“All leadership is crisis leadership. From the first minute, I had to make very tough decisions in front of crowded rooms of people and absorb fear. Hold two truths: bad things can happen, but continue to play for the future.”
Jeff Immelt is a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, a global equity and private equity firm. He recently published his memoir, Hot Seat: What I Learned Leading a Great American Company, about his time as CEO of General Electric.
On the second day as General Electric CEO, the terrorists attacks on 9/11 sent the world reeling and created an uncertain future. Two GE employees died that day. Its business verticals from aviation to insurance were greatly impacted and forced a brand new CEO of one of the world’s biggest companies to navigate uncharted waters. GE was met with crises of a different nature like the 2008 financial crisis that called for decisive and extreme measures. “All leadership is crisis leadership. From the first minute, I had to make very tough decisions in front of crowded rooms of people and absorb fear. Hold two truths: bad things can happen, but continue to play for the future.”
GE, NBC’s then parent company, played major roles producing television like The Office, 30 Rock and The Apprentice. This includes personally convincing Donald Trump to take on the host’s role for the reality show.
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKER
Jeff Immelt
Venture Partner
New Enterprise Associates (NEA)
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
John Darcie: (00:07)
Hello one and welcome back to salt talks. My name is John Darcie. I'm the managing director of salt, which is a global thought leadership forum and networking platform at the intersection of finance technology and public policy, salt talks, or a digital interview series that we launched in 2020 with leading investors, creators and thinkers. And our goal on these salt talks is the same as our goal at our salt conferences, which we hope our guests today will join us at salt in New York coming up in September, but it's to provide a window into the mind of subject matter experts, as well as provide a platform for what we think are big ideas that are shaping the future. And we're very excited today to welcome Jeff, uh, ML to salt talks. Jeff is a venture partner today at new enterprise associates NEA, a global, a global venture capital and private equity firm.
John Darcie: (00:55)
He's also the recent author of hot seat, a memoir of leadership in the time of crisis. About his time at the helm of GE a fantastic, very candid book about his time there and prior to joining NEA in 2018. As I mentioned, he was the night chairman of GE and served as CEO for 16 years. He's been named quote, one of the world's best CEOs three times by Darren's, uh, during his tenure as CEO, uh, GE was named America's most admired company by fortune magazine. And one of the world's most respected companies in polls by Barron's and the financial times he's received 15 honorary degrees and numerous awards for business leadership and chair, the president's council on jobs and competitiveness under the Obama administration. Jeff has a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics from Dartmouth college and an MBA from Harvard university. He's also a member of the American academy of arts and sciences and hosting today's talk is Anthony Scaramucci, the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge capital, which is a global alternative investment firm. Anthony is also the chairman of salts. And with that, I'll turn it over to Anthony to start the interview.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:02)
So John got to take a shout at you, like right away, just right out of the box. Okay. I first met Jeff IML when you were in diapers, likely. Okay. He was at the sun valley conference 20 years ago. I'm kidding. He wasn't in diapers, Jeff, but, but you, you were talking at that point about taking over the reins from a legendary CEO now to cease Jack Welch and the trials and tribulations there of coming into the job right after nine 11. It was literally the week of, and so we're going to talk about the book in a second, but I think it's a precursor to the book and your experience at GE. I want you to take us back 19, 20 years ago, almost set the scene for us. You're taking the reins of GE. Tell us about what's going on.
Jeff Immelt: (02:54)
Hey, Anthony. Great to see you again, John, you as well, you know, there anything, like you said, my first as a cog was September 10th, 2001, I did an all-employee broadcast with Sue Herrera. I flew to Seattle, I spent the night there and was going to see Boeing that September 11th, um, on a stair stepper, uh, downstairs, working out and watch the second plane hit the world trade center. So at that moment, you know, you kind of knew, uh, life, as we knew it was going to change dramatically. Just the, the tragedy of what went on. And, and, and, you know, the first thing I thought about was how many employees did, did we have that were impacted, there were two that were killed and then just start combing through, you know, we, we had, uh, engines on the planes. We own 1200 aircraft. We insured the world trade center in BC, which we owned at the time was, went four days with no advertisements.
Jeff Immelt: (04:00)
And so kind of, I went from like, you know, kind of all this build up to being the CEO, to just tripping into a whole new world. And, you know, it was one of the things I discuss in the book. Anthony has really, you know, today all leadership is crisis leadership. And like from the very first minute I had to make very tough decisions and do it in front of crowded rooms of people and, and, uh, had to absorb fear, right. And not spread it on and had the kind of hold. What I say is, hold two truths, bad things can happen, but you have to continue to play for the future. And I had to do that my second day on the job. So just hard to explain. I want
Anthony Scaramucci: (04:44)
To, I want, I want to take you further back now, let's go back to your upbringing and let's go back to, uh, your decision to go to GE. And how long were you at GE prior to becoming CEO?
Jeff Immelt: (04:58)
Yeah, so my dad worked at GE, so I, I always had a context. I always thought I wanted to go to work for a company in those days. You know, like you, a lot of people that I went to school with, went to work on wall street or went to work for consulting firms. I didn't really want to do that. I remember the summer between years of business school, I worked on a project at BCG. I worked at BCG and I sat in the final presentation and I found myself sympathizing with the CEO, not the consultants. So I figured I wanted to be on the other side of the table. And I joined GE thinking, I'd stay there five years. And I ended up staying 35 years and I started in sales. I did sales and marketing product management, uh, you know, manufacturing. I went from the plastics business to the appliance business, to the healthcare business. So kind of a typical career in a conglomerate. And, you know, I never really thought about being CEO of GE until the end, because it was just too weird to think about. But, uh, you know, five years turned into 10 and 15 and 20 and all right, so the, the
Anthony Scaramucci: (06:02)
Book is well titled. The book is called hot seat, and it's what I learned leading a great American company. And, and by the way, I would recommend this book to everybody. I hope this book becomes a case study book in all of the countries, business schools, or even the undergraduate business schools, because a very candid assessment of what went on, uh, during your tenure and frankly the good, the bad and the ugly as well as the successes. Um, why did you write the book, Jeff, uh, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
Jeff Immelt: (06:36)
You know, if the truth equals facts plus context, and I felt like all the context had gone away from GE over the past few years that basically, uh, we did more good things than bad things, but people were dwelling on incomplete truce, and I wanted to tell a more complete story. And so I hired a co-writer who was a great woman named Amy Wallace. She spoke to 75 of my colleagues and investors and people in the T ecosystem. And our goal was really to tell a complete story of the good and the bad and what we saw, what we learned and put, put readers in the shoes of people, making decisions. Look, everybody can be an armchair quarterback looking back, but life has to be lived looking forward. And so, you know, you just don't have the luxury to second to second guess all the time.
Jeff Immelt: (07:31)
So I want to tell a more complete story, Anthony and I kind of view that in the time of COVID all leadership is crisis leadership. And I think if you read about the financial crisis or nine 11, or all the things that we went through as a leadership team, hopefully readers are going to say, Hey, I'm not alone. And here's some things that worked and some things that didn't work, but I wanted it to be, I wanted it to be raw and I wanted it to speak to the people I worked with because I truly loved them and I love working with them.
Anthony Scaramucci: (08:02)
Okay. So, but you, you paint a very stark clear, concise picture. And so let me lay it out for people that potentially have not read the book, and then you can hand check me if I'm wrong, but what you're basically writing in the book is that you had this storied celebrated CEO and you had earnings in the company. And again, a cultural standards being what they are, accounting standards being what they are, they got tougher and they got more scrupulous after things like WorldCom and after Sarbanes Oxley. And so all of a sudden now the accounting realities and the way you had to look at the company was quite different, frankly, than the way Jack Welch had to look at the company. You had the nine 11 situation and you had this transformation happening in the of technology. And of course, GE is an old line manufacturing company. And so there you were at the helm during those inflection points and a result of which you made decisions, uh, that were, uh, you know, consistent with the culture of GE and consistent with your values. So tell us about that decision making, tell us about the prism that you look through. And then I get that right, because that was my read of the book basically. And then tell us how you took your decision-making prism. Okay. And applied it to what was going on at the time.
Jeff Immelt: (09:34)
You know, Anthony Jack was a great CEO and the company really prospered under his leadership, but the world was changing and it changed dramatically. Uh, we had kind of an under-invested set of industrial businesses. We had a flourishing set of financial businesses and our price earnings ratio was greater than a tech company. So, so clearly perception didn't quite equal reality in that context. I think, you know, we set about reinvesting in the industrial company, the non-finance company, we were making great progress, but we made the decision at that time to let GE capital continue to grow. And by the time the financial crisis hit, uh, that didn't look, you know, that didn't look so smart. Right? So, uh, you know, I, I think, you know, we needed the GE capital earnings to help boost and, and support the investment in the industrial. And, uh, you know, again, the financial crisis was a huge challenge for GE
Anthony Scaramucci: (10:34)
You know, it's interesting because it's another big learning lesson I've gotten from the book. Some of our life is a serendipity. Some of our life is providential. It depends on the error that you're in. It depends on the culture of your times and the businesses that you're managing. I think you make a very, very strong case for all of those things. Um, but you had a situation beyond your control, frankly, Jeff, that I want you to describe to our listeners. And that is, uh, you had a company that had its earnings going up fairly consistently. I don't want to say manufacturer because that's unfair. It was consistent with the accounting standards of that time. Uh, but as you had changing accounting standards and you had a changing conglomerate, uh, those earnings became, uh, harder to show consistent growth with, again, I think that's fair, fair characterization. So therefore, uh, that's a situation, uh, and now you and I both know that situations get personalized. You know, it's, it's George bushes recession and it's bill Clinton's recovery, but there's a cyclicality to the thing. Um, and so explain that to our listeners, uh, the way you write about it in the book and explain what you, how you put your arms around these.
Jeff Immelt: (11:53)
Yeah. You can look, I mean, I think, you know, GE capital was a great business and, you know, very competitive and basically was run the way all financial service companies were run. But you know, what, what basically, you know, like when nine 11 happened, the Monday, the market opened our largest shareholder trimmed their position by 50%. And I spoke to them and asked them why after the market closed. And they said, we didn't realize you were an insurance, right? So here's the largest investor that didn't really see that we were in that kind of financial service business. So it took us time to, again, retrain our investors about the desire to, you know, spool up the industrial companies. And, you know, I bought a life science company had paid 16 times earnings and that in those days was considered to be crazy. The same company today would trade at 50 times earnings, right. Or something like that. So, you know, we were going about the process of change. Uh, I think making really good progress, but, you know, we were so big in financial services that when the financial crisis hit it, it really took a huge toll on the company.
Anthony Scaramucci: (13:05)
And so let's talk about that. GE GE capital, uh, a grew into a very large appendage of the business. Uh, it obviously was deeply impacted by the 2008 financial crisis. What did the company ignore regarding GE capital that led up to the crisis?
Jeff Immelt: (13:24)
It's a great, it's, it's the question I thought about a lot and it's one of aggregate size, and I think it's something that CEOs or business leaders you don't sometimes pay attention to what your risk triggers really should be. Uh, we always viewed as the important thing for GE capital to be AAA rated. In other words, to have rating agencies that, that basically valued the company's debt. I think what we found is, uh, it, in the moment that labor brothers went bankrupt, the rating agencies didn't matter anymore. And it was how can you fund yourself when the capital markets, uh, froze or ground to a halt. And therefore, you know, our aggregate size, Anthony was just too fast, right? We were, we were two or 3% of the commercial paper market. We were two or 3% of the long-term debt market. That doesn't sound like a lot of share, but believe me, when the capital markets closed, that's a lot. Right? So, uh, you know, we had, we had to raise tens of billions, of dollars of capital to put into GE capital, to persevere and make it through, uh, make it through the, uh, the financial crisis. Really nobody's business model was hurt worse when Lehmann brothers went bankrupt and GE capital because we were debt funded finance company. And we were kind of on an island of one, the banks could do deposits. We had no capability to do deposits. It was really a challenge. Yeah. I
Anthony Scaramucci: (14:51)
Mean, and, and to just candidly, you couldn't draw from the federal reserve at zero interest rates. You weren't a quote unquote bank. Remember companies like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were able to get banking, charters to do that. And you know, you fast forward to Robin hood, as an example, Jeff, uh, Robin hood had that problem three weeks ago. They couldn't draw from the fed. So they had to go out and they had to stop trading, uh, which hurt their image and reputation. And then they had to go out and get the money from venture capitalists. And so again, it's the situations and our responses to them. The reason why I love the book is that it's so candid about the evaluation of those things and that, okay, so here I am, I'm in the hot seat. Here's what's going on. Here are the decisions that I'm making at the time. You want to judge it with 2020 hindsight, that's fine, but this is what was happening right there in the windshield. As I was driving this gigantic tractor trailer. And I want to, I want to get in, I
Jeff Immelt: (15:48)
Told the story, you know, the most important decision I ever made, I made on September 30th, 2008. And we went out and raised like 15 or $16 billion on an equity raise.
Anthony Scaramucci: (16:00)
You got some from Warren buffet as well
Jeff Immelt: (16:01)
From Warren buffet. And this was the weekend after Washington mutual, uh, when declared bankruptcy and the bond holders got crushed. And, and I always say, I'll tell people today, that was the most important decision I ever made. And I got crushed for it, media, CNBC, Joe Kern, and everybody, the next day he said, oh, what a, what? Uh, you know, he shouldn't have done that and stuff like that. But you know, in a crisis, you know, the teams have to work. You have to make decisions and you have to be willing to be judged.
Anthony Scaramucci: (16:32)
Well, I mean, another thing that is worth pointing out here is that if you're a CEO or let's say as an example, you're the white house communications director. You have to be a crash dummy in certain situations. And then you got to roll from the car and get up and dust yourself off. And I think that's one of the things I love about the book the most is the resilient, see the elements of resiliency in the book. I want to go to the tech giants for a second, because I think there's a resonating message here for companies like alphabet and Amazon. What could they learn from GE and its cautionary tale about inertia and excessive size and scope? What would you say to some of those people?
Jeff Immelt: (17:15)
Oh, a little bit different. I would say to alphabet, you've never seen a bad day in your markets, not one, right. Search has done nothing but grow some of the businesses they've reinvested in. Haven't really done much. So it's really a, a certain, a dominant search company. So somehow they have to create a tabletop exercise of what a really bad day looks like and make sure that their culture and their business model still works, whether it comes from a regulator or some other, uh, force. I think in the case of Amazon, you know, Anthony, I have so much respect for Jeff and what he's done, but man, you know, when you're this complicated and again, your world gets rocked. You know, I go back until the GE store look when everything was going well, it conglomerates awesome. It's amazing. Right. But when things are really choppy, it is really tough to manage so many different businesses at the same time. So I think, I think they, they both have to model what happens when really bad days occur and that's hard, but that's necessary.
Anthony Scaramucci: (18:21)
Uh, th they look, it's, it's a great message. I've got two last questions before I have to turn it over to the erstwhile millennial. Okay. Who will try to outshine me. I melt. So, you know, what can I say? But here are my two last questions. I want to make these fun questions. Let's go to Donald Trump and the recruiting of then a real estate mogul business mogul Donald Trump into the apprentice. Uh, you and Jeff sucker, Mark Burnett, trying to get him to do that show.
Jeff Immelt: (18:52)
Yeah. So, um, you know, the funniest story about that, uh, uh, Anthony is that we tried to seal it on his golf course in Bedford, New York. Uh, he and I are playing Randy Falco and Bob Wright, uh, Donald goes up to the par three T. He turns to us and says, I'm the richest golfer in the world. And we all say, oh, you know, you're full of, uh, stuff like that. He gets a hole in one. So this is a true story. And just kind of sit there and stay, I'm like a pizza shrunk back, or what happened, gets a whole little one. And then, well, while we're riding around, he says to me, you know, Jeff, look, let's say, you know, I want to do this, but you know, to me, Zucker and all these guys, they don't matter if I get, if I have an issue I'm going straight to you. And I want you to know that, and I want you to be there to answer my call. And, and so that was a, that was Donald. Uh, the one thing I remember about the apprentice is that it looked like it would never work on paper. He made it work. Uh, here's a guy that likes to win, you know, and, uh,
Anthony Scaramucci: (19:59)
Listen, he has a charismatic television personality, whatever my, uh, political differences are with him. Uh, you have to be observant of those facts and his talent. Let's go to 30 rock because that is a cheeky rendition of the parent company, G E Alec Baldwin. Who's a great as great comic wit you know, I wasn't in love with Alec Baldwin the day that he took my head on a Christmas ornament. Unfortunately I went onto the tree of fallen Trump people, and I was in the audience there. And, uh, he was putting the ornament on the tree. Wasn't in love with Alex at that moment. I'll just confess that. But, uh, you know, there, he was playing a G suit. Let's just call it for what it is on that show. The show started out. Uh, but you kept the faith. Tell us about that. Yeah, the
Jeff Immelt: (20:51)
Only time I ever came down on the NBC team on a programming note was around 30 rock. Uh, Lauren Michaels came to see me. We weren't going to pick it up. We had another show that was kind of about Saturday night live. There was also, uh, going out that year. Uh, and he said, look, Jeff, I've never asked for anything in my entire career, but this is a good show. Uh, uh, it's, it's great writing. Tina Fey really cares. And so I said to Jeff Zucker, look, we're going to do this show, right? So we, we, we blended in, in the spring, it started very slowly, but you know, things are only funny because they're true. So I found myself seeing, you know, various scenes in 30 rock that I thought resonated with our employees. And quite honestly, I knew it was going to be a great show.
Jeff Immelt: (21:39)
The two shows that were really, uh, I liked the office cause I started in sales and I knew those people and 30 rock were two that I basically kept alive for a long time. Uh, flash forward a year or two Steven jobs. One of the few times I've talked to Steven was he wanted to get NBC content on iTunes and we weren't going to let him, he called the scream at me and before he hung up and he said, besides the only two shows people want to watch are 35 and in the office. So you got to do this for me. You're also going to be really mad, right. It's just, you know, I identified with both those shows.
Anthony Scaramucci: (22:21)
Well, listen, you've had a fascinating career. Uh, I, John's gonna want to talk to you a little about what you're doing now. I want to hold the book up again. You know, jet Javits, an incredible book. It's a great achievement. Um, lots of things happen in our lives that we don't plan for. This is a book about dealing with those things. And, um, and so I recommend it to everybody. I enjoyed reading it, uh, probably as much as you enjoyed writing it, it had to be cathartic for you to write it. Let me turn it over to John Dorsey. Uh, go ahead, Mr. Dorsey. He's he's in South Carolina, so John's a native of North Carolina. So hopefully he'll give you some guff for that, but go ahead. Mr. Dorsey
John Darcie: (23:04)
Clear South Carolina is way more backwards than North Carolina. Let's just the beautiful qui on it, backwards
Speaker 4: (23:11)
Effect DUI. Um,
John Darcie: (23:14)
But yeah, you know, again, I think the book was fascinating because a lot of times when a CEO goes through what many perceive as a disappointment, they prefer to just slink off into the sunset and enjoy the spoils of a, of a great career and not confront those issues and teach people about what they learned from, from an interesting period, uh, leading a great company and you didn't shy away from that. You know, your book, wasn't so much of a whitewash of your tenure, but just lessons that you learned and how people can apply them into the future, which I think is a great segue. So you're, you're teaching at Stanford, you know, about and leadership. You're also investing a new enterprise associates, one of the great venture capital firms in the world. What do you teach your students at Stanford? And what wisdom do you impart that you learned at GE when you're looking at new investments, new mega trends that are taking place, whether it's in technology or business in general,
Jeff Immelt: (24:05)
You know, John? So, um, I, I, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do when I retired. I thought I wanted to work with small companies and entrepreneurs. I, I knew I wanted to try my hand at teaching. Here's what I've learned from students is they don't want laundry lists of leadership, checklists. They want grit, stories, successes, and failures, because they know they're going to have to go to a world where you have to figure stuff out on your own. And so I think, you know, what I try to do is give them notions of here's how you do business in China or here's the trends are, or here's how digital industrial companies come together. And then I always end every class with a story. So some of the stories are good, some are bad. Some of my, one, some of my lost, and I want to show them that, you know, your career is really built on good days and bad days. You need a few bad days to make the good days feel better. And that resonates with them, uh, from a tech, from a venture standpoint, I, I love the healthcare space. I work there in my career at GE. And so I do a lot of, uh, healthcare investing. And I wanted to think small again, I had been in a big company for 35 years. I wanted to see what a company with 50 or a hundred people felt like, and that's been great fun.
John Darcie: (25:22)
Yeah. So Anthony asked you about Amazon and alphabet being two examples of companies that have grown massively in size and stale. And you've seen people leave places like Google over the years and talk about how they, they might've been acquired by Google and they thought they were going to be able to maintain sort of an entrepreneurial mindset inside of the greater parent company. But oftentimes those massive behemoths sort of squash that element of entrepreneurship and your ability to move fast. What advice, again, going into that theme, would you give to companies and to entrepreneurs that are working in large companies, but how do you maintain the, that innovative forward thinking mindset inside of a sprawling organization and those companies, should they, should they spin out different, uh, entities within the organization to maintain sort of some level of autonomy or what's the best approach, uh, for maintaining that innovative mindset?
Jeff Immelt: (26:11)
I think the first thing, you know, one of the sections of the book I talk about how do you make size and advantage and not a disadvantage? So like one of the places where we really played size as a real advantage was globally, you know, how do you do business in China? And, and around the world, we did that. And we did that exceptionally well. And it was only because we were a big company and then places where we failed, like investing in digital capability, analytics and things like that, where we would have been better off kind of doing a joint venture with a startup, getting it outside the company. So I think it's kind of like you, you have to play to your strengths with size. You have to be willing to be flexible, to bring in new people and new ideas and keep them from getting crushed by the, the mothership, if you will.
Jeff Immelt: (26:57)
And you have to be able to do both those. And then the last thing as a leader, when you decide you've got to get to what's next, you have to use all of the force of will to drive change. One of the things I always talk to my students about is, you know, when, when you're in school, you basically think that listening solves all problems that everybody would do well, if you only listened to everybody. And I said, that's not exactly true, right? Uh, you need to listen. You need people around you, you trust. But sometimes, you know, there's a lot of times when Jeff Bezos doesn't listen to the people around him, he just says, look, here's, what's next. Here's where we're going. And that's one of the reasons why Amazon is so successful. So surrounding yourself with good people, knowing when to listen and when to move, those are all things that you get from experience and from a good long business career.
John Darcie: (27:47)
Yeah. It's like Abraham Lincoln, uh, you know, when he was talking about emancipation, he went around the room and he says, okay, who's who are the A's and who are the nays? It was, you know, 10 days and one a in the A's habit, uh, because it was, it was, uh, Mr. Lincoln that was making the decision. Anthony uses that analogy sometimes with the decisions he makes the SkyBridge, which especially
Anthony Scaramucci: (28:07)
When you disagree with me Darcie. Okay. That's when I usually it's a contrarian indicator.
Jeff Immelt: (28:13)
So we did it in 2005, we launched a clean energy initiative and we had 30 people in the room, two or four at 28 were against it. We've got it. Right, because that's one of the chores you have as a leader is to pick what's next.
John Darcie: (28:29)
Right. So I'm going to talk about that a little bit more. You talk in the book about personnel. So you talk about how some of your regrets, as you look back at mistakes, maybe that were made was around not moving quickly enough to get rid of people that were maybe poisoning the culture. And we're focused so much on the pursuit of power and influence within the company, as opposed to, you know, not caring who gets the credit for success. How do you, how do you develop a strong organizational culture where you root out, uh, that mindset? Is it a case of just moving on from people that, that are poisoning the culture? Is it something that you can train, but how do you think about building strong organizational culture?
Jeff Immelt: (29:04)
Yeah, look so when I go back to the financial crisis, as terrible as it was, I was always very confident because the people that I was surrounded by, I trusted and, and, uh, there are other times in my career where that wasn't the case. I think one of the things that's John is, you know, we all get blind to people. And sometimes, particularly when you do a job for a long time, you're just not as sharp about it, as you need to be knowing when people have checked out and that you really on behalf of the organization have to move them aside. Right. You know, you're, you're not human. If you like firing people, we all want to see people in their best moment, but it's really critical that you take action on those people that have given up on themselves or playing for the wrong reasons.
Jeff Immelt: (29:52)
For eight years monthly, I would bring in a senior executive, we would have dinner on a Friday night with our spouses. And then I would spend six hours on a Saturday morning with him or her just talking about, uh, their, their, their, their career aspirations, how they did their work, what they thought of me. And, and you need to have, even in a big company, you need to have that kind of connection. So you can tell not just about that person, but you learn about the people around them and who's doing the work and who isn't. So it's, you know, it always sounds scribble. I would say people for the most, but they do. Yeah.
John Darcie: (30:30)
And when you show people that you care about them as people, it makes them feel like they want to work hard for you and, and not poison the culture. But, um, I want to talk about the period after you left you. So we talked about Jack Welch and I'm going to summarize it. Uh, you know, you basically felt that perception didn't equal reality in terms of how people perceive GE when you took over. And then after you left your successor, John Flannery unwound, some things that you had worked on that actually had showed some promise and maybe derailed, uh, some of the makeover that was taking place at GE, if you've been able to continue longer. And even if say you were in the seat today, what types of projects and initiatives would you be continuing? Some of which may be, uh, that you started sort of late in your tenure there,
Jeff Immelt: (31:10)
You know, I, you know, John, I, I'm gonna big out a little bit on the question cause I didn't write the book to kind of judge what what's happening to companies today. I really wanted a more complete narrative, but what I did, but look, all companies are a blend of operations and, and kind of innovation, what what's next. And so I think, you know, I would have focused on those two things where, where, like you gotta execute. If you don't execute, you don't last long, but you still have to invest in the future. You, you know, the most successful business that was in GE when I was, there was our aviation business look, we could wake up tomorrow morning and Elon Musk could launch an all electric aircraft and he could probably raise 10 or $15 billion to do it. And that changed the industry. Right? So if we're not leaning forward into those spaces and not taking risks and try new things, like it doesn't matter how long you've been around or what business you're in, you're going to get crushed someday. Right. So I would just stay focused on operations and innovation.
John Darcie: (32:10)
Yep. Last question. You know, we talked about Trump earlier, but his, his rise as a political figure, I think was born a lot out of the hollowing out of the American middle-class across the American Heartland. So you were at a major manufacturing company, GE got a lot of different businesses, but you saw firsthand the outsourcing of jobs, the effect of globalization. It didn't get quite as much attention as it was happening sort of slowly and quietly, uh, 20 years ago, let's say, uh, whereas today, you know, given the massive rise in living costs relative to wage growth, you're seeing much more outcry from those types of people who are willing to embrace some of the, maybe caustic elements of Trump because of the fact that they perceive that he's fighting for them and trying to restore some dignity to their work. What did you observe during your time at GE that maybe you saw some of this, uh, populism based on, on the hollowing, out of the American middle-class and what do you think the prescription is? I know you worked on some of these things under president Obama, what's the prescription for restoring that dignity and bringing home manufacturing and just rebuilding the American middle-class.
Jeff Immelt: (33:15)
Yeah. You know, John. So, um, my dad worked at GE for 38 years, so I never have had anybody that needed to explain to me the value of a GE job. Number one, number two, look, I I'm, I would call myself a Scaramucci Republican. I'm a, um, Romney Republican. I don't really recognize what I've seen
Anthony Scaramucci: (33:35)
Museum of natural history with that comment I knelt, you know,
Jeff Immelt: (33:39)
So I don't recognize what what's happening today. So let me just put that out there. I've never been overly political, but, but I don't recognize it's, but there's a reason why, you know, president Trump resonated with so many people and that is for 30 years basically business people like me thought we could move any job we wanted to, to chase low wages or move factories around. And that was all part of being a competitive framework. And you know, it wasn't unique to GE, but we were a part of that that actually started to change during the financial crisis. And it only accelerated with president Trump. So if you're running a company today, you need to care about where you make things. You need to respect the people who are doing middle-class work in your companies, and you need to be able to have some vision for how you include them into the, the role of your company, the vision of your company.
Jeff Immelt: (34:38)
And so, you know, it may, some economists at MIT might be able to defend here's what's happened to manufacturing jobs, but it doesn't work where it matters most. And the fact of the matter is, you know, for us, um, you know, 300,000 people when I retired, there were 300,000 people that worked at GE, probably half of whom were in the U S we were a net exporter. They were more important in, in political influence that I was right, hundred CEOs getting together in DC doesn't matter like it used to, but this string of people that work for you and work with you and that are essential to their communities, they matter a lot. So, you know, my hope is that, you know, the, this generation of business leaders understands that you can still sell around the world and you should, but you need to have some vision for this country or else you're not going to be, you know, your ticket's going to be pulled and you're not going to be allowed to compete for the future. And, and, uh, you know, or anybody in 2020, anybody that sole sourced of product in China for shipping to the U S had to have their head examined, had missed every clue for the previous decade. So, yeah, I think it's fascinating.
John Darcie: (35:51)
And it's, it's, it's very much back in the news as Ford announced, uh, recently that they're going to be moving a lot of their manufacturing activities that they were supposedly going to invest in Ohio are moving into Mexico. And I'm sure we'll, we'll re re-litigate, uh, the different approaches that Trump and now the Biden administration have taken to bringing American manufacturing home. But Jeff ML, thank you so much. The book is called hot seat. Anthony, will you hold it up again? So we get some sure promotion. The other thing I
Anthony Scaramucci: (36:17)
Want to mention, which I didn't get a chance in our interview, Jeff, is that when you started at GE, uh, and I'm on page 1 66, you had 6.4% of the corporate office were women. And yet the comparable to the rest of the corporate relations in the fortune 500 were 11.9%. And you did a masterful job of bringing that up and bringing GE into the cultural diversity and inclusion. Uh, and so I want to applaud you for that. The book is called hot seat. Uh, what I learned leading a great American company. It's a, it's a fantastic read. And I appreciate you coming on Saul talks, and I want to get you to one of our live events at some point, you know, I don't think Donald Trump will be coming to any of those live events, Jeff, but you know, you never know in life, just never know what's going to happen. So anyway,
Jeff Immelt: (37:12)
There's 12 of us left Anthony. So
Anthony Scaramucci: (37:15)
I exactly
Speaker 4: (37:16)
Right. Thanks again.
Jeff Immelt: (37:18)
Thanks for, thanks for,
John Darcie: (37:21)
Thank you, Jeff. And thank you everybody who tuned into today's salt. Talk with Jeff Immelt, the former CEO of GE, and now a venture investor, a new enterprise associates and a professor at Stanford teaching and investing based on what he learned during his tenure at GE reminder, if you missed any part of this salt talk or any of our previous talks, you can access them on our website. It's salt.org backslash talks, and also on our YouTube channel, which is called salt tube. Please follow us on social media. We're on Twitter is where we're most active at salt conference, but we're also on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. And please tell your friends about these salt talks. We love growing our community and educating a broader constituency of people, but on behalf of Anthony and the entire salt team, uh, this is John Darcie signing off today from salt talks. We hope to see you back here soon.