How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America-and How to Undo His Legacy
This week listen to the NY time journalist David Gelles talk about his new book with this title. How one man came to embody the 1980’s shift to short term shareholder focus—and the negative legacy we are dealing with from this today. The stories we tell about business influence our perceptions of business- David Gelles tells a compelling story of how Welch’s story, seen in hindsight, represented an important negative turning point in the history of business and a legacy we are having to turn from today
Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
About David Gelles:
David Gelles is a correspondent on the Climate desk at The New York Times, covering the intersection of public policy and the private sector.
Before joining the Climate team, he spent eight years as a reporter for the Business section, covering C.E.O.s, tech, media, Wall Street and more. Mr. Gelles was the Corner Office columnist from 2018 to 2022, and previously worked with the Well team to expand The Times’s coverage of meditation.
Before joining The Times in 2013, he was a reporter for the Financial Times in New York and San Francisco. While at the FT, he conducted an exclusive jailhouse interview with Bernard L. Madoff.
Mr. Gelles is the author of “The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Stole the Soul of Corporate America — and How to Undo His Legacy,” published by Simon & Schuster in 2022, and “Mindful Work: How Meditation Is Changing Business From the Inside Out,” published in 2015 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism and at Boston University, and lives in New York with his family.
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Wow. This is so important! I'm going to listen again. So much to mine & pay forward. Bravo! :-) This reinforces so much of my obsession about us facilitating a power shift in a tipping point of new leadership (which I imagine has evolved for all three of us since our last chats, years ago by now). I loved hearing your voices chime in, sharing your own journeys and heartfelt care for what has been and what could be! I felt transported to moments in the past and to time traveling into our new future. I started my career wearing a navy blazer and foulard bow tie-- female version of man uniform in 1983. I was referred to as a…