GE: Jack Welch and the Cult of the CEO

Jack Welch became the most celebrated CEO in America during his two decades running General Electric, exiting any business where GE was not first or second, scaling GE Capital into a profit engine, and building a management culture famous for its rigor. His signature system was rank and yank: every year managers graded on a curve, the top roughly 20 percent rewarded, the bottom 10 percent let go regardless of absolute performance. It made GE a talent factory, and Welch retired in 2001 near the company's all-time peak market cap.

This case sharpens a harder question than whether a leader was right: what a forceful management system quietly optimizes for, and the fragility it can leave behind years later. Open the app to examine what your own incentives actually reward, and whether it matches what you say you value.