Jeffrey Immelt's Leadership at General Electric: Strategies, Organizational Changes, and Alignment with 21st Century Business Environment

Jeffrey Immelt Leadership 1
The leadership of Jeffrey Immelt at General Electrics
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Executive summary
This paper would take General Electric leadership under Jeffrey Immelt into consideration. The paper
first introduces the brief biography of Jeffrey Immelt, his leadership style and strategies he applied during his
16 years tenure. It then looks at how these strategies aligned with the business environment of the 21st century.
Furthermore, it talks about how Immelt strategy aligned with resources and capabilities of General Electric.
The next part will talk about organizational changes that Immelt implemented and how he executed his
approach during his tenure to re-establish General Electric as market leaders. Lastly, we discuss the other
alternatives that can be considered and conclude the general leadership qualities of Immelt from which
potential leaders can learn.

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Table of Contents
Executive summary.....................................................................................................................................2
Introduction...................................................................................................................................................4
Background of GE Company.....................................................................................................................4
GE under Immelt’s Leadership................................................................................................................4
New and Emerging markets............................................................................................................................................. 6
Infrastructure...................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Demography......................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Environment........................................................................................................................................................................ 6
Core competence......................................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Capabilities.................................................................................................................................................................................................... 8
Alignment of Immelt’s strategies with the 21st-century business environment..................9
VUCA Analysis................................................................................................................................................................... 9
PESTLE Analysis of GE................................................................................................................................................. 10
Alignment of Immelt’s strategies with resources and capabilities..........................................12
SWOT analysis of GE..................................................................................................................................................... 13
Weaknesses of GE............................................................................................................................................................ 13
Opportunities for GE...................................................................................................................................................... 14
Threats of GE.................................................................................................................................................................... 14
TOWS analysis of GE..................................................................................................................................................... 15
Organizational Changes under Immelt..............................................................................................17
Ability to execute Immelt’s strategies................................................................................................18
Other alternatives to be considered...................................................................................................19
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................20
References...................................................................................................................................................21

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Introduction
The paper discusses and analyses the leadership of Immelt during his time as CEO of the world’s
largest multinational conglomerate, General Electric. We look at strategies, decisions, capabilities, and core
competencies of Immelt as well as their impact on the company’s improvement during his 16 years tenure in
office. The leadership styles and management approach of Jeff Immelt his intelligent decision making and
strategic management are as well discussed. Also in this report, we look into bold options that Jeff made as
the CEO of GE that helped it to diversify its business operations. Also, alternative business ventures for
General Electric in the future have been suggested in this report.
Background of GE Company
General Electric (GE) is an American company that has a presence in more 180 countries globally. Its
principal offices are at Boston. The company has different businesses which include aviation, healthcare,
energy sector, manufacturing of additives and financial services (Ngoie, 2012). The company has been in
existence for the last 125 years and boasted as one of the biggest companies in the world due to its revenue
turnover and leadership on the market. General Electric has more than 300000 employees worldwide.
GE under Immelt’s Leadership
Jeffrey Immelt was the 9th chief executive officer of General Electric and was appointed in September
2001. Immelt went on to serve as a CEO for 16 years before retiring in August 2017. Jeff’s management
journey began on a low note as he took over the management of the company just four days after the
infamous 9/11 attack which cost the company’s insurance business about 600m dollars, killed two of its
employees and directly affected the aircraft engines business (General Electric, 2018). There were also
immediate challenges that arose as soon he assumed office like the high profile corporate scandals

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WorldCom and Enron. Also in 2008, the company’s primary source of growth, GE Capital was severely
impacted by the financial crisis. The resulted in GE Capital accumulating bad debts and several assets
disposals. This led to slow economic growth of the company, investor’s confidence in the company was
affected and the company faced more global competition like never before ((Pomerantz & Dusen, 2017)).
Due to this, the company’s revenues were significantly affected. Hence Immelt quickly had to find solutions
to these critical issues. According to Pomerantz and Dusen, Immelt decided to spinoff the real, estate, media
segments, and financial services, including the NBCUniversal’s stake for billions of dollars a move that
stabilized the company following the financial crisis it was facing. Also due to the rapid change of business
environment, Immelt identified primary areas where he had to focus exploring new opportunities that were to
be the core for the overall future growth of the business (Whittington, Cailluet, & Yakis-Douglas, 2011). His
idea was to make the company adaptable to the environment and shift the focus from deal-making and
cutting costs to the production of new products, services, and markets. He began by redirecting GE’s strategy
to focus on the customer, innovation, and organic growth. Early 2002, Immelt devoted the company to 8%
organic growth rate per year (Immelt, 2017). He also identified a number world trends such as an increase in
population growth of aging people, the necessity to improve infrastructure, the high demand for energy, the
climatic change and various opportunities in the future markets. He aimed to direct GE into producing
superior, high-quality customized products and services to customers in the rapid-growth markets. The
primary feature of his strategy was to develop a new Growth platform for the company that could be either
entirely new businesses or extensions of the existing commercial areas. By doing this, the new growth
platform would then be implemented through strategic acquisitions of a stake in potentially high growth
sectors. Immelt restructured and was keen on diversifying the company’s portfolio to venture into new
businesses other than just manufacturing. During this time he narrowed down on this four areas to seize new
opportunities for the company;

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New and Emerging markets
Immelt analyzed the Asian and Middle East markets growing development which could act as a hub
for the General Electric business in a move to increase revenue growth.
Infrastructure
General Electric as well predicted massive growth in the infrastructure sector, therefore, began to
position itself more in this sector as well as the financial services sector. The company also realized
opportunities in technology, energy, rail transport, aviation and other infrastructure related areas.
Demography
General Electric also predicted population growth of old people that translated to increase in demand
of healthcare facilities and services that presented new opportunities for venturing in healthcare services
provided. The company also realized there was an increase in population in developing countries hence this
also offered a chance to venture into the entertainment business.
Environment
General Electric also analyzed various global problems such as scarcity of water, climatic changes
affecting the world and global warming in which Immelt realized opportunities which could be converted
into lucrative business.
These four areas formed the basis upon which Immelt focused his strategies to re-establish the
company’s market leadership. To help him seize these opportunities, Immelt had to restructure the
company’s management operations (Baños-Caballero, García-Teruel, & Martínez-Solano, 2014). Therefore,
he decided to do away with his successor’s model of management whereby major business sectors were
subdivided into units which worked independently with defined goals and objectives but enabled the
company to be more responsive. Contrary to this, Immelt preferred the cross-business integration approach
whereby business sectors were divided into smaller segments that worked cross-functionally to achieve their