Tag: Business

Fix it Later and Ad-Hoc Procedures, Amazon Returns

[Jeff counseled the same “fix it later” strategy in the early days when we didn’t have good returns tracking. For a window of time in the early days of Amazon, if you shipped us a box of books for returns, we couldn’t easily tell if you’d purchase them at Amazon and so we’d credit you for them, no questions asked. One woman took advantage of this loophole and shipped us boxes and boxes of books. Given our limited software resources, Jeff said to just ignore the lady and build a way to solve for that later. It was really painful, though, so eventually customer service representatives all shared, amongst themselves, the woman’s name so they could look out for it in return requests even before such systems were built. Like a mugshot pinned to every monitor saying “Beware this customer.” A tip of the hat to you, maam, wherever you are, for your enterprising spirit in exploiting that loophole!]

https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2018/5/21/invisible-asymptotes

What if Something Happens to Your Corporate Jet? Use Your Backup!

It didn’t help Immelt’s case that even as GE was falling apart, he was growing enormously wealthy. He drew a titanic salary, routinely ending the year as one of the highest-paid CEOs in the country. In 2015, the year he struck the disastrous deal for Alstom, he made $33 million. And when Immelt traveled the world in GE’s corporate jet, he routinely had an extra jet follow behind, just in case the one he was on broke down. When it was revealed, this “chase plane” became a metaphor for all that was wrong with GE—a company obsessed with appearances, run by a CEO who was out of touch, wasting resources on something that added no value. Immelt, said one prominent analyst, was “the imperial CEO,” noting that “not even heads of state get that kind of treatment.” If GE was squandering money on a second plane, he wondered, what else were they doing? “You really have to question the financial oversight and controls and internal audit,” he said. “You have to question the entire organization.”

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy
David Gelles

Motivation to Hit Your Earnings Target

Mr. Immelt, who received more than $200 million in compensation during his time at G.E., developed a thick skin as C.E.O. Yet even as a wealthy executive who hopscotched the globe accompanied by an extra empty plane, he was never able to escape the long shadow of Mr. Welch. Wall Street had come to expect the extraordinary from G.E., and no matter how he tried, Mr. Immelt could never revive the company’s stock price. Eventually, even Mr. Welch, who handpicked Mr. Immelt as his successor, lost faith in his protégé.

In the book, Mr. Immelt recounts how badly it stung when Mr. Welch went on CNBC and said he would “get a gun out and shoot him” if Mr. Immelt missed his earnings target. “When you lead an organization the size of G.E., you accumulate a lot of ‘friends in name only,’” Mr. Immelt writes. “I hadn’t thought Jack Welch was one of them.”

G.E. is a shell of its former self, but Mr. Immelt has concocted a series of second acts. As a partner at a venture capital firm, he is advising up-and-coming companies. And as a lecturer the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Mr. Immelt — a consequential figure in the history of business, wherever you lay the blame — is imparting his wisdom on the future leaders of corporate America.

Jeff Immelt Oversaw the Downfall of G.E. Now He’d Like You to Read His Book.
David Gelles
NYTIMES