How This B-School Is Keeping Jack Welch’s Legacy Alive & Well

Jack Welch at his computer in his apartment in New York City

‘HE AND I JOKED THAT HE WASN’T GOING TO BE AROUND HERE FOREVER’

But Welch also was keen on hitting academic measures of success. “Jack wanted to get to the core: is a faculty member successful at helping students learn new skills,” says Silberman. “It wasn’t just net promoter scores and enrollments. He got really deep into and got his head around how to ring the bell with regard to academic measuring techniques that accrediting bodies use. Even though he made fun of them, he said, ‘I am going to hit them because it’s part of how to establish my brand.’ And he was incredibly successful.”

Over the years, the effort to get Welch on film for the program came about because, adds Silberman, “he and I joked that he wasn’t going to be around here forever so let’s get all of this content down electronically so the curriculum is there. As an executive and leader, he was very disciplined about planning. But then he truly thought he was going to live forever. So we had these discussions but they were completely theoretical in his mind. The last couple of years he was starting to fade, and he recognized that so we spent a lot of time talking about the future.”

In the past two years, as Welch’s health began to fade, he became slightly less involved, leaving it to his wife, Suzy Welch, to attend the annual graduation ceremonies in Washington. D.C.  The last time he showed up for commencement was 2018 when he sat in an elevated chair on the stage to hug and congratulate students as they received their diplomas.

To Silberman’s way of thinking, that future is clear. He envisions no major changes to the $46, 200 MBA program or its curriculum. The Jack Welch MBA is composed of a dozen courses, each lasting ten weeks long, that can be taken over 18 months or stretched out over three years. The program requires a time commitment of ten to 15 hours weekly, and enters new classes four times a year in January, April, July, and October.

‘AT HIS CORE, HE WAS AN EDUCATOR’

The courses range from “Leadership In The 21st Century” and “People Managemen”t to “Marketing In A Global Environment” and “New Business Ventures and Entrepreneurship.” The subject of Financial Management gets two courses, while there are also doses of “Strategy,” “Organizational Change and Culture,” “Operations Management,” “Business communications and executive presence,” and “Managerial Economics.” The final course–“Business Analytics”–is combined with a culminating capstone experience in which students prepare and present a strategic plan to help their organizations attain a “more profitable and sustainable position of market leadership.”

The courses are chock full of Welch’s thinking, including his more controversial beliefs about winnowing out the poorest performers in an organization on an annual basis, the so-called bottom 10% of the workforce. Throughout, there are video keynotes from Welch and several other top executives. Silberman thinks of Welch’s leadership ideas as timeless. “We are always going to alter and tweak to stay relevant but I truly believe that what made him successful was he was at his core an educator. Before he was CEO at GE, when he was the head of plastics, he saw his role as bringing out the best in people.

“And as a scientist with a Ph.D., he tinkered. He had all these tools, some would work, some wouldn’t, and the ones that would work he would keep using and the ones that wouldn’t he would throw out of the toolbox. So that curricula that has been built was really 40 years of thinking, managing, and executing on how you run a business and mentor leaders. I think it is going to be effective for hundreds of years. I don’t think it is ever going to go out of favor.

‘I LOOKED OVER AT HIM AND THE TEARS WERE JUST ROLLING DOWN HIS CHEEKS’

“Over time, there will be less of a personal attachment to him I suppose. But all the students who are there now and all the faculty knew him and talked to him personally. The outpouring of support and loss and grief from him passing away was pretty astounding. There were hundreds if not thousands of students writing in to say how much they loved him and how the considered it their obligation to go out and be successful in their careers as a monument to what he taught.”

Typical of the many notes is one written by Aileen Fan, a 2016 graduate and president of Visante Communications in Miami. Her email, addressed to “Dear Jack,” was sent to the school two days after Welch’s death. “Studying my MBA at JWMI was the best decision I made 7 years ago,” she wrote. “I am grateful for your vision, leadership, and wisdom! Your teachings still resonate with my heart, “Control your own destiny or someone else will,” “Be candid with everyone,” and “Change before you have to.” JWMI ignited my lifelong learning journey, and I am grateful every day. I know you are proud of all your students! I know heaven is a beautiful place because they’ve got you. A life well lived, and you will always live in my heart!” 

Perhaps the biggest surprise for Silberman was the countless number of hours Welch spent on the school. Asked why he thought Welch invested so much of himself into the program, Silberman says simply, “He loved it. He just loved it. He told me, ‘I never accomplished something that has given me more joy.’ I’m no psychologist but you didn’t have to dig deep to find out why he loved it. He would openly say this is the most important thing he has done with his career. He never, ever talked to me about GE. I had to pry stuff out of him. It was as if he felt that was behind him. The only thing he wanted to focus on was what he had learned in terms of mentoring and teaching people and then force that into an appropriate academic setting so that it would have an academic life that would go on long after he passed.”

In the third year of the program, Silberman recalls, JWMI staged a full graduation ceremony for the 500 to 600 graduates at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington. D.C. “Jack and I were waiting behind the stage as the academic procession came in with all the faculty and students,” says Silberman. “We stood waiting in a little anteroom to the side of the stage where there was a closed-circuit TV so you could see the graduates marching in. I was looking up at that, and I realized he hadn’t said anything for a while. I looked over at him and the tears are just rolling down his cheeks. I was worried that he wasn’t going to be able to go out and give a speech. I put my arm around him and said, ‘Are you okay?” And he said, ‘This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.'”

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