Lights Out, Thomas Gryta
Lights Out, Thomas Gryta
3 Rating(s)
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Lights Out
Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric

Author: Thomas Gryta, Ted Mann

Narrator: James Edward Thomas

Unabridged: 13 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 07/21/2020


Synopsis

A WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER

"If you’re in any kind of leadership role—whether at a company, a non-profit, or somewhere else—there’s a lot you can learn here."—Bill Gates, Gates Notes

How could General Electric—perhaps America’s most iconic corporation—suffer such a swift and sudden fall from grace?

This is the definitive history of General Electric’s epic decline, as told by the two Wall Street Journal reporters who covered its fall.

Since its founding in 1892, GE has been more than just a corporation. For generations, it was job security, a solidly safe investment, and an elite business education for top managers.

GE electrified America, powering everything from lightbulbs to turbines, and became fully integrated into the American societal mindset as few companies ever had. And after two decades of leadership under legendary CEO Jack Welch, GE entered the twenty-first century as America’s most valuable corporation. Yet, fewer than two decades later, the GE of old was gone.

​Lights Out examines how Welch’s handpicked successor, Jeff Immelt, tried to fix flaws in Welch’s profit machine, while stumbling headlong into mistakes of his own. In the end, GE’s traditional win-at-all-costs driven culture seemed to lose its direction, which ultimately caused the company’s decline on both a personal and organizational scale. Lights Out details how one of America’s all-time great companies has been reduced to a cautionary tale for our times.
 

About Thomas Gryta

THOMAS GRYTA writes about General Electric for the Wall Street Journal. Previously he covered the telecommunications industry for the Journal and was a Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University. In prior work around the newsroom he covered the biotechnology industry and did general assignment reporting and copyediting. Gryta studied history at the University of Massachusetts, including a year in Germany. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and three children.  

About Ted Mann

TED MANN is a reporter in the Wall Street Journal's Washington Bureau, where he is part of a team covering business and government. He was the beat reporter covering General Electric and other industrial conglomerates for the Journal's corporate bureau in New York from 2014 to 2017, and previously covered transportation for the Greater New York section, where he broke the George Washington Bridge scandal that ensnared former governor Chris Christie and his aides. He is a graduate of New York University. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by Magdi Azer on July 26, 2020

Reading this book was a trip down memory lane. I had the privilege of working at GE for 20 years, so I had a front-row seat for many of the topics covered in this book. Already at GE for six years when Jeff Immelt became CEO, I can still remember sitting in a large conference room with many of my col......more

Goodreads review by Tony on July 28, 2020

First let me put in context my interest in this book. I am a GE employee, not by choice, but through chance as the company I worked for was taken over 9 years ago (I was a bit disappointed that the takeover was not mentioned in the book, although I guess $3 billion dollars is small fare in this stor......more

Goodreads review by Drew on August 10, 2020

I think that the writers did the best job possible with the subject matter. But it’s hard for me to love a book that is about arrogant people making poor decisions and still ending up absurdly wealthy.......more

Goodreads review by Kevin on September 07, 2020

Taking a break from fiction to catch up with some nonfiction. This is the story of the recent decline of General Electric. It's not a tale of lurid flagrant fraud, as with Enron or Theranos. Nor of outright collapse, as with the Rogue Trader of Barings Bank in the 1990s. GE's decline is a story of g......more

Goodreads review by Bruce on September 07, 2020

I worked twenty-five years for GE. The Company was full of incredibly smart, dedicated people who cared and loved their business. It is difficult and challenging to revisit the years leading up to GE’s tragic fall. The authors do a good job in my estimation of capturing the broad strokes and specifi......more