Warren Buffet is MORTAL..not a SAGE

I love Warren Buffet for several reasons.

• First of all he is from my generation, who really earned what he achieved.
• Second, because he was honest and not arrogant.
• Third, because he was willing to live a life of honest, hard working people and not the bright lights of BROADWAY, BEVERLY HILLS and other celebrity habit ates.

But it is also refreshing that WARREN has suffered from the MELTDOWN..impacting all of us.

However, WARREN must also recognize he is MORTAL and must have succession plan... I believe that Berkshire Hathaway is really WARREN and not a real company.. but only time will tell...

Bill Rothschild, author of the only objective, comprehensive and instructive evaluation of the most remarkable company.. THE SECRET TO GE's SUCCESS.

TOO MUCH, TOO SOON, COMPLEX CHANGES ALWAYS FAIL

This is a message to PRESIDENT OBAMA and his TEAM
It is clear that President Obama and his team want to show their followers that they will do what they said...namely CREATE CHANGE and so they doing what they said.

Doing what you say is commendable and even very rare. Most tell their constituents what they want to, to get elected and do what they want to do.

President Obama is not following this traditional path. He has proposed to what he promised in "unionization, equal rights, abortion rights, getting troops out of fighting in Iraq and many others", at the same time STIMULATING and SPENDING beyond any historical predict"

However, he is violating every principal of sound leadership.. YOU CAN'T DO EVERYTHING AT THE SAME TIME.

If OBAMA and his TEAM continue to fulfill contradictory promises and try to solve all of the problems facing the UNITED STATES and THE WORLD..

History and common sense says he will FAIL... I hope he is able transgress HISTORY and COMMON SENSE and win...but I don't believe he will do, what everyone else has failed to do.

Bill Rothschild...author THE SECRET TO GE's SUCCESS and GEWatcher.com

LEADERS MUST CREATE AND MEET EXPECTATIONS!!

In my entire career as a senior executive at GE and my 25 years plus years as strategic consultant, I always told my clients that it is critical to NEVER PROMISE what you can't deliver.

Unfortunately, this message has been lost on the current generation of "leader?", in business, in the government and in even in religion.Surely, the BUSH administration didn't do what they promised and it helped create the MESS we are now in.But my most disappointing, even amazed, situation is in General Electric.

A review of GE's past showed that the company failed to meet the PROMISED EXPECTATION, but learned from its mistakes and since the latter years of BORCH, and the JONES and WELCH eras... GE could be counted on to do "what it said".IMMELT has now violated this THREE TIMES in the past year.Last January... he asserted, without hestitation... that GE would make its promised numbers.. but a month later GE failed to meet the promises.

Just a few months ago IMMELT promised that GE would continue to provide the dividends for 2009 and that it would maintain its AAA rating.Today.. it reduced its dividend 68%... and it is clear that its AAA rating will be reduced.

I am not sure what the CURRENT GENERATION of SO CALLED LEADERS... didn't learn that it vital to DO WHAT YOU SAY and ALWAYS MEET THE EXPECTATIONS THEY CREATED.WHY HAS THIS HAPPENED?I am disappointed and amazed and hope that at some point in time that the CURRENT LEADERS??? will recognize that REAL LEADERS CREATE AND MEET REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS...

Bill Rothschild, author of the only comprehensive, objective review of GE's 127 years and the author GEWatcher and StrategyReview blogs...both on www.strategyleader.com

Reinventing GE...a reason for its 126 successful years...It may be time to do it again!

In a recent speech Jeff Immelt, current GE CEO, explained that the key to surviving and even prospering in a Crisis situation is ADAPTING.. This is consistent with GE's remarkable ability to reinvent itself over its 127 years.

Each of the GE's leaders was challenged in different ways, but learned from their challenges and moved the company in a new and exciting direction.

In my latest book “The Secret of GE’s Success” I describe how GE has resisted what I call: cookie cutter succession planning.GE has had only ten CEOs in its 126 years, with a range of six to twenty year reigns. Remarkably each have been different and have leaders who were very different and were able and willing to ADAPT to change.

Charles Coffin succeeded Thomas Edison when Edison GE merged with Thomson Houston. Coffin was a very gentlemanly executive who was able to integrate these two different companies and their cultures, while developing highly positive relations with customers. He was faced with leading the company out of the Panic of 1893, a major depression. He negotiated with JP Morgan to take over the company’s equity position in the emerging electric utilities and installed the GE conservative financial systems.

Swope and Young had to lead the company both during the highly prosperous periods of the roaring twenties and the great depression. These unique individuals also played a major role in influencing social and economic policies and encouraging the unionization of the company at a period of major labor unrest and violence. Further they instituted a consultative management approach to the company that was highly unique at the time.

Cordiner institutionalized management and took strong stands against Big Government and Big Labor, as well as contributing to political conversion of Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately his achievements were darkened by the great electrical conspiracy and his inability to select his personal choice as successor.

Borch was faced with the challenge of moving the company ahead after the price fixing scandal and instituted one of the most risky and challenging new venture program ever. He moved the company in services, including financial services as well as several high tech ventures. To his credit, Borch recognized he had miscalculated the ability of the company to undertake and lead all of these ventures simultaneously and instituted the portfolio leadership systems that have enabled the company to continue deal with diversity and change.

Jones was a financial leader that used the portfolio management approaches to grow both revenues and earnings in a predictable way that calmed the concerns of Wall Street and positioned the company to move its stock upward.

Welch was a completely different type of leader than Jones. For over twenty years he was able to grow the company, prune its portfolio and make it a financial services giant, while continuing to grow some of the traditional businesses. He became a celebrity CEO and GE and Welch were viewed as one and the same.Again when Welch left he selected an individual with different styles and visions.

Jeff Immelt was faced with the challenges of succeeding a legend, keeping the company’s stock high, maintaining the triple A rating and initiating changes in a maturing portfolio of businesses. Further he was faced, four days into his tenure, with the aftermath of September 11, and the fact that the company not only lost employees in the World Trade buildings, but one of its leased aircraft and a stock that feel rapidly and has not regained the levels it had prior to 9/11.In short, GE has had the unique ability to select CEOs who could lead for long periods, were not inhibited by the past and could adapt to change.

I am pleased that Immelt is following his predecessors and wish him success in doing as well as they did.
Bill Rothschild, author of four vital Strategic leadership books.

Strategy is for the HEALTHY and not those in the INTENSIVE CARE WARD.

During my career, both as GE's Corporate Strategist and in my more than 26 years as a consultant, I have emphasized the need to do strategic thinking and decision making, when the organization is healthy and has options, and not when it is very sick, in the intensive care ward or dying.

The recent, shocking collapse of the automobile and financial services industries, prove that it is impossible to develop viable options when the patients are in emergency surgery. It amazes me that the so called "leaders" of giant, prestigious companies, like GM, Ford, Citicorp, Merrill...could have been so surprised by the decline and fall of their markets. They fell into the GO BIG/ GO GLOBAL trap and tried to be all things to all people and do "creative packaging and book keeping" to grow market share. Unfortunately this has proven to be a global phenomena and not just an American problem.

I became involved in learning and practicing the art of strategic thinking in the early 1970s when GE's CEO Fred Borch recognized, that he had tried to do too much too soon and it negatively impacted GE's profitability and threatened its future. Mr. Borch admitted he made a mistake and became the advocate of the principles of strategic portfolio leadership and management. GE was willing to challenge everything and everyone and focus on areas where GE could win.

This enabled the company to prosper. Unfortunately, even GE, has become a victim of the GO BIG and GO GLOBAL mystique...but at least the company still has a strong portfolio and has options. It still makes money and hasn't lost billions and forced to ask for government handouts. Hopefully it will turnaround its stock and credibility decline, learn from the past and re institute the sound strategic thinking and decision making skills that it had in the past.

In summary, I hope that we all learn from this current malaise and re institute the disciplines of sound strategic thinking and decision making. If you want to learn more read Putting It All Together- a guide to strategic thinking decision making..available on http://www.strategyleader.com/.



Bill Rothschild, Rothschild Strategies Unlimited LLC

GE's CONVERSION OF RONALD REAGAN...

Only one company can make the claim that one of their employees became president of the United States, and even more assert that they changed this individual political philosophy. The company is General Electric.

In my latest book: The Secret to GE’s Success, I describe how and why Ronald Reagan converted from being a liberal, union loving Democrat to a highly conservative Republican.Ronald Reagan was hired by GE to host the very popular GE Theater, as well as to become the company spokesman. Reagan toured all of the GE plants and addressed GE employees at all levels.

He worked for Lemuel Boulware, who was the architect of an anti-big government / anti- big labor strategy and policy that became known as Boulwarism.The underpinning of this employee and community relations philosophy and strategy was that Big Government and Big Labor, independently and in an alliance, were dedicated to take away management’s rights and make the company a socialist state. Even though GE had been pro-labor and pro-government in the pre-war years, under Gerard Swope and Owen Young, the GE leadership, under Wilson and then Cordiner took the opposite view.Under Boulwarism, GE management studied the needs of the employees and communities and balanced them with needs of the company to be competitive and profitable and decided on “fair but balanced” offer prior to the union negotiations. They presented the offer before the union talks and were willing to take a strike, rather than do was not right for all of the major stakeholders.

Further they told the communities that if they could not operate effectively and profitably in the current locations they were ready and willing to move their production to more company, non union, locations. Obviously, these practices were not popular with the unions, the government and the traditional GE communities, but GE did what it said and divided and conquered the unions.Reagan, though he wrote his own speeches, became a missionary for Boulwarism and he ultimately concluded that the message was right and so he changed his own socio/political philosophies.

This conversion led to his running and winning the office of Governor of California and then the US Presidency.
Bill Rothschild...author of "the Strategic LEADERSHIP Library"

SURVIVING THE GREAT DEPRESSION--GE STYLE!

One of the reasons that GE was so successful was the LEADERSHIP of Gerard Swope and Owen Young during the depression... this is an excerpt from my latest book: THE SECRET TO GE's SUCCESS..

."In 1929, the stock market collapsed and the world suffered the greatest economic depression in modern times. As noted, GE's revenues dropped more than 75% during the period. In comparison to many of its peers, who instituted sweeping layoffs---and in many cases put skilled and loyal employees out on the street--Swope and Yound were both more compassionate and more pragmatic. They recognized that if they wanted to keep talented people, they would have to take steps to minimize the Depression's impact on them.Three programs were introduced:

• Unemployment benefits. GE provided loans and relief to those workers the company could not continue to employ.


• Guaranteed work program. GE's electric lamp business allowed workers to share the pain. Instead of just laying off 20% of the workforce, it instituted a program to allow employees to reduce their work hours from five to four days. Because each worker took a 20% reduction in pay, the program permitted GE to keep everyone employed.


• Profit sharing in the 1930's. Another important innovation of the Swope/Young era was the introduction, in 1930, of a profit-sharing plan. This was unique in several ways. First it was offered at a time when many companies were having trouble simply surviving. Second, it was offered to all employees, regardless of their position in the company. Again, this plan was consistent with the socialistic philosophies held by Swope and supported by Young."
  

Read the entire story of the genius of Swope and Young---models of REAL LEADERS from which today's CEOs could learn...especially GE management..
Bill Rothschild, author of COMPLETE STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP LIBRARY
ROTHSCHILD STRATEGIES UNLIMITED LLC

A Real Strategic Stimulus Plan- Invest in Manufacturing Industries

Everyone agrees that we need to CREATE more jobs...but not everyone agrees on the type of jobs and how to do it. Let me share some of my ideas of what I would do>
First of all I would create MANUFACTURING jobs and get away from the mistaken idea that we should let the world "make our products" and we will be the Service capital of the world. Over the past three decades we have invested our resources into financial, health care, educational and recreational services. We thought that the Wall Street was immune from competition. The same is true of health care, education and recreation. We have now found this was a poor assumptions since even the SERVICE jobs have been outsourced to India and other developing nations.
So we have let our good paying manufacturing jobs be exported to the LOW LABOR parts of the world, with CHINA now being the biggest and most powerful. The result is that entire communities and States, like upper New York, Central Connecticut, Massachusetts..as well as the RUST belt..died or just been harvested to slow death.

This is what I think we need to do:

1. Select industries where we can not only compete but dominate. This may be integrated circuits, communications equipment and other consumer/ industrial markets.
2. Give our youth the option to LEARN trades, be apprentices, skilled craftsmen or women and not just go to colleges.
3. Invest STIMULANT money in refurbishing existing factories, build new factories, even be willing to own the facilities and RENT or LEASE them to companies who would use them.
4. This should include providing health care services, call centers, service centers and so on.

In short, use part of the stimulant money to recreate industries where we can win and not just build roads and other public facilities.

The United States can compete. There is no need to just BUY AMERICAN, but there is a need to REINVEST in our ability to compete. However, we must also be realistic, OTHER COUNTRIES are already doing this and so we must give our companies a chance to win. I would favor SMALL COMPANIES, but also allow the BIG companies to get aid if they want them and will build in the US and not just export our jobs and know how.

Bill Rothschild, author of of a complete Strategic Leadership Library.


The first and most comprehensive Strategic thinking and decision making process.

The only comprehensive assessment of GE's 127 years..including successes and failures.

Linking LEADERS and STRATEGIES

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