He seeks people who have enormous personal energy and the ability to motivate and energize others, and who are instinctively competitive. Making GE informal has meant violating the chain of command, communicating across layers and paying people as if they worked for a demanding entrepreneur. Corporate events inherited by the CEO have been transformed into meaningful levers of leadership. Annual and monthly meetings allow Welch to set and change the corporate agenda, to challenge and test strategies and people, and to make his presence and opinions known to all. Welch understands the value of surprise by making unexpected plant and office visits, hastily arranging lunches with junior management, and by delivering intimate and spontaneous handwritten notes to employees, which are sent immediately by fax and then by mail.
Most great leaders are masters at communicating their desires.
Welch doggedly repeats the key messages again and again, reinforcing them at every opportunity. Over the years he has been obsessed with harnessing the brute strength of big business while ridding GE of big-company paralysis. But they are where Welch collects unfiltered information, challenges and tests his top management, and ensures that the organization's successes and failures are openly shared. A central part of Welch's mission is to transform GE into an informal learning organization. Its management-development courses, where Welch personally teaches, are directly linked to the strategic priorities of the company.