Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Former GE CEO Jeff Immelt

I recently interviewed Jeff Immelt on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today was the leader of one of the largest companies in the world for more than a decade and a half. Jeff Immelt spent 17 years as CEO of GE, and is the author of the new book, Hot Seat. Jeff, thank you for joining us.

Jeff: Great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Adam: When you became CEO of GE, you took over the fifth-largest company in the US. To put that into context for listeners, Google, JPMorgan, Facebook, and Disney are not among the top 10 largest companies in the country today. The outgoing CEO is Jack Welch, an icon in American business. How did you become the CEO of GE? What were the key experiences that enabled you to land such a coveted job?

Jeff: I think careers are really based on, I would say, experiences that you have and how you perform, the kind of training that you put into yourself and to make yourself better, and luck, right? So let's face it, all three of those things come together. From a career standpoint, I had multiple experiences across 3G businesses. I saw multiple cycles. You know, in fact, in the late 1980’s, I was leading the appliance service business during a huge product recall. There was a huge disaster that had me end up in the boardroom once a month for 18 months. And I constantly thought I was gonna get fired. But that was like one of the best experiences I had. So I demonstrated, you know, I even say, the ability to perform. I also had bosses and experiences where I can learn globalization and technology, and, you know, process reengineering, and things like that. So I had a career, right? I had great people and great teams and experiences to learn from. And then just like that, Jack turned 65, I was in my mid 40’s, you know, at that moment in time, there were three of us that were considered potential leaders for that company. And so in some ways, it's just the function of being in a place at a specific moment in time. So, performance, the ability to learn, and, you know, fortune. I guess those three things come together. In terms of replacing Jack, you know, Jack was a tierpoint. As an icon, he was voted the best manager of the previous century. So that's like, 100 years. That's a pretty high bar to get over. But I never really viewed it as that. Really my job was replacing him. It kind of grabbed the company and led it into the 21st century. And I think if you ever think about your life, in terms of the context of the person you replace, it's too big a burden, particularly when you're replacing somebody big because Jack was incredible.

Adam: Can you take listeners inside the interview process? You mentioned that you were competing against three other incredibly accomplished candidates, but that was just the final round. I mean, there were, however-many unbelievably accomplished candidates, just to get to the Final Four. What did you do during the interview process that set you apart and what advice do you have for listeners who find themselves in similar situations, whether they're in the running for a job that they want badly or whether they're competing for an important business contract?

Jeff: That’s a really good question because, you know, the process is part of the process, right? In other words, how you act when you're in the intense glare of the spotlight, it's actually part of the evaluation process of how people look and see, you know, who should get whatever job. It's funny. And when you get to the point of being maybe a CEO, there's no interview per se, you know, so you've got so much record, right? And so many observation points and data points. It's almost not an interview anymore. Although I did have sessions with board members and things like that. But in terms of my interface with Jack, he'd kind of watched me over 20 years, let's say. So that was kind of an easy part. I think what I tried to do is be an intense version of myself, you know, in other words, just acted natural, just kind of said, look, this is who I am, this is the way I am, this is what I believe in, and take the consequences as they come. So I think any of your listeners that find themselves in a very high profile, job transition or interview, don't be something that you're not. Be the purest form of who you are, and let people make the judgment based on that.

Adam: I love that situated advice. And we're going to talk a lot more about leadership and your core philosophy on the topic of leadership., but one of the most important things that anyone can take away on the topic of leadership is that for any leader to be successful, he or she needs to be authentic and needs to be comfortable in their own skin. And, to your point, before you can effectively lead others you need to be able to lead your own life. So I appreciate you relating that to your experience. And I wanted to know if you could share with listeners a little bit more about the process before we talk about your time as CEO? What were the most important skills that you developed on your path to becoming CEO? And what do you believe are the most important skills that anyone should develop in their careers?

Jeff: I would put them in three buckets really, Adam, like, I would say that I had, you know, like, functional expertise, right. I knew I knew markets, I knew customers, I knew technology, I had, what I would call, kind of deep domain expertise around technologies and markets. And that was good, right. So that was, that was a building block. The second building block is the way you interact with people, right? So I knew how to build teams, I knew how to drive performance, I knew how to drive change. I was able to demonstrate those things. And I knew how to take pressure. I was able to demonstrate those things through a variety of different opportunities and situations. And then the third, I think, is kind of like what you learned from your parents, you know, like, I was curious, I was hard-working, I had a pretty good blend of like, self-awareness and self-confidence, you know, I was willing to stand apart, you know? I wasn't necessarily a let's follow the crowd kind of guy. And so in some way, you know, these things are honed, both through career experience and trying things in your career. But also, you refine things you learned as a 12 year old. And you draw on those things when you're 58. And so in some ways, all of those come together with how leaders are trained to do whatever it is they set out to do. And it's experiential, it's academic. But it's also hugely personal, hugely personal. And, you know, Adam, I teach classes now and I tell the students on the last day of class that basically they all have the intelligence to do any job they want to do, you know? And their career is ultimately going to be defined by answering three questions- how fast can you learn? How much are you willing to give to others, right? How much can you give? And how much pressure can you take? Right? How can you persevere? How much are you willing to sacrifice personally? And if you can answer those three questions, and you can answer them every day, you know, you can do almost anything you set your mind to but people tend to quit. They stop learning. They reject people and the needs of other people. And they just finally say, look, I can punch through those 300 times. I can't take more. I'm going home. Right. And so people stop answering those two questions.

Adam: I think that that's such important advice. And one of the reasons why listeners tune into this podcast is because they want to understand what steps they can take to become a better leader. You shared a few right there. I want to ask you- you lead a company that at its peak generated more than $180 billion in annual revenue. I mean, that's a staggering number. What do you believe are the key characteristics of a great leader? What should listeners understand when it comes to what it takes to lead, not only Fortune 500 organization, but to lead any company, or to lead within any company at any level.

Jeff: Yeah, so what I'm gonna do first is I'm going to differentiate between leader and leadership. Right? So I think, I think as a leader, and particularly in this setting, leaders need to pick what's next. So they have to have a kind of a vision for the future. They have to know how to drive change, right? So how do you orchestrate? How do you create metrics? How do you instrument all those things that are necessary to perform, and they know how to absorb fear, like, because nothing ever works like it's supposed to. And so your ability to kind of guide people through, you know, okay, we know what we want to do, we know how to drive change, but bad things are happening, and we need to persevere. To me, that's what leaders do. That's leadership. Now, leadership also includes building organization structure that helps facilitate leaders. It's developing people that can help drive the change. It's creating kind of the right incentive plans and things like that. So I think there's, there's activities that I associate with leaders, and there's activities that I associate with leadership. And at the end of the day, if you really want to be you know, if you think about, like Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots, or, you know, people that you think are really great leaders, they're able to be leaders, but they also build this infrastructure of leadership that helps them sustain performance year after year.

Adam: I love that you mentioned Bill Belichick, because that's gonna lead me to another question that I wanted to ask you. One of the things that Bill Belichick has done so successfully, when it comes to the New England Patriots, has been his ability to build a winning organizational culture. And one of the reasons why the Patriots have been so successful year after year after year is, regardless of who's out, who's up, who's down, they win because of their culture. And one of the things that you talk about in your book is the GE culture. And I wanted to know if you could share with listeners what makes an organizational culture great. What made the GE culture what it was, and how can leaders build a winning organizational culture?

Jeff: Yeah, I think there's two things I will talk about, you know, the first thing is that cultures evolve over time, you know, so there's certain things about culture that are static, and there are certain things that are dynamic. And again, going back to any company or any winning sports team, the ability to do it over 20 years means that you are constantly evolving and changing, right? And then I say cultures really are at the top of an organization at the bottom. So if you think about GE- GE is a company, when I retired, it had 330,000 people. But at the top, we had 150 people, they were called officers of the company. And I picked all of them. And we spent time together, we tried to create a kind of a sense of unity and purpose. And I didn't expect them to be loyal to me. I expected them to be loyal to the company. In other words, I wanted diversity of thought, and I wanted them to push back when they thought it was wrong. But everybody in that group was expected to put the company ahead of themselves. So that's the thought. The other phase of the culture is at the bottom, right? It's factory workers, it’s salespeople, it's developers, it's frontline employees in 180 countries around the world and how do they act? What kind of professionalism do they exhibit? Do they link with the purpose of the company? And so if you can, if you can create a culture at the top that is unified, and at the front lines where it's really manifested for your customers and in your constituents, then a big company is small, right? Everything else falls in place if you can achieve that. So you know when you think about it, you know like 10 to 30,000 employees and 180 countries that were eight divisions, that's too hard. But if you can unify 150 people, and have commonality of messaging on the front lines, you can do it. Right. And so that's what I'd say. Again, Belichick, Bob Kraft, Tom Brady, right? Always unified in the mission. And then whoever came in, you know, as a player, what did they hear from the top? Do your job, do your job over and over and over again. And absolutely, it didn't matter who the general manager was, or who the assistant coaches were, or who played left guard, or anything else, it all just fell into place. With those two things. I think that's how companies work when I used to do sales calls, and I would go into a CEOs office. And if all they did is have fancy paintings on the wall, I would say he or she has no friggin’ idea what's going on there. But if they were a CEO of a hospital, and they had a picture of them, with seven nurses, and three patients, and on the other corner was like the Advisory Council of the town they lived in, then I'd say we got a chance here of being a good vibrant, healthy culture and organization.

Adam:  Full disclosure to listeners-  in my office I have a picture of Angels stadium. So I don't know what that sounds about me other than the fact that I'm a long-suffering Angels fan,

Jeff: I had jet engines, I had pictures of products, and pictures of teams. That's what I had. And I reserved a small place for my wife and daughter.

Adam: Jeff, one of the things we talked about a little bit earlier on in the conversation, is the importance of self-awareness when it comes to leadership. And to that end, I want to quote from the first paragraph of your book. “Many business books begin with a tacit promise. Let me tell you how to be like me, an unmitigated success.” Clearly, I couldn't say that. That really sets the tone for your book, which is introspective and reflects on your time, leading GE which you call quote, at best controversial. A key theme in my conversations with so many great leaders on this podcast, and so many great leaders off of this podcast is that our best learning experiences come not from our successes, but from our failures. What do you consider your most significant failures during your tenure as CEO of GE? And what lessons did you learn from them?

Jeff: Yeah, great question. Just as a preface, you know, Adam, I wrote the book for two reasons, really, you know, one gets to the paragraph you read, which is, you know, truth equals facts plus context. And I felt like all the context had gone missing around the company. And it'd be one thing if it just hurt me, but it hurt 1000’s of people that I worked with, and that wasn't acceptable to me. And the second one is I teach the business world today, and you know, young people today, they've lived through the financial crisis and COVID. So they don't really believe anymore in like the five jewels of leadership and things like that, they believe in figuring stuff out on their own, like give me tools, let me figure it out. Because I know life is gonna be volatile and things like that. So looking back, I'd give you one situation and one personal. The situation one was, I had a chance shortly after I took over as CEO- shortly after 9/11, so it's after a crisis- to really reset the nature of the company strategically in a profound way. And we decided not to go through that door, and that in some way, shape or form impacted the next decade plus, because it made us too heavy in financial services, which worked for a long time, but by the financial crisis that didn't look very smart. And that's certainly something I could have done better. And then the personal one was I just over time, I allowed a handful of people that I just didn't trust to be in key positions inside the company and left them there too long, and almost to a situation that did the company harm. And look, I say that in the context really of, there's probably 60 people that worked for me that have been, you know, Fortune 500 CEOs. So we developed a ton of good people, and did for a long period of time. But anytime you allow individuals that you don't trust to stay, bad things happen. And I blame myself for that, right? You know, my board, and I argued about one or two people, and we just didn't come out the right door. And those are challenges. And, you know, out of my work with probably 20 companies today, and every company I work with, has at least one person in a top position that the CEO doesn't trust. So this is not unique to the company I lead at the time/ I think it's just a parable for all leaders, that is, you know, like, again, anybody that puts the enterprise, or puts themselves ahead of the enterprise, it doesn't matter how good they are. They have to wait. They have to wait. And so those are two lessons. Two things, if I had to do over again, I would have done differently.

Adam: Let’s talk about decision-making, you made some good decisions. And as you don't hesitate to acknowledge you made some bad decisions. What is your best advice on the topic of decision-making?

Jeff: Yeah, look, I think, first of all, you have to make decisions. And you just have to live life forward, right? So it'd be easy. If you can live life backwards, you know, decisions would be easier to make. But you have to live life forward, right. So that's number one; don't be afraid, never lose your nerve, be willing to go forward. Number one, surround yourself, again, with people you trust. So surround yourself with people that can give you good feedback, positive and negative all the time. and develop, you know, for your listeners, like knowing what to do is actually sometimes the ease in fact, almost all the time, the easiest part, knowing what to do, knowing when to do it is really a bigger challenge. And I would say sometimes we were too early on initiatives, where if we had either waited, or had more stamina, we could have, I think, done a better job or made a better call with more information. So I'd say again, surround yourself with great people and get a sense of timing in terms of when and how to make decisions. And that's the best advice. The advice I can give people frequently, you know, I see with my students, I hear a little bit of some of the criticism I've gotten or other companies get is about listening, you know, like, listening is critical, right? But you can't listen to everybody all the time. And I made mistakes by listening too little. And I made mistakes by listening. So I think there's this common mantra of like, if only he listened to me, or if only he listened more all the time, a lot of people I worked with would say he was a great listener, right? He sought information, he listened. That's really not the situation, I think the situation is, you know, you've gotta be surrounded with good people that you trust. And you've got to be more flexible from a timing standpoint, because sometimes the right decision made too early, can still turn out wrong.

Adam: Great advice. Great leaders are great listeners. But at the end of the day, the buck stops at the top and leaders have to make decisions and you can't surround yourself with people who are going to make decisions for you. When it comes to every decision out there.

Jeff: I'll tell you that every leader of a business in the U.S. is going to have to make a decision about whether or not they go back to work physically or virtually. Right. It's not clear to me which one is successful. But a leader is going to have to make one of those decisions. And I guarantee you that no matter where you were 50% of the people are going to say she was right. But you've got to be comfortable with deciding what you think is best for the company or business you're in.

Adam: And one of the reasons why I love the name of your book; if you don't want to be in the hot seat, don't be a leader. But I personally believe that everyone should aspire to take on some level of leadership, whether you're the CEO of your company, or whether you're a leader in your family, whether you're a leader in your community, there's not enough leadership out there today. And that's one of the reasons why I do so much work around leadership is because we can all become better leaders. And it starts with stepping up to the plate.

Jeff: Yeah, no, I completely agree. Every job looks easy until you're the one doing it. Absolutely. So it's easy to second guess the coach, the CEO, the mayor, the President, it's easy to second guess everybody. But I think people who want to lead or who will lead, don't worry about that stuff. They just say, look, I'm going to do my best. I'm going to tell the truth. And I'm just gonna let the chips fall, where they fall. And it's just too rare that you know that people are willing to play it that way.

Adam: You’ve developed relationships with so many of the world's most successful leaders, presidents, heads of state, fellow business leaders. What advice do you have for listeners on how to cultivate and build winning relationships?

Jeff: Yeah, winning relationships are built when you don't need them. So learn to communicate with people out of sequence. When you're not there to say, I need a favor, give me an order, save my ass, right? You build them when you're just there to say, hey, how can I help you? I'm here to help you. What's on your mind? What can I learn from you? Right? And so in when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008, and, you know, the two people that if you were in financial services, you needed to know three people; Tim Geithner, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke. Three people. They were more important than Obama, Bush and everybody else. Now. I knew the three people because I knew them years before the crisis hit. And when I didn't need anything, and I was there to help and serve and be a useful and so that's how you build relationships day in and day out. You never know what meeting, what handshake, what person is going to make the difference in your life. You know, I say to people, look, I went to business school with Jamie Dimon, Seth Klarman. I know Jamie Dimon has gotten into a fight with him on a basketball court. Right? So be nice to everybody cuz you never know who's gonna be CEO of JPMorgan. It's just your relationships.

Adam: Do you remember what the fight was all about? Was there an illegal screen? Bad elbow? What happened?

Jeff: Yeah, totally. There was a charge- actually I was earning money as a referee. So he was playing and I was the referee, because you got paid two bucks a game, something like that, refereeing. I called Jamie for a charge. And he turned me. The guy was a little bigger, even today a lot bigger, but a little bigger. And but you know, it's just like, people are so transactional with their lives. And they don't realize it if the first time somebody calls you is when they need something, they typically don't get it. You got to learn to do things out of sequence.

Adam: Great advice. You were involved in many multi-billion dollar deals with GE over the course of your career. What advice do you have on the topic of negotiating and deal-making?

Jeff: Again, I come back to a little bit of what I just said, which is things that are done suddenly are almost never done well. And, you know, a lot of the deals we did that work the best are ones that were worked on over years, and with deep understanding of the human situations and things like that. So I think a lot of it has to do with getting kind of a real sense for the people and the culture of the companies you're going to do business with. And then I think deals really revolve around financial strategy, timing, and kind of human execution, and you need at least two out of those three things that are going your way. But if you have none or one, you're going to waste money, you're gonna get blown out of the water. So, you know, finance, you know how much you pay, and is there a strategy that makes sense? You don't buy in the wrong part of the cycle. And can your team really execute? Well, so in the book, we talk about an acquisition called Amersham we acquired into life sciences, which was a great fit with where we were going, our timing was perfect. And we had a great team to execute. I write later about Austin, it was a consolidating acquisition. So that made sense, our timing was terrible, and the team was ready to execute. So that turned out to be a bad deal, because two out of the three of the things just weren't effective. So you need to be thinking about those three lanes, right? Human execution, market cycle, timing, and financial and strategic impact.

Adam: Before we go, I want to ask you a few rapid-fire questions. What is the single best leadership lesson you learn from Jack Welch?

Jeff: Jack made a big cup of big companies small. He did it better than any human I've ever seen. He is a combination of his own personality. The way he communicated, the way he set metrics, his value on people. You know, Jack was a master at leading at scale.

Adam: What is your best piece of advice on the topic of international business?

Jeff: See it for yourself. Be on the ground. Get your own sense for every country, every culture that you're doing business in, but if you have to read about a global strategy in the Financial Times, you're too late. You're too late. Take China- really, you can learn from Henry Kissinger who's great. Or you can go meet with 50 25 year olds in Shanghai. Let me tell you which one you learn more from, right? It's going to be the ground-level view.

Adam: What was the most fun part of being CEO of GE?

Jeff: Gosh, I’d say I just love the people, you know, the frontline people. I loved them, I couldn't get enough of them. Whether it was Australia or Cincinnati, or Dubai, the most meaningful part was global, you know, seeing the impact of an American company in China and India and other places in the world. That's really breathtakingly meaningful when you see that.

Adam: So what can anyone listening to this conversation do to better excel personally and professionally?

Jeff: Be an avid student, be a student of trends, be a student of leaders. Just absorb everything you can every day. I had a remarkable opportunity to get smarter every day for 35 years, for 40 years now. But for 35 years, I did get smarter each and every day. Now I’m somebody else. But I had the opportunity to get smarter every day. Just be a student of everything.

Adam: Jeff, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of 30 Minute Mentors.

Jeff: Thanks, I really enjoyed it.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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