Most of us have heard about Bob Welch, the charismatic CEO of General Electric, the American company that embodied innovation and industrial power throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.
What most of us didn’t know until William Cohan wrote Power Failure,” is that Welch who, for 20 years, masterminded the firm that once claimed to “bring good things to life,” enjoyed many successes but he may have made his biggest mistake in the selection of his successor.
“CEOs make a difference,” Cohan told Steve Tarter. In his book, Cohan not only covers Welch's rise to power at the company and follows the many deals he pulled off but involves the reader in the selection process of the person to fill his shoes, profiling the three major candidates in exacting detail.
Jeff Immelt, Welch’s handpicked successor, ran into difficulties immediately because no sooner was he in the CEO chair than 9-11 happened, an event that cost General Electric dearly.
Along with having two GE employees killed in the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, Immelt canceled all scheduled commercials on GE-owned NBC for three days, costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars. GE had also insured 7 World Trade Center and all four airplanes used in the attacks.
That was just the beginning of a downturn for GE.
Immelt lasted 17 years before he was fired. General Electric, after a 129-year run, was broken up into three separately traded public companies in November 2021. What happened to an institution often viewed as the corporate superstar of American business?
Cohan spent three years researching the book, talking to executives and individuals close to the company to tell that story.
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