但是他只把心思花在了营销上了。产品和方案的复杂度、落地的可能性没有做判断，下面的人只能交给他PPT了。

  
  

• The worst thing to happen to Jeff wasn't 9/11. It was Sarbanes-Oxley.

• 必须指出，Immelt 在任期间世界政治、经济、政策、产业等方面均发生了巨大转向的变化，包括，上任第四天后发生 9/11对GE的主营业务产品巨大影响；安然等数个大型企业的公司舞弊事件导致政府对公司监管骤然严格起来；全球可再生能源的政策和需求压力；新生市场的竞争对手；数字化的迅猛发展等等。新的世界与Welch所处的世界有太多不同。

John Flannery (2017–2018)

• 犹豫不决、耽于分析，这肯能不是他的错，但是投资人等不了了

  
  

• Flannery was a man constantly reexamining himself, his curiously often reflecting inward as he reviewed his past calculations and decisions like an analyst poring over a slide of film.

• 可能他过于理性了。

  
  

• That meant dealing with the truth, no matter how harsh it might be and no matter the consequences. Flannery would be brutally honest, even though, as he was well aware, that would mean changing the company's tone.

• 作为领导人把一切透明化，是好的吗？可能很多时候，让下面的人缺乏信心，或更迷茫。

  
  

• Flannery was well aware of Immelt's flaws, and he wanted to change the GE culture to encourage debate and focus.

• 要让一个组织自然产生 debate，需要考虑机制、赋权和激励，不然大家都不敢、或不愿意 debate 。

  
  

• Russell Stokes, like Flannery, he scowled at the typical flood of PowerPoint presentations that came with working at GE. He would tell people that a long presentation was a bad sign, usually indicating that the presenter was hiding something. A well-run business didn't need a lot of slides, he said, just the facts.

• 太对了！我建议一件事只写一页PPT。

Larry Culp (2018–present) 

• Culp has made no secret that he is shifting the company's culture toward bottom-up management rather than imperial decrees from the top that don't resonate with those in the trenches.

• 至上而下的文化是 Welch 主导创立的，不知道现在 GE 改造成功了吗。

  
  

• Culp want to create a "market of truth" in the company.

• 同上一条。

GE 公司

• GE grew as the nation grew, managed to evolve with the times, and entered the twenty-first century stronger that even. At its peak in 2000, GE was the most valuable company in America, worth almost $600 billion.

  
  

• It was so large that it was given the same brand of financial credit and trust as the US government itself.

  
  

• In June 2018, GE was being dumped from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. GE was an original member of the thirty-stock index and had been included continuously since 1907.

GE 公司的决策、管理

• Cash flow wasn't as important as the all-important earnings per share resulting that made Wall Street swoon for GE every quarter.

• 对GE来讲，市盈率是最核心指标。这样的压力之下，产生了至今也没解决的问题。例如，把长期服务合同记作当期，并故意降低交付成本，增加预期利润。

  
  

• This way of managing financial results wasn't Immelt's invention, and it wasn't a secret. GE executives have acknowledged that they worked to make sure earnings were always growing in a nice smooth trajectory.

• 几个手段：1.GE Capital 做账；2.收购公司；3.公司间交易；4.服务合同变现

  
  

• A steady stream of acquisitions fed the earnings momentum.

• 见上一条

  
  

• In 2006, GE bought the $500 million mortgage portfolio of New Zealand's Superbank. The unusual operation would last just three years. But GE had what it wanted: more assets on the balance sheet.

• 见上一条

  
  

• Thus, if a company can consistently find ways to ensure that a long-term contract will be more profitable in the future, the contract can be source of income in the present.

• 见上一条

  
  

• In Comstock's summary: "Pick a simple story ... and tell it again, and again, and again."

• 非常喜欢这句话！Beth Comstock 确实非常擅长营销。

  
  

• Strategy is story well told.

• 同上一条

  
  

• The company used hundreds of different enterprise software systems to manage everything from the flow of parts to service contracts to sales data. That could all be winnowed down and reduced. 

• 这是在编故事：想着把GE变成软件公司，首先把公司数百家子公司的软件统一，就可能节省大量成本。这个事情应该没落地。

  
  

• Marketing was getting ahead of the product. In fact, the sales teams weren't even entirely confident about what their product could do. 

• 营销先于产品，让一线人心如死灰。

  
  

• Buybacks were a regular fixture under Immelt, who spent more than $108 billion on them after 2004. At the end of 2018, GE's entire market value was $67 billion.

• 还有一个招：股票回购

• 这样既可以少分红，也可以拉高股价（让股东开心）。但是GE把这件事做到太过了，连经营的钱都没有了，还在回购股票。当然，雪上加霜的是，股票多年持续下跌，使得这个操作副作用很大。

  
  

• While Immelt said that he encouraged debate, meeting often lacked rigorous questioning.

• 作为领导人不能太天真！就像Immelt 一样。

• GE的潜规则一直就是不能反对Immelt 一句，否则他也不听，还会受到排挤。在这样的情况下，他站在每个人面前让他/她说意见，对方只会顺着他讲。

  
  

• When the board chair and CEO are the same person, the top executive is essentially his own boss. it can only get worse with time if a chairman remakes the board to his own liking. This governance structure has been slowly fading from corporate America since the Enron era.

• 这个问题在美国上市公司比较明显。

GE 公司为适应趋势做的努力

• Jack Welch was not impressed. He scoffed at the notion that the new dot-coms could run with a company like GE. Startups like Amazon were building warehouses, distribution systems, and manufacturing facilities -- all aspects of doing business that GE had long ago perfected and knew how to do while preserving the all-important profits.

• 对于数字化，Welch是不感冒的。这是他不能理解的世界。

  
  

• For a marketing-oriented leader like Immelt, it made sense to play up any connection GE had to the subject (internet) that had captured the world's imagination.

• 很可惜，Immelt 直到现在还不觉得自己有问题。他原来倡导的“imagination”，实际上，很大程度上真的是 imagination。

对《Lights Out》书的评价

评分 3 分（满分 5分）

好的地方：

• 两位作者收集、总结了很多细节，内容比较丰富

不好的地方：

• 本书基本上信息的整理，和简单的分析，缺乏洞察， 和更高角度的理解，例如，从宏观的国家/国际政治、经济、产业发展等方面分析

• 很明显两位作者缺乏对管理学和大型公司治理的知识和经验，没有能够从信息中揭示出GE公司内部具体的战略、策略、组织、业务拓展之间的逻辑分析

• 整本书行文非常啰嗦、用词偏僻、很多段落句子故弄玄虚，同时，也缺乏“故事性”的写作能力，这可能是一般的财经记者职业惯性使然

总结：

• 作为GE重要的见证信息，如果要了解GE的发展，这本书还是非常推荐的