I've seen this kind of thing first hand where the company I work for also prioritize buybacks instead of investing in R&D coupled with commitments to wall street on EPS. When top management stops focusing on delighting the customer and cost cutting is what employees feel as result of EPS pressure --that's certainly a leading indictor of bad outcomes.
While the majority of the responsibility should rest with Jeff Immelt's decisions, Jack's decision to pick Jeff as successor --- that was poor management decision and he should own that. One of the main responsibilities of a good manager is to pick good people. With all due respect, he failed in that regard.
My wife worked for GE Capital in 2008 when the financial crisis hit. At that time they managed about 75,000 vehicles in Canada and for a period of about three months they couldn’t even buy a car for any of their customers. Imagine running a fleet of 500 or 1000 units & your told my your leasing company “ sorry we can’t buy any vehicles on your behalf at this time “ Crazy times !
I've seen this kind of thing first hand where the company I work for also prioritize buybacks instead of investing in R&D coupled with commitments to wall street on EPS. When top management stops focusing on delighting the customer and cost cutting is what employees feel as result of EPS pressure --that's certainly a leading indictor of bad outcomes.
While the majority of the responsibility should rest with Jeff Immelt's decisions, Jack's decision to pick Jeff as successor --- that was poor management decision and he should own that. One of the main responsibilities of a good manager is to pick good people. With all due respect, he failed in that regard.
My wife worked for GE Capital in 2008 when the financial crisis hit. At that time they managed about 75,000 vehicles in Canada and for a period of about three months they couldn’t even buy a car for any of their customers. Imagine running a fleet of 500 or 1000 units & your told my your leasing company “ sorry we can’t buy any vehicles on your behalf at this time “ Crazy times !