Lights Out
Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric
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Narrated by:
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James Edward Thomas
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By:
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Thomas Gryta
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Ted Mann
About this listen
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 21st 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.
©2020 Thomas Gryta (P)2020 Houghton Mifflin HarcourtListeners also enjoyed...
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At the end of 2008, Ford Motor Company was just months away from running out of cash. With the auto industry careening toward ruin, Congress offered all three Detroit automakers a bailout. General Motors and Chrysler grabbed the taxpayer lifeline, but Ford decided to save itself. Under the leadership of charismatic CEO Alan Mulally, Ford had already put together a bold plan to unify its divided global operations, transform its lackluster product lineup, and overcome a dysfunctional culture of infighting, backstabbing, and excuses.
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The best business book I ever read
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Tap Dancing to Work
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When Carol Loomis first mentioned a little-known Omaha hedge-fund manager in a 1966 Fortune article, she didn’t dream that Warren Buffett would one day be considered the world’s greatest investor - nor that she and Buffett would become close personal friends. Now Loomis has collected and updated the best Buffett articles Fortune published between 1966 and 2012, including thirteen cover stories and a dozen pieces authored by Buffett himself. Loomis has provided commentary about each major article that supplies context and her own informed point of view.
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A collection of finance articles - not a biography
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By: Carol J. Loomis
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Glory Lost and Found
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- Narrated by: Joseph Durika
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Glory Lost and Found: How Delta Climbed from Despair to Dominance in the Post-9/11 Era tells the story of Delta's dramatic tumble into bankruptcy and how it climbed its way back to pre-eminence despite hurricane-force headwinds: high fuel prices, a hostile takeover bid, relentless competition, economic meltdowns, and geopolitical shocks.
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For Aviation Enthusiasts & the Business Industry
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The Paul Volker Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington Post journalist Sebastian Mallaby has garnered New York Times Editor’s Choice and Notable Book honors for his enthralling nonfiction. Bolstered by Mallaby’s unprecedented access to the industry, More Money Than God tells the inside story of hedge funds, from their origins in the 1960s and 1970s to their role in the financial crisis of 2007–2009.
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Valiant effort but lacking analytic horsepower...
- By ND on 01-10-11
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Play Nice but Win
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In 1984, soon-to-be college dropout Michael Dell hid signs of his fledgling PC business in the bathroom of his University of Texas dorm room. Almost 30 years later, at the pinnacle of his success as founder and leader of Dell Technologies, he found himself embroiled in a battle for his company’s survival. What he’d do next could ensure its legacy — or destroy it completely.
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Not perfect, but worth a listen
- By James S. on 11-09-21
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Finish Big
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When pioneering business journalist and Inc. magazine editor at large Bo Burlingham wrote Small Giants, it became an instant classic for its original take on a common business problem - how to handle the pressure to grow. Now Burlingham is back to tackle an even more common problem - how to exit your company well. Sooner or later, all entrepreneurs leave their businesses and all businesses get sold, given away, or liquidated.
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Begin with the end in mind
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This first real look inside Team Obama mixes political warfare and big-business shakeups in equal proportions, and comes from a uniquely informed source. Steve Rattner is not just the man brought in by the president to save the auto industry, he is a former New York Times financial reporter who also earned a place among the top tier of Wall Street's most informed investment bankers and corporate experts.
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Overhaul - A Memoir
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Africa Rise and Shine
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The road to success is rarely linear and never easy. But with courage, hard work, perseverance, and dedication to duty, Jim Ovia, founder and chairman of Zenith Bank, proves we can achieve the unthinkable. Jim has been called the Godfather of Banking by Forbes Africa. And this should be no surprise. In a time of tension between military and civilian regimes, periods of incredible economic instability, and a decaying infrastructure, Jim founded Zenith Bank in Nigeria.
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Very inspiring
- By Henry on 06-10-23
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Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?
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In 1990, IBM had its most profitable year ever. By 1993, the company was on a watch list for extinction, victimized by its own lumbering size, an insular corporate culture, and the PC era IBM had itself helped invent.
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Moderate Start, Picks up FAST!
- By Art H on 02-08-05
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The Bank That Lived a Little
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Based on unparalleled access to those involved, and told with compelling pace and drama, The Bank That Lived a Little is the story of one of the most familiar names on the British high street since Big Bang in 1986. Philip Augar describes in detail three decades of boardroom intrigue driven by ruthless ambition, grandiose dreams and a desire for wealth. It is a tale of a struggle for long-term supremacy between rival strategies and their adherents.
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Global superstar bankers under light-touch gov
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Alibaba
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In just a decade and a half, Jack Ma, a man from modest beginnings who started out as an English teacher, founded Alibaba and built it into one of the world's largest companies, an e-commerce empire on which hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers depend. Alibaba's $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the largest global IPO ever. A Rockefeller of his age who is courted by CEOs and presidents around the world, Jack is an icon for China's booming private sector.
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Strange: Best part of story happens "off-screen"
- By Tristan on 09-02-16
By: Duncan Clark
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What listeners say about Lights Out
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 08-24-22
Great book, though harsh
The books is a stellar investigation of the workings of GE and ultimately the fall of the company. Jeff Immelt gets much blame, but also so much blame that one cannot help wonder if the book is needlessly harsh on him. Great work of journalism, but perhaps slightly unbalanced.
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- R. F. Laurita
- 08-10-20
Come one come all...
Come one come all to hear a story that must be told. How hubris can be the greatest downfall, and the destroyer of innocent peoples lives. No more locker room BS as a determination of someone's ability to lead a business. Accountability and transparency are all that is needed moving forward, in business, in politics, in life.
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- Jeffrey D
- 08-15-20
JP Morgan's progeny
Lights Out is an interesting and timely book. What in the world happened to GE? Its fall from industrial stardom has been astonishing. Since the fall of GE coincides with a decline in American fortunes generally, one feels that there ought to be a lesson here. Although I am grateful for the story the authors are able to tell, I cannot help but feel that there is a much longer and more interesting book under the surface. The authors largely tell a story about Jeffrey Immelt, the successor to the famed manager Jack Welch, who took GE into the financialized capitalism of the late 20th century, which worked while it worked. Immelt took with him enormous riches from GE, and yet left it floundering. Immelt was a positive thinker and a salesman. One of his lieutenants, Beth Comstock, apparently knew next to nothing about the production side of GE, but thought that the important thing was that GE tell a good story, whether tethered to reality or not, to its employees and to the public. The financial books were, to some extent, cooked. Both Welch and Immelt have spent time in their post-GE careers telling everyone who will listen that it was not their fault.
It appears that the authors may not have had as much access to GE insiders as one would like. Since the fall of GE did not result in extensive legal investigations, the major figures do not have to talk, and when they do, it is likely to be self-serving. I did notice one article in Fortune (July 21, 2020) reacting to the book. There, the former communications director at GE lays out what the book “gets wrong about GE.” It turns out that what it “gets wrong” are two minor issues regarding dates. If this is all GE has to say for itself, it is indeed a sad commentary on the actions of GE and its officers.
One suspects that there is a deeply meaningful history here, beginning earlier than these authors do, at least as far back as the beginning of Jack Welch’s ambitious leadership beginning in 1981. I have to admit that I harbor a somewhat disreputable hope that that history would be something of a melodrama, like the fall of Enron, full of idiocy and bad guys. But perhaps it is also a history of an aging industry that even without all the creative accounting, stories, absurd acquisitions, corporate jets, advertising, inflated salaries, financialization, and flim-flam, would have declined anyway.
Maybe the truth is a bit of both. While industrialists used to act as though moving atoms and electrons around efficiently and usefully was absorbing enough (e.g., Thomas Edison), now many of them (supported by the business culture in which they work) appear to care more about stock price, stock options, fame, advertising stories, financial engineering, and drinking their own kool-aid (mixed by chief marketing officers like Comstock). Such a history can’t end well.
By the way, those GE washing machines and refrigerators? That business is still headquartered in Kentucky, but it is mostly owned by a Chinese company. It can use the GE brand until 2056. And those GE light bulbs? They are now a part of Savant Systems, as of 2020. It too will continue to use the GE brand. In a way, the company is going back to its roots, since it was started not by Thomas Edison, the inventor, but by JP Morgan, the financier.
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- coryevil
- 11-29-20
Peeling back the layers of mistakes by GE's CEOs
good listen, very interesting, definitely makes you understand how billions got lost by a conglomerate
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- Admiralu
- 09-29-20
The Sad Fall of an Icon
This was an account of the fall of General Electric. The title of pride and delusion is aptly applied here. Despite a long and storied history, founded by Thomas Edision, "incorporated" by J.P. Morgan, the company was a shining example of what an American company could do, create and become. How far the mighty have fallen. The book starts with a brief history then begins with the most dynamic CEO, Jack Welch. A bio and his approach brought GE billions despite the old boys club atmosphere, GE had a commitment to its customers, employees and shareholders. It took care of them despite some questionable business and accounting practices. When Welsh retired, Jeff Immelt was chosen to lead the company. Unfortunately for him, his tenure was marked by two of the worst disasters to hit modern business and our country, the 911 attacks and the 2008 financial crisis. It began the slippery slope of the fall of GE. It's all here in detail. Overextending themselves, forays into new fields, questionable acquisitions, flowery accounting practices and more. It is a straight forward account of what happened. I read this book using immersion reading, while listening to the audio book. The narration was rote, dull and monotone. The book would've been better with a more emotive narrator. A lesson in hubris this is a warning to many companies of what not to do. A good read.
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- James McDuff
- 11-24-20
Unexpectedly very good
After hearing the authors interviewed on Marketplace and reading a few reviews I was t expecting much but turns out this book was great and brought back a lot of memories handling Immelt and the GE aircraft in an old FBO job.
It’s a story that even the mighty can fall. GE is as American as Apple Pie and I hope to see them emerge on top. I think this story proves Immelt was on the job longer than he should have been.
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- Ann K.
- 12-02-20
Interesting but missing an important part
This book is interesting and it’s obvious that they have spoken to a lot of former GE executives. The language and lingo is heavily “GE speak”. There isn’t a lot that is new, seems like a summation of many WSJ articles I’ve read, but I did enjoy some of the insights into the conversations and discussions between the top leaders. My biggest complaint is that there is very little mention of the employees and what all of this turmoil has meant for them. The authors go on and on about shareholders and GE executives and retirees with pensions, but fail mention the workers that have been deeply impacted and, to some extent,
traumatized by all that has happened with GE over the last two decades. Thousands of people lost their jobs, lost benefits, or had their pay frozen while executives, company officers, and board members got wealthier. The perks and pay that these “failed” execs and even Jack Welch took on their way out of the company is disturbing and upsetting, especially in light of the sacrifices made by workers. The employees who were daily in the trenches making sure GE made sales, built and shipped products, and innovated new technology knew very little of what was going on at the top levels and found out often when the public did. I would have liked to see the authors give a little bit more consideration and air time that. Overall, I gave it 4 stars. This book is worth a listen if you don’t know much about GE and it’s fall from grace over the last 20 years. If you already know the stories, there isn’t much that’s new.
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- Justin
- 09-21-20
An Eye-Opening Look Behind the GE Curtain
While this book started slow, it finished strong. The story of the post Jack Welch era is one that needed to be told. The similarities between Enron and GE both in practice and hubris are shocking and not-shocking all at the same time.
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- Paul Courter
- 12-28-20
Great read
Learned a lot, very entertaining, bought GE stock with a bit of hope! Good narration as well.
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- Timur
- 08-08-20
Terribly great book
Listen to it after Winning by Jack Welch
Now we know why Jack Welch died:
(spoiler)
Grief...
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