Elevate Classics: David Gelles On Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, Jack Welch's Leadership And More.

I mean, we live in a short-term world.

And I remember reading once a guy told me, he won't even read books that until they're 10 years old, because how do you, like, you can write, you know, Elizabeth Holmes is the best leader ever.

And, you know, it looks really good.

Like this stuff needs to age and it turns to wine or vinegar.

I make this comment, not to comment on your own writing, but that I was a pen and in 1996, you know, 94, 98.

I wasn't in Wharton, but I did a program where I took a lot of classes in Wharton and we were, I mean, the airplane interview was like, this was the thing I remember most from college, Jack Welsh, the airplane interview, like the master evaluator of talent.

Not only did he pick Jeff Immelt through this whole process of flying people around and asking them who they do die.

But then the three people were so good that he didn't hire, that they went on to lead all these other companies and just this lore that everyone learned.

And, you know, it's funny until I read your stuff, I kind of, I knew everything that had gone on, but I don't think there is a wine that has turned to vinegar more than that, than that story.

Right.

In terms of leader six obsession and the types of leaders and otherwise.

So not...

I mean, not only did Jeff Immelt, I mean, ostensibly drive GE in the ground or have terrible performance, but the three people that lost, I think it was, went on to... destroy other companies like as well and planted the kernel for the disaster that is still Boeing today.

And when I, I think I read it was first year article on the book on this.

I was like, God, man, that just closes that chapter on this is all kids were fed on in business school for 10 years.

And the Jack Welsh was the, and it just all wasn't really true.

So that's a lot, but that was very personal for me because I grew up in that when that was being taught.

But I want to add a crucial bit of context here.

And you alluded to it in sort of the setup, which is that it was true for a while, right? Jack Rose did make GE the most valuable company in the world.

When you were at Wharton, the GE stock was still on this record tail.

And so we can't lose sight of that, which is to say- But

because he was good at stock manipulation, right? I mean, yeah.

Fine, fine.

But I think, again, to this conversation around incentives, right? We live in a world where that was the metric that mattered, right? We defined success by how the stock was performing quarter over quarter.

And it made it very easy to not care about anything else.