What keeps a CEO awake at night? Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE shares his thoughts.

During a recent discussion with for Senior Executives at Harvard Business School, Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE shared his insights on leadership, corporate culture, his current role in the company. Invited by Professor Ranjay Gulati, Chair of the HBS Advanced Management Program, the CEO of one of the world’s largest corporations gave an open and honest talk about what he considers to be some of his own mistakes and what keeps a CEO awake at night. With a market capitalization of over $200 billion, nearly 300 000 employees and interests in business segments as divergent as Industrial Production, Energy, Technology and Infrastructure, Capital Finance the list had the potential to be a long one. 

BOOK REVIEW: “Reorganize for Resilience” by Ranjay Gulati (2010)

 

Back in the carefree days before 2007, companies looked at growth as their major challenge.  In those days, obtaining a 15% increase on yearly growth seemed to be the most important thing for them to achieve, to keep their stockholders happy.  Since then, with the collapse of firms such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, survival has become the key element to business.  In Reorganize for Resilience, Ranjay Gulati shows some of the things that resilient companies do, both in good times and in bad, to ensure that they don’t end up being a case study on what companies shouldn’t have done.