Performance Preparation

Welcome to the next Performance of Royzel School of Talents. The details of the performance will be as follows:

Day & Date: Sunday, 2 August 2009
Time: 03.00pm - 06.00pm
Venue: Gedung Kesenian Jakarta (GKJ)

We hope all students will prepare themselves well for the performance.

But most of all, Enjoy your music !!!

See you there

Management of Royzel

How to Become a Ballerina

Becoming a ballerina is a dream for many little girls. Maybe it's the thrill of wearing a tutu and performing on stage or maybe they really have a love of ballet. Actually, becoming a ballerina takes many years of dedication and practice; but it is not an impossible dream. Read on to learn more.
Step 1
Take a ballet class. All ballet dancers start at the beginning learning the art and technique of ballet dancing. Most ballet students start out as young children, but older students also have dreams of becoming a Ballerina. Getting a late start does not mark you out of the chance to become a Ballerina. You may just have to work a little harder to achieve your goal.

Step2
Participate in ballet performances and recitals to learn how it feels to perform on stage in front of a live audience. Practice all the time and perform at every possible opportunity.

Step3
Join performance companies or ballet companies as you perfect your skills and techniques. Most ballet and performance companies require auditions and, should you be chosen, will expect dedication and respect for the company. This type of performing company may be within a dance studio, college, performance centers or ballet schools and are stepping stones on your way to professional ballet companies.

Step4
Audition for professional ballet companies. The audition process may be lengthy and difficult as the expectations of the professional companies are strict. The more famous the ballet company, the more difficult it will be to get through the audition process.

How to Become a Ballerina

Becoming a ballerina is a dream for many little girls. Maybe it's the thrill of wearing a tutu and performing on stage or maybe they really have a love of ballet. Actually, becoming a ballerina takes many years of dedication and practice; but it is not an impossible dream. Read on to learn more.

Step1
Take a ballet class. All ballet dancers start at the beginning learning the art and technique of ballet dancing. Most ballet students start out as young children, but older students also have dreams of becoming a Ballerina. Getting a late start does not mark you out of the chance to become a Ballerina. You may just have to work a little harder to achieve your goal.

Step2
Participate in ballet performances and recitals to learn how it feels to perform on stage in front of a live audience. Practice all the time and perform at every possible opportunity.

Step3
Join performance companies or ballet companies as you perfect your skills and techniques. Most ballet and performance companies require auditions and, should you be chosen, will expect dedication and respect for the company. This type of performing company may be within a dance studio, college, performance centers or ballet schools and are stepping stones on your way to professional ballet companies.

Step4
Audition for professional ballet companies. The audition process may be lengthy and difficult as the expectations of the professional companies are strict. The more famous the ballet company, the more difficult it will be to get through the audition process.

PERDENGARKANLAH MUSIK KAMU PADA SEMUA ORANG

Pernah kamu merenungkan, bagaimana beberapa orang musisi pendatang yang dapat menyebabkan begitu banyak orang menyukai musiknya? Artikel ini mencoba memberikan beberapa tip singkat mengenai bagaimana kamu dapat memulai memposisikan diri kamu di dunia industri. Hasilnya pasti akan sesuai dengan usaha yang kamu lakukan.

Musik sudah menjadi gaya hidup semua orang, mendengarkannya merupakan suatu pengalaman berkesan pada kita semua. Tapi begitu, kamu ingin menggunakan musik sebagai cara untuk mendapatkan uang dan menjadikannya sebagai suatu profesi, kamu perlu melakukan usaha-usaha tambahan agar dapat sukses dari jenis jasa ini. Popularitas musik sudah merupakan rahasia umum. Seseorang dapat menjadi sangat terkenal, kaya, dikagumi banyak orang, didekati banyak perusahaan untuk merestui suatu produk tertentu, banyak mendapatkan sponsor dll. Begitu ada suatu pertunjukan program seleksi musik di acara TV, ratusan bahkan ribuan orang antre di lorong-lorong panjang untuk dapat berpartisipasi dan juga oleh karena itu penjualan album musik telah memecahkan banyak sekali rekor-rekor penjualan tahun-tahun sebelumnya sehingga ini merefleksi bahwa industri musik adalah industri yang sangat besar karena konsumsinya dilakukan oleh semua orang dimuka bumi. Musik sudah menjadi sesuatu bagian yang tidak terpisahkan dari hidup seseorang dan ini adalah sesuatu yang positif. Mari kita lihat apa hal-hal kecil yang dapat kamu lakukan untuk meningkatkan penjualan musik kamu. Sebagaimana peribahasa yang ada, diperlukan begitu banyak tetesan air yang diperlukan untuk memenuhi suatu lautan, namun seseorang perlu melakukan langkah awal itu.

Selalu ingatlah bahwa musik kamu harus bisa menjangkau sebanyak mungkin orang dan dapat didengarkan dengan baik dengan cara yang mudah sehingga target pendengar kamu dapat terakses dalam jumlah yang banyak. Bukan sebaliknya dimana pendengar mencari kamu. Oleh karena itu, kamu harus melakukan upaya-upaya tertentu setidak-tidaknya untuk periode-periode awal sehingga orang-orang dapat dengan gampang mengakses musik kamu. Mereka harus bisa melihat potensi seni kamu dan kehebatan kamu tanpa banyak rintangan dan upaya yang sulit. Pertanyaannya sekarang, apakah memungkinkan melakukan hal ini tanpa harus mengeluarkan biaya yang terlalu besar? Jawabnya sangat bisa.

Pertama, kamu bisa buat klub musik kamu sendiri. Pertontonkanlah kebolehan kamu sesering mungkin di tempat-tempat umum, sekolah, universitas dan jangan lupa memakai teman kamu yang paling akrab – internet. Apabila kamu ingin hasilnya lebih baik lagi, usahakan agar kamu dapat meng-upload musik kamu pada berbagai situs internet seperti iTunes dll sehingga orang-orang dapat mengetahui dan menikmati musik kamu dengan mudah dalam waktu yang cepat. Kamu juga dapat mengijinkan host situs-situs tersebut untuk merekam musik dari album kamu tanpa usaha yang terlalu merepotkan.

Penjualan musik-musik digital dewasa ini telah menjadi cara penjualan yang baru di industri musik. Semakin banyak orang yang ingin men-download musik ke dalam iPods, MP3 dan jenis player lainnya sekarang ini. Ini menghemat banyak sekali waktu dan usaha dan tentu ini sangat mudah dilakukan. Jadi kecuali kalau kamu memasukkan musik kamu pada situs-situs musik, kamu tidak akan pernah dapat merangkul pendengar yang kamu harapkan. Untuk masa sekarang ini, upaya ini sudah banyak dilakukan. Ingatlah bahwa tantangannya untuk kamu pada tahap kamu sebagai pemula ini adalah bagaimana menciptakan hype dan buzz serta aura tertentu mengenai bakat kamu. Lebih baik lagi apabila kamu dapat membuat rekaman musik digital dari musik kamu dan dijual langsung di website. Banyak talenta-talenta baru di dunia musik yang telah menikmati ketenaran dari cara seperti ini.

Dengan mengizinkan orang-orang men-download musik kamu secara digital, maka kamu akan menyentuh kehidupan banyak orang dengan banyak cara. Dengan cara ini pula, memungkinkan banyak orang yang telah mendengarkan musik kamu di mana pun mereka berada untuk mendapatkan alamat kamu dan dapat mengontak kamu dengan mudah.

Banyak orang yang telah mengesampingkan cara marketing lama seperti membuat CD karena dianggap sudah kuno, tapi menurut saya tidak. Penggunaan CD walaupun pada akhirnya mungkin akan kalah penjualannya dibandingkan dengan penjualan melalui rekam musik digital, mungkin karena harga CD lebih mahal daripada harga yang ditawarkan oleh situs-situs internet atau karena produksi CD sedikit lebih rumit dari pada melalui rekaman digital namun sekarang ini penjualan melalui CD masih memegang peranan yang penting apalagi di Indonesia yang tingkat melek IT-nya masih agak rendah dibanding dengan negara maju. Jadi tetap cari carilah toko musik yang bersedia kamu titipkan CD kamu.

Tujuan utamanya adalah tetap supaya sebanyak mungkin orang dapat menikmati musik kamu jadi dengan demikian hal ini memberikan kamu kesempatan untuk dapat mempertontonkannya kepada banyak orang bukan hanya kepada orang-orang yang lewat toko musik yang menjual CD kamu. Apabila musik kamu bagus dan dapat diterima, orang-orang dapat kembali ke situs yang memuat musik kamu untuk mendengarkannya kembali. Selain hal itu, stasiun-stasiun radio lokal dan disc jockey klab malam yang ada di tempat kamu tinggal mungkin adalah teman baik kamu kedua yang harus kamu samperin untuk menciptakan buzz yang diinginkan mengenai musik kamu. Orang-orang yang bekerja pada sektor inilah yang akan membantu kamu untuk memperdengarkan musik kamu tanpa usaha yang terlalu banyak. Begitu orang-orang mulai memperhatikan kamu dan mulai menikmati musik kamu, kamu akan lihat bagaimana penjualan musik kamu akan meningkat. Pengalaman yang menarik bukan?

Berbagai Jenis Jender Musik Yang Berbeda

Apakah perbedaan masing-masing jender musik yang ada dan dimainkan di dunia blantika musik kita? Cobalah baca tulisan berikut ini yang memberikan sedikit gambaran mengenai jender musik dari musik klasik ke hip hop ke jazz dan artikel ini akan membantu anda untuk belajar tipe-tipe musik tersebut.

Sebenarnya agak sulit untuk mengkategorikan jenis-jenis musik yang ada dewasa ini namun selalu saja kaset-kaset atau album yang dikeluarkan mengaku bahwa mereka mengacu pada satu jender musik tertentu. Supaya bisa benar-benar menikmati jenis dan jender musik yang berbeda-beda itu, adalah penting bagi kita untuk mengerti semuanya termasuk mengerti semua tipe-tipe musik yang dominan yang menguasai dunia blantika musik dunia dan Indonesia. Kamu dapat memutuskan mana dari sekian banyak jenis tersebut yang paling cocok untuk kamu buat rekaman atau buat latihan ataupun untuk sekadar kamu dengarkan.

Salah satu jenis musik yang paling dominan dan paling penting di dunia musik adalah musik klasik. Ini jenis musik yang memerlukan latihan yang panjang dan latihan yang keras karena jenis musik dengan tingkat kompleksitas yang tinggi dan memerlukan waktu yang lama untuk dipelajari. Musik klasik tidak sederhana dan bagi penyanyi yang ingin dadakan tenar atau penyanyi kamar mandi, tentu ini bukan musik yang cocok. Musik jenis ini perlu bimbingan yang tepat dan latihan yang panjang serta penguasaan tekhnik yang tinggi. Hampir semua pertunjukan opera menggunakan jenis musik ini dan semua diva-diva yang menyanyikan jenis lagu-lagu klasik ini sangat dihormati dan disanjung karena tingkat dan kemampuan penyanyi tersebut. Musik klasik sangat digemari dan ditekuni dengan mendalam oleh orang-orang yang mencintainya dan apabila kamu tertarik pada jenis musik ini, maka kamu perlu mencari seorang pembimbing untuk membantu anda memainkan musik ini atau menyanyikan musik ini dan mengembleng anda dengan keras karena akan menyulitkan bagi anda untuk belajar sendiri. Satu jenis musik tipe yang lain berakar dari jenis musik suku-suku tertentu yang telah ada untuk waktu yang lama. Musik dari suku-suku tertentu ini terdapat pada suku tertentu dan tidak perlu peralatan studio yang terlalu mahal untuk dapat menciptakannya. Musik suku seperti musik suku-suku Afrika, Hawai dan Indian di Amerika pulnya kualitas-kualitas unik tertentu yang melekat pada jenis musik ini. Banyak musik suku Afrika yang punya irama cepat sedangkan musik suku Hawai banyak juga yang musiknya meriah dan bersemangat. Musik suku Indian Amerika punya unsur atau kualitas yang magis sehingga dapat mempengaruhi jiwa seseorang. Sama halnya, jenis musik orang-orang dari suku Nordic atau Arab punya karakter jenis musik tradisional masing-masing yang dapat membuat seseorang menjadi sangat spontan dan mempengaruhi emosi. Apabila anda suka menari dengan menggunakan musik yang simple, musik dengan nuansa alam, maka musik tradisional dari suku-suku ini mungkin cocok bagi anda. Musik jenis Hip-hop termasuk musik yang cukup baru dibandingkan dengan jenis-jenis musik veteran yang kita sebutkan diatas. Namun jenis musik ini telah mendapatkan sambutan yang hangat oleh banyak kalangan muda dengan skala yang mengglobal. Celana dengan pinggang yang rendah (low waist pants), gerakan tubuh yang meliuk-liuk, perilaku yang “cool”, permainan kata-kata yang ritmik – semuanya tergabung sekaligus memberikan nuansa hip hop yang sangat kental dengan ke-khas-annya tersendiri. Apabila anda ingin dianggap sebagai orang yang “hip” dan “cool”, mungkin anda ingin coba beberapa musik atau lagu hip-hop yang ada atau dapat men-download-nya dari website ke dalam iPod anda.

Salah satu jenis jender musik lain yang terkenal adalah Rock. Rambut panjang berewokan, gitar ditangan, kesan urakan, suara yang keras dan agak serak adalah karakter dan fitur utama dari musik Rock. Drama dan suasana yang dihasilkan oleh jenis musik rock ini sangat sulit dilupakan. Jenis musik ini yang berirama cepat dan agresif ini dengan penampilan yang agak ‘serampangan’ ini sudah terkenal sejak Elvis Presley mulai terkenal di zaman lalu dan sejak itu menjadi musik yang paling populer di seantero dunia. Apabila anda adalah seorang anggota rock band, anda bisa mempunyai tiket untuk mendapatkan ketenaran dengan cepat.

Kamu dapat pula memilih jenis musik yang agak sederhana dan jelas musik yang lebih lembut dari yang lain, anda bisa memilih musik country. Jenis musik lain adalah jazz yang merupakan salah satu jenis musik yang sangat mempengaruhi jiwa dan kita dapat terbuai terlena dengannya apalagi jenis yang pecahannya jenis “blues” yang sesuai dengan namanya menspesialisasikan pada lagu-lagu yang bernada sentimental dan sedih. Tarian jazz cukup cocok bagi kamu yang ingin menjadi disc jockey. Jenis musik folk adalah salah satu jenis musik tradisional juga yang disebut pula sebagai musik rakyat sehingga telah diturunkan dari satu generasi ke generasi berikutnya dan merupakan salah satu jender musik yang terkenal dan disukai oleh banyak pihak.

Apa sih Gunanya Belajar Seni – Musik dan Tari?

Banyak orang tua bertanya pada kursus kami mengenai pertanyaan di atas. Baiklah untuk menjawab hal itu, mari kita telaah satu persatu alasan untuk menjawab pertanyaan diatas. Tulisan ini dikumpulkan dari riset pada beberap media yang ada.

Latihan atau pendidikan musik pada usia muda akan sangat membantu perkembangan pada bagian otak tertentu yang digunakan untuk mempelajari bahasa dan daya nalar. Studi yang dilakukan belakangan ini telah menunjukkan bahwa latihan musik dapat mengembangkan kemampuan otak kiri yang dalam tugas sehari-harinya memproses informasi atau bahasa yang masuk ke otak dan pada dasarnya membantu otak tersebut mengalirkan sirkuit tertentu pada otak dengan cara tertentu. Memperdengarkan lagu-lagu yang familiar pada saat menangkap informasi baru cenderung meningkatkan daya tangkap pada anak-anak yang masih muda.

Terdapat pula hubungan yang sangat erat antara musik dan daya nalar spasial (spatial intelligence – kemampuan untuk menangkap informasi tertentu dengan cepat dan dapat membuat gambaran secara mental atas hal-hal yang dilihat). Intelegensia seperti ini, dimana seseorang dapat memvisualisasikan berbagai elemen pada saat bersamaan sangat penting fungsinya untuk banyak hal dari menyelesaikan tugas matematika yang kompleks sampai pada kemampuan untuk mengingat apa saja yang akan diperlukan untuk dimasukkan dalam tas sekolah pada hari itu.

Murid-murid yang belajar musik dan tari cenderung belajar berpikir secara kreatif dan memecahkan masalah dengan cara membayangkan berbagai alternatif solusi yang ada, sehingga menolak ketentuan dan asumsi yang berlaku. Pertanyaan mengenai hal-hal yang berhubungan dengan seni tidak hanya memiliki satu jawaban yang tepat.

Penelitian belakangan ini menunjukkan bahwa murid-murid yang belajar seni baik itu seni musik atau tari secara keseluruhan mendapat hasil tes ujian standar – SAT dengan nilai yang lebih tinggi daripada anak yang tidak mengikuti latihan atau pendidikan seni. Mereka juga ternyata berhasil mendapatkan nilai yang lebih baik di sekolah mereka.

Suatu pelajaran seni pada dasarnya memberikan gambaran ke dalam mengenai kultur lain dan mengajarkan kepada anak-anak bersikap empati pada orang dari kultur berbeda. Pengembangan sikap empati dan mengerti perasaan orang lain yang bertolak belakang dengan pengembangan sikap tamak dan “yang penting saya duluan”, memberikan pengalaman budaya antar negara yang menyebabkan anak dapat memberikan respek pada ras lainnya pada usia dini.

Anak-anak yang belajar seni musik dan tari dilatih mengenai ketekunan dan keuletan karena mereka belajar bagaimana hal-hal kecil dan detail yang dikerjakan dan diikuti dengan susah payah dapat menjadi suatu yang sangat penting sehingga anak dapat membedakan mana yang karya yang benar-benar bagus dan mana karya yang biasa-biasa saja. Standar-standar ini apabila diaplikasikan pada pekerjaan anak-anak memerlukan tingkat penguasaan yang tinggi sehingga anak pun di minta untuk mengeluarkan segenap kemampuan mereka untuk dapat tampil baik.

Di dalam musik, satu kesalahan adalah kesalahan. Tidak ada istilah yang abu-abu. Dapat diketahui dengan mudah apakah nada instrumennya tepat atau tidak, apakah not nya dimainkan dengan benar atau tidak dan lain-lain. Hanya dengan kerja yang sangat keraslah suatu pertunjukan yang baik dapat dilakukan. Melalui pelajaran musik dan tari, murid-murid belajar bagaimana untuk tetap mempertahankan upaya keras yang terus menerus untuk mencapai kemahiran dan melihat hasil nyata dari upaya mereka.

Pelajaran musik dan tari meningkatkan kemampuan bekerja secara tim dan disiplin diri. Supaya suatu orkestra atau tarian ballet dapat tampil prima, semua pihak yang terlibat harus bekerja sama secara harmonis dengan satu tujuan yaitu pertunjukan yang baik dan setiap anggota mesti berkomitmen untuk mengikuti latihan (rehearsal) dan latihan-latihan yang dilakukan secara rutin.

Musik memberikan anak-anak suatu sarana untuk mengekspresikan diri sendiri. Oleh karena anak-anak zaman sekarang secara umum memiliki tingkat kenyamanan yang lebih baik daripada orang-orang zaman dulu dalam hal memperoleh hal-hal yang dasar seperti, makanan, rumah dan pakaian yang baik, tantangan yang mesti dihadapi adalah bagaimana membuat hidup ini menjadi lebih berarti dan untuk mencapai pengembangan diri yang lebih tinggi dari orang zaman dulu. Setiap orang membutuhkan aktualisasi atas apa yang ia rasakan dan siapa dirinya. Rasa percaya diri adalah salah satu produk sampingan apabila anak anda dapat mengekspresikan dirinya dengan baik.

Pelajaran musik dan tari membangun kemahiran-kemahiran yang nantinya akan sangat diperlukan oleh anak tersebut pada saat memasuki dunia kerja. Pelajaran musik dan tari tersebut memfokuskan dan mementingkan pada aspek “aksi” daripada observasi dan mengajarkan bagaimana murid bisa tampil dimana saja dan kapan saja di dunia. Perusahaan selalu mencari karyawan-karyawan yang multi-dimensional yang memiliki fleksibilitas dan intelektual yang supel seperti yang diajarkan dalam pelajaran musik dan tari sebagaimana yang telah dijelaskan diatas. Di dalam suatu kelas musik atau ballet, murid-murid dapat belajar berkomunikasi lebih baik dan bekerjasama dengan anak-anak lain.

Pertunjukan musik dan ballet mengajarkan anak-anak belia untuk mengatasi rasa takut dan mengambil resiko dalam hidup. Sedikit rasa khawatir adalah hal baik karena hal ini akan selalu muncul di dalam hidup kita. Dengan bisa mengendalikan rasa khawatir tersebut pada usia yang belia, akan memberikan bekal yang besar bagi anak sehingga tidak menjadi penghalang dimasa mendatang dan dapat membangun karakter anak yang kuat dan tahan banting. Pengambilan resiko adalah penting juga dalam hidup kita apabila anak tersebut ingin mengembangkan bakatnya secara maksimum.

Memainkan musik dan menari ballet adalah kegiatan yang menyenangkan. Semakin anak kita menguasai alat musik yang dipelajari atau anak kita makin luwes dan makin banyak mengenal gerakan balet yang indah, mereka akan semakin tertarik pada seni-seni tersebut dan hal ini memberikan suatu kesempatan kepada mereka untuk mempertontonkan kemahiran mereka pada anggota keluarga. Kemampuan untuk dapat bermain musik dan menari ballet tentu akan membuka banyak kesempatan-kesempatan berharga yang dapat memperkaya hidup mereka.

Mengapa Musik menjadi Kreasi Seni yang Begitu Penting

Musik adalah hadiah yang tidak dapat ditolak oleh siapa pun. Musik telah memberikan pengaruh yang sangat besar pada setiap fase kehidupan manusia. Tidak ada seorang pun di dunia yang tidak terpengaruh dari unsur ini. Artikel ini mencoba mengeksplorasi berbagai tahap dalam musik.

Kalo kamu suka musik, tentu saja kamu tidak sendirian. Orang-orang dari berbagai penjuru dunia menghabiskan dalam jumlah persentase yang besar dari waktu dan hidup mereka untuk mendengarkan musik yang mereka sukai. Musik mempunyai efek terapi yang sangat baik sehingga sedikit sekali dari orang-orang yang mendengarkan musik yang masih merasa tidak bergairah setelah mendengarkannya.

Banyak orang bukan hanya suka mendengarkan musik tapi juga sekalian belajar musik dalam berbagai bentuknya. Kalo kamu gila musik, kamu bisa mendapatkan software musik untuk menciptakan musik kamu sendiri. Banyak orang telah mencoba belajar berbagai jenis instrument musik. Yang lainnya, walaupun hanya memiliki kemampuan nyanyi pas-pasan telah mencoba melatih mereka sendiri untuk menyanyi. Kemudian ada sebagian lagi orang yang menggunakan tarian mereka sebagai alat atau medium untuk menikmati musik. Banyak juga yang sebenarnya suka menciptakan lagu dan sebagian lainnya suka merekam lagu-lagu tersebut. Kita semuanya dilahirkan untuk mencintai musik. Anak-anak dari semua umur, menyukai musik. Bayi-bayi yang baru lahir yang tidak tenang dan rewel dapat dihanyutkan perhatiannya dengan musik yang menenangkan dan melodius. Wanita yang sedang mengandung, yang mendengarkan musik mentransfer kesukaan mereka pada musik kepada bayi yang mereka kandung. Anak-anak selalu mendapatkan minat mereka pada musik yang sebenarnya diturunkan dari orang tua mereka. Apabila kamu memainkan musik country di rumah anda, anak anda juga tentu akan menyukai musik country. Anak-anak balita yang agak nakal dapat menari dan menggunakannya sebagai sarana untuk meluapkan energi mereka yang terkesan berlebihan. Dalam kelas-kelas taman kanak-kanak, anak-anak diajarkan beberapa jenis lafal yang mirip (rhymes) dan lagu-lagu yang mereka sukai untuk menyanyai bersama atau hanya mendengarkannya saja. Bahkan sebenarnya pada tahun-tahun awal masa sekolah, musik sebaiknya diberikan dalam porsi yang cukup besar di kelas-kelas supaya seorang anak dapat mengapresiasi musik dan menikmati pendidikannya. Anda akan bisa menghasilkan musik anak-anak dengan menggunakan software musik gratis di internet yang dengan mudah dapat di download pada banyak situs di internet.

Untuk pencintanya, musik adalah segalanya. Tanpa musik dunia serasa hampa. Beberapa dari lagu-lagu dan nada-nada terbaik memang terbukti sangatlah romantic. Siapa yang bisa lupa dengan indahnya lagu dengan judul “Love Story”? Pencipta musik telah banyak menggunakan musik untuk mengekspresikan perasaan mereka sejak dari zaman kuno. Suku-suku kuno zaman dulu dimana pun di dunia telah menggunakan semacam bentuk musik dan tari untuk menarik dan mengundang lawan jenis. Apakah itu menggunakan drum seperti yang dilakukan di suku tertentu di Afrika atau menggunakan piano di Eropa atau flute di India. Daya hipnotis musik telah membawa banyak keberhasilan dalam memadu pasangan. Nada melodius flute yang dimainkan oleh Dewa Krishna telah mengangkat namanya sebagai salah satu dewa yang
paling romantis yang pernah dikenal oleh masyarakat. Karya Shakespeare: Romeo dan Juliet dikenal menggunakan lagu-lagu untuk mengutarakan perasaan mereka dan bahkan sampai hari ini pun, kebanyakan film komedi romantis Hollywood sangat bergantung pada lagu-lagu untuk membuat film mereka menjadi blockbusters.

Kamu memerlukan musik yang dapat menghentakan kaki untuk dapat menari. Tidak terkecuali siapa pun anda dan apa yang anda lakukan, anda pasti akan suka bergerak sesuai alunan musik yang enak. Inilah daya dan kekuatan sulap musik yang dapat membawa anda ke alam bawah sadar yang jauh dari kenyataan dan menggelorakan emosi dan perasaan anda di luar kuasa anda. Kemampuan untuk menikmati musik itu sangat gampang dan sangat natural. Orang-orang dewasa ini menggunakan musik pada kesempatan apapun sehingga membuat hidup lebih meriah.

Apabila anda mencintai musik, anda pasti mencintai hidup ini. Musik dapat menyentuh jiwa anda, menyampaikan pesan-pesan yang indah dan dapat mengubah dunia. Jadi bernyanyilah, menarilah dan karanglah lagu-lagu dan musik atau luangkanlah waktu untuk sekedar mendengarkan musik dan dengan cepat jiwa anda akan terbebaskan. Ini adalah salah satu cara yang paling sederhana untuk menikmati hidup ini dan meningkatkan kualitasnya.

Not-Not Musik

Dari Back ke Rob Zombie, Beethoven ke yang lain… artikel ini akan mencoba untuk menggali akar perkembangan not-not musik yang telah kita kenal sekarang ini. Musik atau “kata-kata yang tidak terucapkan” mempunyai potensial untuk dapat merasuk ke dalam diri kita, menggelorakan emosi, perasaan dan kenangan-kenangan masa lalu yang tidak terlupakan.

Istilah not musik mempunyai dua arti yang sangat berbeda dalam bahasa sehari-harinya, yaitu:

1. Suatu nada tertentu yang terdengar
2. Satu nota simbol yang ditulis untuk mewakili satu nada tertentu

Walaupun kedua arti diatas merupakan dua hal yang berbeda, mereka mempunyai hubungan yang terkait satu sama lain. Definisi saya mengenai not musik adalah, “satu nada yang terdengar pada waktu tertentu”. Notasi musik tradisional selalu menggunakan definisi yang kurang lebih seperti ini sebagai acuan. Musik pada dasarnya terdiri dari banyak not. Kadang, not musik muncul satu setelah lainnya dalam sekuens yang berurutan misalnya pada melodi yang dinyanyikan. Pada waktu lain, kadang banyak not-not yang dapat terdengar sekaligus pada saat yang sama, ini biasanya terjadi pada saat banyak nada atau instrument-instrumen yang dinyanyikan atau dimainkan untuk mewakili bagiannya yang berbeda-beda.

Pada saat musik ditulis, setiap not diwakilkan secara terpisah satu sama lainnya, baik untuk not-not yang diperdengarkan secara sekuensial maupun not-not yang didengar pada saat yang bersamaan. Setiap not yang diwakili secara individu tersebut memiliki nada tunggal atau frekuensi yang bertahan untuk jangka waktu yang singkat. Selama berlangsugnya not musik tertentu, apakah panjang atau pendek, ada kemungkinan terjadi perubahan di dalam nada keras lembutnya atau bahkan kualitas atau jenis nadanya, namun semua itu tetap dianggap sebagai satu not musik yang sama. Satu not musik tunggal di dalam satu bagian tertentu dinyanyikan atau dimainkan oleh satu tipe suara atau instrumen tertentu.

Namun, ada beberapa klarifikasi yang diperlukan untuk itu:

1. Ada beberapa instrument perkusi yang mempunyai not-not musik tertentu yang ditulis hanya untuk instrumen tersebut yang mempunyai kharateristik yang dapat kita kategorikan mempunyai panjang not yang tidak terbatas karena not tersebut dapat dimainkan tanpa ada batasan waktunya, salah satu contoh yang paling jelas dalam hal ini adalah instrument drum.

2. Ada beberapa tipe instrumen yang ada yang memiliki kemampuan untuk merubah tinggi rendahnya nada secara perlahan-lahan selama dimainkan. Contoh yang paling tepat untuk ini adalah gitar Hawaii atau segala jenis instrumen petik yang memiliki fret seperti biola.

3. Tidak ada cara yang benar-benar sempurna untuk dapat mencatat notasi perubahan naik turunnya nada pada satu not musik tertentu tapi salah satu contoh yang baik adalah penulisan slide dari satu not musik ke not musik lain. Di dalam pelajaran musik ini disebut glissando.

4. Ada beberapa instrumen yang dapat memainkan beberapa not sekaligus pada saat bersamaan. Contoh dari ini adalah seperti instrumen yang memakai keyboard dan beberapa jenis instrumen petik lainnya seperti harpa. Not-not musik ini dapat berupa satu kord (chord), atau mungkin not-not dengan bagian berbeda-beda yang bergerak secara terpisah. Pada kasus-kasus seperti ini, setiap not dapat ditulis dengan panjang tertentu.

5. Satu not tertentu dapat ditulis dengan beberapa cara yang semuanya tergantung dari panjang not tersebut.

Notasi adalah salah satu cara untuk menulis musik dan telah berkembang dan berevolusi untuk jangka waktu yang lama sekali. Sama halnya seperti cerita-cerita rakyat, banyak sekali jenis dan tipe musik zaman dulu yang diturunkan dari satu generasi ke generasi berikutnya tanpa dilakukan penulisan notasinya sama sekali dan karena itulah konsep notasi ini berevolusi dalam periode yang lama. Notasi sangat diperlukan oleh musik untuk memberikan nuansa presisi dan konsistensi dalam melantunkan suatu lagu tertentu.

Notasi diciptakan dan dikembangkan sejalan dengan adanya pelajaran teori musik karena tidaklah mungkin bagi kita untuk mencatat semua not-not musik yang digunakan apabila not-not musik tersebut tidak memiliki nama, atau apabila tidak ada cara untuk mengidentifikasi hubungan antara satu not dengan not lainnya. Oleh karena itu, ketika konsep mengenai kunci-kunci dan skala (scale) mulai diperkenalkan, pada saat yang sama ahli-ahli musik juga memberi kunci dan skala-skala tersebut nama-nama supaya mudah diidentifikasikan.

Orang-orang Romawi dan Yunani kedua-duanya menggunakan notasi musik yang tidak berbentuk grafik, yang menggunakan huruf yang mewakili alphabet tertentu untuk memberi simbol not tertentu. Dari sinilah muncul huruf-huruf A sampai G yang kita gunakan sekarang ini untuk merepresentasikan not musik. Huruf-huruf ini kadang disebut sebagai “Notasi Boethian” yang diberi nama sesuai nama seorang penulis dan ahli negara orang Romawi yang bernama Boethius. Sesuai dengan catatan sejarah, beliaulah yang dianggap sebagai orang pertama yang mendokumentasikan penggunaan huruf-huruf Romawi sebagai nama-nama kunci pada not-not musik.

Metode lainnya dalam penamaan not-not musik telah diperkenalkan sekitar abad 1000 setelah masehi oleh seorang pendeta terkenal bernama Guido d’Arezzo. Metode ini telah dipakai dan tetap dipertahankan pemakaiannya dalam periode yang panjang sebagaimana yang kita ketahui namanya sekarang ini yakni metode tonic sol-fa. Hal yang paling penting dalam perkembangan musik sehubungan dengan metode ini adalah bahwa pada saat itu dipergunakan 6 jenis not musik yang dipakai oleh skala major (major scale) bahkan sampai saat sekarang ini. Italia dan Prancis dan Negara-negara Eropa lainnya sampai sekarang masih menggunakan metode dan nama-nama tonic sol-fa ini sebagai notasi musik mereka dan bukan huruf-huruf alphabet, namun saya percaya bahwa perubahan dengan menggunakan nama-nama tonic sol-fa ini barusan terjadi hanya pada sekitar 200 tahun terakhir ini saja.

Sistem notasi musik zaman dulu yang menggunakan huruf alfabet pada dasarnya adalah cikal bakal dari simbol-simbol yang kita gunakan dewasa ini. Namun disana-sini banyak terjadi perubahan dan penyempurnaan. Pada periode-periode awal, not B flat adalah not yang berbeda dan menggunakan huruf kecil, sedangkan pada waktu itu digunakan huruf B yang huruf besar dan agak gemuk. Huruf yang B yang huruf kecil dan lebih berbentuk kotak dan lebih bernuansa gothik dipakai untuk mewakili B natural. Namun, secara keseluruhan notasi musik sekarang ini cenderung memiliki tingkat ketepatan yang sangat tinggi daripada notasi musik zaman dulu.

Dalam period dari zaman dulu sampai pada periode sekarang, telah banyak sekali proses adaptasi, penambahan dan penyempurnaan pada notasi musik dan banyak diperkenalkan metode-metode baru, tanda-tanda dan komplikasi-komplikasi musik baru. Semua bentuk dan jenis notasi zaman dulu yang masih perlu dan masih dipergunakan tetap dipertahankan sampai sekarang sedangkan notasi-notasi yang lebih rumit dan lebih merepotkan telah lama ditinggalkan. Notasi-notasi modern dikembangkan di Eropa sekitar abad 15 dan 16 dan sejak itu notasi ini telah tersebar dengan cepat ke segala penjuru dunia. Inilah yang menyebabkan pencatatan not musik dan notasi musik menjadi salah satu bahasa dunia yang paling seragam dan dapat diterima sepanjang waktu.

Belajar Musik Dari Mendengar

Belajar Musik dari Mendengar dilakukan dengan mendengar berulang-ulang permainan musik yang dilakukan oleh musisi-musisi lain dan kemudian mencoba untuk membuat kreasi ulang atas apa yang sudah didengar. Ini adalah cara orang-orang belajar main musik yang tradisional dimana pada saat itu tidak ada notasi musikal yang komplit. Banyak orang dari berbagai kultur pada saat ini yang tidak memiliki notasi musikal yang terus belajar musik dengan cara mendengar ini dan latihan pendengaran, ada juga yang dengan melalui kursus menjadi musisi atau pemain musik pada konservatori musik atau college musik dan ini bahkan merupakan hal yang biasa dilakukan oleh mereka yang telah menggunakan notasi musikal secara ekstensif.
Audiasi melibatkan mendengar suara musik secara mental walaupun pada level yang berbeda dengan “mendengar musik melalui kepala”. Selain mendengar ritme dan tinggi rendah nada musik secara mental, ini melibatkan keahlian untuk mereproduksi ulang suara-suara tersebut yang memerlukan pengetahuan melodi, harmoni (chords) dan bass line. Di dunia Barat, belajar musik dari Mendengar diasosiasikan dengan lagu-lagu tradisional dan musik rakyat (folk music) namun banyak bentuk musik-musik klasik yang ada diseluruh dunia yang tidak atau kurang lengkap notasi musiknya namun telah disampaikan dari satu generasi ke generasi berikutnya melalui pendengaran.

Metode Suzuki yang merupakan salah satu sistem pengajaran musik memiliki fokus pengembangan yang tinggi pada belajar melalui pendengaran ini dari sejak anak-anak berumur belia. Di dalam bukunya, “Teaching from the Balance Point”, Edward Kreitman, Guru Metode Suzuki yang berbasis di AS, dengan jelas membedakan “Belajar musik dari Mendengar” merupakan proses belajar yang terpisah dan sama sekali berbeda dengan “Belajar Musik melalui Hafalan”.

Apa sih Untungnya Mendengarkan Musik Instrumental?

Kunci untuk mendapatkan pikiran, badan dan mental yang lebih sehat adalah mendengarkan musik instrumental. Berikut adalah alasannya.

Selain fakta bahwa mendengarkan musik instrumental seperti flute, piano, guitar, biola dan instrumen-instrumen lain itu sangatlah menyenangkan dan menenangkan, para praktisi telah menemukan bahwa kegiatan ini akan memberikan dampak positif besar terhadap pikiran, badan dan mental seseorang.

Belakangan ini, semakin banyak hasil riset mengenai efek dari lagu-lagu instrumental terhadap kesehatan dan kesegaran fisik seseorang. “Semakin banyak sekarang ini, dokter-dokter di dunia menggunakan musik sebagai bagian dari alat pengobatan mulai dari proses penyembuhan kepada pasien-pasien mereka sampai ke tingkat untuk membantu mereka tetap bisa fit dan bugar” kata Victoria Abreo, seorang spesialis pengobatan alternative pada BellaOnline. “Untuk pasien yang menghadapi masalah dengan jantung, mereka akan mendapatkan manfaat yang sama dari mendengar musik klasik selama 30 menit dibandingkan dengan menelan 10mg obat penenang Valium. Musik dan terapi relaksasi telah banyak digunakan secara bersamaan untuk menurunkan detak jantung dan menormalkan tekanan darah pada banyak pasien yang terkena serangan jantung. Penderita migraine (sakit kepala sebelah) juga telah banyak yang dilatih dengan menggunakan musik, pemberian bantuan visual dan tekhnik-tekhnik relaksasi untuk membantu menurunkan frekuensi, intensitas dan durasi penderitaan sakit kepala mereka.

Pada James Medical Center pada Ohio State University, para ahli bedah sekarang ini banyak yang menggunakan musik instrumental untuk memberikan efek relaksasi kepada pasien selama proses pembedahan maupun setelah proses pembedahan tersebut. Pada situsnya, James Medical Center disana dicantumkan bahwa hasil riset maupun testimoni dari para pasien memberikan jawaban yang jelas akan dampat positif yang besar dari penyembuhan melalui musik. “Musik telah terbukti menciptakan sistem daya tahan tubuh yang lebih kuat” demikian penjelasan yang diberikan oleh James Medical Center. "Sistem kekebalan tubuh membantu menyembuhkan luka-luka." Medical Center ini juga memberikan daftar kegunaan yang dapat diperoleh dari terapi mendengarkan musik yakni termasuk mengurangi rasa sakit, menurunkan perasaan ingin muntah atau mual, dan menaikkan syaraf kontrol dan tingkat kesadaran pasien.

Disamping keuntungan-keuntungan fisik yang dapat diperoleh, hasil riset telah menunjukkan bahwa mendengarkan musik instrumental juga memberikan dampak positif pada pikiran dan bawah sadar kita. “Murid-murid yang mendengarkan Mozart selama 10 menit sebelum mengambil ujian SAT – Scholastic Aptitude Tests, secara menyeluruh mendapatkan nilai yang lebih tinggi daripada anak-anak yang tidak terekspos dengan musik tersebut sebelum ujian. Orang-orang yang mendengarkan musik klasik yang ringan selama 90 menit selama melakukan proses editing suatu naskah akan menaikkan tingkat akurasinya sekitar 21 persen." demikian menurut Abreo. Mendengarkan musik instrumental sangat direkomendasikan pada orang-orang pada berbagai kalangan umur – bahkan murid-murid sekolah telah dilaporkan mendapatkan keuntungan yang besar dari mendengar music karena hal ini meningkatkan stimulasi otak mereka, meningkatkan keahlian daya nalar abstrak (abstract reasoning skills) dan pengembangan kognitif (cognitive development).

Tentu saja, kamu dapat mendengarkan berbagai tipe intrumen musik yang ada sesuai dengan keinginan kamu apakah ingin meningkatkan kesehatan fisik, mental atau emosional kamu. Misalnya, untuk memberikan stimulasi pada pikiran, kamu dapat memilih komposisi yang memberikan semangat – musik yang agak cepat dengan tingkat nada yang agak tinggi. Sebagai contoh, misalnya konserto Biola Mozarts (Mozarts’ Violin concertos). Untuk membangun mood (perasaan) kamu, kamu dapat mendengar selandung instrumen musik gitar blues, musik yang dapat mengakses emosi kamu, dan menggelorakan imajinasi kamu, kamu dapat mempengaruhi pikiran bawah sadar kamu dengan cara member stimulasi pada tubuh kamu melalui intrumen musik yang bersemangat yang didesain untuk menggairahkan otak kreatif kita, otak kanan. Contoh yang sempurna untuk ini adalah mendengarkan karya-karya pemain saxophone bernuansa jazz, John Coltrane.

“Musik telah lama menjadi penyembuh yang luar biasa”, jelas Abreo dari BellaOnline."Bahkan di dalam kitab suci, kita telah pelajari bahwa David memainkan harpa untuk mengurangi depresi berat yang diderita Raja Saul (King Saul). Yang lebih penting lagi, musik adalah suatu terapi yang sangat berhasil karena hampir semua orang memberikan respon yang positif pada paling sedikit satu jenis musik. “Dengarkanlah musik instrumental hari ini dan dapatkanlah keuntungannya dari pengalaman kamu tersebut.

Musik Intrumental sekarang ini seperti, piano, gitar, flute, biola dan instrument lain dapat banyak ditemukan di toko-toko atau di situs internet. EZ-tracks.com juga memberikan sebagian musik instrumental dengan gratis. Bila ini adalah waktunya untuk relax dan rejuvenasi, ada juga cara yang baik untuk menyegarkan tubuh yaitu melalui karaoke. Ini adalah obat-obat penawar mujarab yang dapat menyembuhkan kamu.

Apa sih Untungnya Mendengarkan Musik Instrumental?

Kunci untuk mendapatkan pikiran, badan dan mental yang lebih sehat adalah mendengarkan musik instrumental. Berikut adalah alasannya.

Selain fakta bahwa mendengarkan musik instrumental seperti flute, piano, guitar, biola dan instrumen-instrumen lain itu sangatlah menyenangkan dan menenangkan, para praktisi telah menemukan bahwa kegiatan ini akan memberikan dampak positif besar terhadap pikiran, badan dan mental seseorang.

Belakangan ini, semakin banyak hasil riset mengenai efek dari lagu-lagu instrumental terhadap kesehatan dan kesegaran fisik seseorang. “Semakin banyak sekarang ini, dokter-dokter di dunia menggunakan musik sebagai bagian dari alat pengobatan mulai dari proses penyembuhan kepada pasien-pasien mereka sampai ke tingkat untuk membantu mereka tetap bisa fit dan bugar” kata Victoria Abreo, seorang spesialis pengobatan alternative pada BellaOnline. “Untuk pasien yang menghadapi masalah dengan jantung, mereka akan mendapatkan manfaat yang sama dari mendengar musik klasik selama 30 menit dibandingkan dengan menelan 10mg obat penenang Valium. Musik dan terapi relaksasi telah banyak digunakan secara bersamaan untuk menurunkan detak jantung dan menormalkan tekanan darah pada banyak pasien yang terkena serangan jantung. Penderita migraine (sakit kepala sebelah) juga telah banyak yang dilatih dengan menggunakan musik, pemberian bantuan visual dan tekhnik-tekhnik relaksasi untuk membantu menurunkan frekuensi, intensitas dan durasi penderitaan sakit kepala mereka.

Pada James Medical Center pada Ohio State University, para ahli bedah sekarang ini banyak yang menggunakan musik instrumental untuk memberikan efek relaksasi kepada pasien selama proses pembedahan maupun setelah proses pembedahan tersebut. Pada situsnya, James Medical Center disana dicantumkan bahwa hasil riset maupun testimoni dari para pasien memberikan jawaban yang jelas akan dampat positif yang besar dari penyembuhan melalui musik. “Musik telah terbukti menciptakan sistem daya tahan tubuh yang lebih kuat” demikian penjelasan yang diberikan oleh James Medical Center. "Sistem kekebalan tubuh membantu menyembuhkan luka-luka." Medical Center ini juga memberikan daftar kegunaan yang dapat diperoleh dari terapi mendengarkan musik yakni termasuk mengurangi rasa sakit, menurunkan perasaan ingin muntah atau mual, dan menaikkan syaraf kontrol dan tingkat kesadaran pasien.

Disamping keuntungan-keuntungan fisik yang dapat diperoleh, hasil riset telah menunjukkan bahwa mendengarkan musik instrumental juga memberikan dampak positif pada pikiran dan bawah sadar kita. “Murid-murid yang mendengarkan Mozart selama 10 menit sebelum mengambil ujian SAT – Scholastic Aptitude Tests, secara menyeluruh mendapatkan nilai yang lebih tinggi daripada anak-anak yang tidak terekspos dengan musik tersebut sebelum ujian. Orang-orang yang mendengarkan musik klasik yang ringan selama 90 menit selama melakukan proses editing suatu naskah akan menaikkan tingkat akurasinya sekitar 21 persen." demikian menurut Abreo. Mendengarkan musik instrumental sangat direkomendasikan pada orang-orang pada berbagai kalangan umur – bahkan murid-murid sekolah telah dilaporkan mendapatkan keuntungan yang besar dari mendengar music karena hal ini meningkatkan stimulasi otak mereka, meningkatkan keahlian daya nalar abstrak (abstract reasoning skills) dan pengembangan kognitif (cognitive development).

Tentu saja, kamu dapat mendengarkan berbagai tipe intrumen musik yang ada sesuai dengan keinginan kamu apakah ingin meningkatkan kesehatan fisik, mental atau emosional kamu. Misalnya, untuk memberikan stimulasi pada pikiran, kamu dapat memilih komposisi yang memberikan semangat – musik yang agak cepat dengan tingkat nada yang agak tinggi. Sebagai contoh, misalnya konserto Biola Mozarts (Mozarts’ Violin concertos). Untuk membangun mood (perasaan) kamu, kamu dapat mendengar selandung instrumen musik gitar blues, musik yang dapat mengakses emosi kamu, dan menggelorakan imajinasi kamu, kamu dapat mempengaruhi pikiran bawah sadar kamu dengan cara member stimulasi pada tubuh kamu melalui intrumen musik yang bersemangat yang didesain untuk menggairahkan otak kreatif kita, otak kanan. Contoh yang sempurna untuk ini adalah mendengarkan karya-karya pemain saxophone bernuansa jazz, John Coltrane.

“Musik telah lama menjadi penyembuh yang luar biasa”, jelas Abreo dari BellaOnline."Bahkan di dalam kitab suci, kita telah pelajari bahwa David memainkan harpa untuk mengurangi depresi berat yang diderita Raja Saul (King Saul). Yang lebih penting lagi, musik adalah suatu terapi yang sangat berhasil karena hampir semua orang memberikan respon yang positif pada paling sedikit satu jenis musik. “Dengarkanlah musik instrumental hari ini dan dapatkanlah keuntungannya dari pengalaman kamu tersebut.

Musik Intrumental sekarang ini seperti, piano, gitar, flute, biola dan instrument lain dapat banyak ditemukan di toko-toko atau di situs internet. EZ-tracks.com juga memberikan sebagian musik instrumental dengan gratis. Bila ini adalah waktunya untuk relax dan rejuvenasi, ada juga cara yang baik untuk menyegarkan tubuh yaitu melalui karaoke. Ini adalah obat-obat penawar mujarab yang dapat menyembuhkan kamu.

BELAJAR MUSIK ITU SEPERTI BELAJAR BERBICARA

Anak-anak mulai belajar menggunakan suaranya sejak dari mereka lahir. Ini menyebabkan mereka melakukan experimen atas suara-suara mereka dengan meniru suara-suara yang mereka dengar dari lingkungan mereka dan secara umum belajar untuk menghasilkan suara-suara tersebut dengan tepat. Sejalan dengan pertumbuhan anak, anda akan dapat mengamati bahwa anak anda menjadi seorang musisi dengan keinginan mereka untuk terus menerus melakukan imitasi suara-suara musik atau nyanyian yang mereka dengar.

Hampir semua murid yang belajar musik dapat mengikuti nada-nada tuts yang dimainkan pada piano atau keyboard dengan memadukan suara yang mereka dengar dengan suara yang mereka hasilkan karena telinga dan suara dapat disinkronisasikan. Namun, apabila anak tersebut diminta untuk mereproduksi ulang not musik yang didengarnya dari instrumen tersebut, proses ini dapat mengambil 3 atau 4 jam atau bahkan lebih untuk dapat dicocokan. Alasannya adalah karena telinga dan instrument tidak dapat disinkronasikan dengan mudah seperti suara dan telinga. Murid-murid tersebut harus mengidentifikasikan mana dari 12 not musik tersebut yang telah dimainkan sebelum dapat mereproduksi ulang not balok musik yang dimainkan oleh instrumen tersebut.

Sama halnya dengan ini, seorang murid mungkin bisa mengidentifikasi kualitas atau tipe suatu kord (chord), bagian scale atau fragmen melodi yang dia dengar. Namun apabila murid tersebut diminta untuk memainkan musik itu pada instrument tertentu, mereka akan mengalami kesulitan mengidentifikasi mana dari 12 not musik tersebut yang mereka dengar. Kemampuan untuk mengikuti musik dari mulut atau mengingat irama musik tersebut, atau bersiul bersamanya atau bernyanyi bersamanya adalah hal yang lebih mudah, namun apabila kita minta anak tersebut menduplikasikannya kedalam bahasa instrumen, mereka akan mengalami masalah yang sama. Namun jangan cemas.

Untuk menjadi seorang musisi professional, seorang murid harus memiliki sebanyak mungkin cara-cara atau fasilitas untuk dapat mereproduksi ulang nada melodi tertentu dari instrumen yang ia miliki semudah kemampuannya untuk melantunkan musik tersebut dengan suaranya. Pada tingkat yang lebih tinggi, seorang musisi handal mesti dapat menuliskan melodi yang dihasilkan dari imajinasinya persis seperti ia melantunkan musiknya. Untuk memiliki kemampuan intrumentalia pada tingkat ini atau kemampuan menterjemahkan lantunan melodi seperti air mengalir baik melakukan reproduksi melalui ingatan atau melalui nada-nada orisinal yang dihasilkan dari imajinasi dan untuk dapat mendengar suatu musik dan dapat memainkannya serta merta pada instrument yang dikuasai, maka semua scale musik baik major maupun minor termasuk juga dialek-dialek musik dan progresi kord (chordes) mesti dihafal.

Ini tentu memerlukan latihan. Latihan tidak perlu menjadi kata yang tidak mengenakkan. Bahkan sebenarnya latihan dapat menjadi sesuatu yang sangat menyenangkan apabila tidak dilakukan secara berlebihan. Berikut ini adalah beberapa tips sederhana bagaimana supaya anak-anak dapat berlatih.

KEBOSANAN

Kebosanan adalah salah satu penyebab mundurnya kemampuan seorang anak. Latihan mereka menjadi tidak lama dan menjadi sesuatu hal yang terpaksa. Biasanya kebosanan terjadi karena tidak ada variasi dalam latihan. Oleh karena itu, variasi sangat diperlukan dalam latihan. Hal-hal yang dapat dilakukan untuk mengurangi tingkat kebosanan adalah sebagai berikut:

Mainkan setiap lagu mundur (dari belakang kedepan) – baca setiap not balok dari bawah keatas dari kanan ke kiri. Mainkan bagian untuk tangan kanan oleh tangan kiri maupun sebaliknya dengan oktaf terbalik. Mainkan tangan kanan dan tangan kiri dengan tempo yang berbeda. Transpos-kan dengan kunci yang lain atau dirubah dari major ke minor maupun sebaliknya. Ini akan menghilangkan kebosanan dalam berlatih hal yang sama terus menerus.

PENINGKATAN KEMAMPUAN

Setiap hari apabila anak anda telah melakukan latihan dengan baik, berikan secarik kertas berwarna yang menarik. Apabila mereka telah mendapatkan beberapa helai kertas berwarna tersebut beritahukan bahwa mereka akan mendapatkan kesempatan untuk membuka sebuah “kotak rahasia” yang berisi suatu pesan. Pesan tersebut dapat tertulis “Secangkir Es Teler” ataupun “Menonton Bioskop” atau “Makan KFC”, sesuatu yang bagi anak merupakan suatu kenikmatan tersendiri sehingga memberikan insentif bagi anak untuk terus berlatih dengan baik.

Memberikan Perghargaan dari Kancing. Buatkan kancing dari kertas tebal berwarna dimana setiap warna memiliki nilai masing-masing yang berbeda misalnya:
Berlatih sendiri tanpa disuruh – dapat kancing warna biru nilai 20 poin
Menghafal suatu lagu dengan lancer – dapat kancing warna hijau nilai 20 poin
Mengulang pelajaran dari guru musik dirumah – dapat kancing warna orange nilai 5 poin
Apabila anda sudah menabung dan mendapatkan suatu poin tertentu, maka anak akan mendapatkan suatu kenikmatan seperti dapat beli DVD baru atau dapat ditraktir di restoran.
Beli buku stiker dan stikernya. Setiap anak yang telah melakukan latihan dengan baik, telah dapat memainkan suatu lagu dengan baik atau suatu tujuan tertentu yang telah berhasil dilakukan dengan baik, berilah suatu stiker pada anak tersebut. Apabila sejumlah stiker telah didapatkan, maka anak akan diberikan penghargaan.

Cara lain adalah orang tua menggambar satu gambar pohon, atau nelayan atau keranjang atau pot bunga. Setiap kali tujuan tertentu tercapai, anak akan mendapatkan misalnya sebuah daun, seekor ikan, sebuah apel atau setangkai bunga. Tujuannya adalah agar mereka mengumpulkan jumlah tertentu untuk mendapatkan suatu kenikmatan tertentu.
Gunakan uang palsu untuk menggantikan uang asli. Apabila anak telah menggumpulkan jumlah yang diharapkan, anak tersebut akan bisa misalnya membeli tas baru, sepatu baru atau lainnya.

KOMPOSISI

Seorang Ibu mengatakan bahwa apabila anak perempuannya menjadi capek pada saat latihan piano, dia mengambil kesempatan jeda itu untuk menciptakan suatu komposisi melodi dari dia sendiri dan memainkan ritme dan harmoni. Kemudian setelah dieksperimentasikan sebentar, dia kembali ke anaknya untuk memainkan lagu untuk piano yang ditugaskan.

Sebagai penutup, ingatlah bahwa pemberian motivasi dan insentif adalah cara yang luar biasa untuk tetap mengasah anak anda berlatih. Tanpa ini, latihan merupakan suatu beban. Pakailah imajinasi anda dan tanyalah pada anak anda untuk dapat membantu proses ini. Mereka mungkin dapat memberikan ide-ide yang cemerlang dan mereka akan merasa senang karena dianggap sebagai bagian dari program motivasi tersebut.

BAGAIMANA MENGAPLIKASIKAN FUNGSI MUSIK KLASIK PADA KEHIDUPAN SEHARI-HARI

BAGAIMANA MENGAPLIKASIKAN FUNGSI MUSIK KLASIK PADA KEHIDUPAN SEHARI-HARI

Ada banyak pandangan yang berbeda mengenai musik namun satu hal yang tidak dapat diabaikan adalah efek musik yang luar biasa pada emosi kita. Ketika seorang bayi lahir, dia sudah bisa langsung beraksi terhadap berbagai jenis musik atau suara yang ia dengar dari sekelilingnya apakah itu suara mainan anak-anak, suara manusia, suara tv dan lain-lainnya. Malah kadang-kadang, ketika kamu mendengar seseorang berteriak atau menjerit kesenangan, secara bersamaan suara tersebut dapat mempengaruhi kamu dan kamu turut pula menjadi gembira.

Sekarang para peneliti telah membuktikan bahwa musik dapat mempengaruhi perkembangan otak pula. Ketika seorang bayi lahir, ia telah memiliki sel-sel otak dalam jumlah miliaran banyaknya dan sejalan dengan waktu sel-sel tersebut terus berkembang dan semakin menguat. Dan berdasarkan penelitian yang dilakukan, telah dapat dibuktikan bahwa anak-anak yang tumbuh dengan mendengarkan lagu-lagu dari musik akan memiliki tingkat konektifitas atas musik yang lebih kuat. Kebiasaan ini dapat mempengaruhi bagaimana cara kamu berfikir, misalnya dengan mendengar musik-musik klasik, kemampuan nalar spasial dapat menjadi lebih baik dan apabila kamu sedang belajar memainkan suatu instrument tertentu, hal ini dapat mempengaruhi cara berpikir kamu dalam memainkan instrument tersebut.

Apakah benar bahwa mendengar musik dapat menyebabkan seseorang menjadi Genius?

Tidak selalu begitu karena musik hanya mempengaruhi beberapa sel-sel otak tertentu yang penting yang mengatur cara-cara berpikir. Setelah mendengarkan musik klasik, seseorang cenderung dapat mengerjakan pekerjaan-pekerjaan atau tugas spasial (yang berjangka pendek) dengan cepat misalnya seorang dewasa dapat memecahkan satu teka teki silang dengan cepat. Ini karena pola jalur efek mendengarkan musik klasik pada otak adalah sama dengan jalur yang digunakan tujuan nalar spasial (spatial reasoning). Dengan mendengarkan musik klasik, jalur ini menjadi terbuka dan menjadi siap untuk dapat digunakan. Ini yang menyebabkan kita dapat memecahkan teka-teki silang dengan cepat namun efek ini hanya berlaku sesaat setelah mendengarkan musik tersebut dan efek tersebut tidak terus menerus. Memainkan suatu instrument tertentu juga akan mempengaruhi kemampuan spasial sesuai dengan hasil riset yang telah membuktikan bahwa latihan main musik dapat mempengaruhi dan menciptakan jalur-jalur baru pada otak manusia.

Kegunaan Musik Klasik

Struktur yang ada pada musik klasik memang lebih kompleks dibandingkan dengan jenis musik lainnya seperti rock, jazz atau pop. Anak-anak yang mendengarkan musik-musik klasik dapat dengan mudah mencerna struktur musik klasik yang telah pernah ia dengar. Oleh karena itu, mendengarkan musik-musik klasik mempunyai efek yang berbeda dibandingkan dengan mendengarkan jenis musik lainnya.

Bagaimana mendidik anak agar suka musik klasik?

Kita dapat dengan mudah membantu anak-anak kita untuk dapat mencintai musik-musik klasik dengan cara memainkan musik-musik klasik tersebut pada setiap kesempatan yang memungkinkan, menyanyikannya pada anak kita, melantunkannya pada anak kita, mengajarkan musik klasik sedini mungkin pada anak, atau juga memainkan sendiri musik klasik tersebut untuk diperdengarkan pada anak kita.

Apa sih Untungnya Mendengarkan Musik Instrumental?

Apa sih Untungnya Mendengarkan Musik Instrumental?

Kunci untuk mendapatkan pikiran, badan dan mental yang lebih sehat adalah mendengarkan music instrumental. Berikut adalah alasannya.

Selain fakta bahwa mendengarkan musik instrumental seperti flute, piano, guitar, biola dan instrumen-instrumen lain itu sangatlah menyenangkan dan menenangkan, para praktisi telah menemukan bahwa kegiatan ini akan memberikan dampak positif besar terhadap pikiran, badan dan mental seseorang. Belakangan ini, semakin banyak hasil riset mengenai efek dari lagu-lagu instrumental terhadap kesehatan dan kesegaran fisik seseorang. “Semakin banyak sekarang ini, dokter-dokter di dunia menggunakan musik sebagai bagian dari alat pengobatan mulai dari proses penyembuhan kepada pasien-pasien mereka sampai ke tingkat untuk membantu mereka tetap bisa fit dan bugar” kata Victoria Abreo, seorang spesialis pengobatan alternative pada BellaOnline. “Untuk pasien yang menghadapi masalah dengan jantung, mereka akan mendapatkan manfaat yang sama dari mendengar musik klasik selama 30 menit dibandingkan dengan menelan 10mg obat penenang Valium. Musik dan terapi relaksasi telah banyak digunakan secara bersamaan untuk menurunkan detak jantung dan menormalkan tekanan darah pada banyak pasien yang terkena serangan jantung. Penderita migraine (sakit kepala sebelah) juga telah banyak yang dilatih dengan menggunakan musik, pemberian bantuan visual dan tekhnik-tekhnik relaksasi untuk membantu menurunkan frekuensi, intensitas dan durasi penderitaan sakit kepala mereka.

Pada James Medical Center pada Ohio State University, para ahli bedah sekarang ini banyak yang menggunakan musik instrumental untuk memberikan efek relaksasi kepada pasien selama proses pembedahan maupun setelah proses pembedahan tersebut. Pada situsnya, James Medical Center disana dicantumkan bahwa hasil riset maupun testimoni dari para pasien memberikan jawaban yang jelas akan dampat positif yang besar dari penyembuhan melalui musik. “Musik telah terbukti menciptakan sistem daya tahan tubuh yang lebih kuat” demikian penjelasan yang diberikan oleh James Medical Center. "Sistem kekebalan tubuh membantu menyembuhkan luka-luka." Medical Center ini juga memberikan daftar kegunaan yang dapat diperoleh dari terapi mendengarkan musik yakni termasuk mengurangi rasa sakit, menurunkan perasaan ingin muntah atau mual, dan menaikkan syaraf kontrol dan tingkat kesadaran pasien.

Disamping keuntungan-keuntungan fisik yang dapat diperoleh, hasil riset telah menunjukkan bahwa mendengarkan musik instrumental juga memberikan dampak positif pada pikiran dan bawah sadar kita. “Murid-murid yang mendengarkan Mozart selama 10 menit sebelum mengambil ujian SAT – Scholastic Aptitude Tests, secara menyeluruh mendapatkan nilai yang lebih tinggi daripada anak-anak yang tidak terekspos dengan musik tersebut sebelum ujian. Orang-orang yang mendengarkan musik klasik yang ringan selama 90 menit selama melakukan proses editing suatu naskah akan menaikkan tingkat akurasinya sekitar 21 persen." demikian menurut Abreo. Mendengarkan musik instrumental sangat direkomendasikan pada orang-orang pada berbagai kalangan umur – bahkan murid-murid sekolah telah dilaporkan mendapatkan keuntungan yang besar dari mendengar music karena hal ini meningkatkan stimulasi otak mereka, meningkatkan keahlian daya nalar abstrak (abstract reasoning skills) dan pengembangan kognitif (cognitive development).

Tentu saja, kamu dapat mendengarkan berbagai tipe intrumen musik yang ada sesuai dengan keinginan kamu apakah ingin meningkatkan kesehatan fisik, mental atau emosional kamu. Misalnya, untuk memberikan stimulasi pada pikiran, kamu dapat memilih komposisi yang memberikan semangat – musik yang agak cepat dengan tingkat nada yang agak tinggi. Sebagai contoh, misalnya konserto Biola Mozarts (Mozarts’ Violin concertos). Untuk membangun mood (perasaan) kamu, kamu dapat mendengar selandung instrumen musik gitar blues, musik yang dapat mengakses emosi kamu, dan menggelorakan imajinasi kamu, kamu dapat mempengaruhi pikiran bawah sadar kamu dengan cara member stimulasi pada tubuh kamu melalui intrumen musik yang bersemangat yang didesain untuk menggairahkan otak kreatif kita, otak kanan. Contoh yang sempurna untuk ini adalah mendengarkan karya-karya pemain saxophone bernuansa jazz, John Coltrane.

“Musik telah lama menjadi penyembuh yang luar biasa”, jelas Abreo dari BellaOnline."Bahkan di dalam kitab suci, kita telah pelajari bahwa David memainkan harpa untuk mengurangi depresi berat yang diderita Raja Saul (King Saul). Yang lebih penting lagi, musik adalah suatu terapi yang sangat berhasil karena hampir semua orang memberikan respon yang positif pada paling sedikit satu jenis musik. “Dengarkanlah musik instrumental hari ini dan dapatkanlah keuntungannya dari pengalaman kamu tersebut.

Musik Intrumental sekarang ini seperti, piano, gitar, flute, biola dan instrument lain dapat banyak ditemukan di toko-toko atau di situs internet. EZ-tracks.com juga memberikan sebagian musik instrumental dengan gratis. Bila ini adalah waktunya untuk relax dan rejuvenasi, ada juga cara yang baik untuk menyegarkan tubuh yaitu melalui karaoke. Ini adalah obat-obat penawar mujarab yang dapat menyembuhkan kamu.

JACK WELCH’S PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY

JACK WELCH’S PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY

1. Farewell to GE

A recent photograph.

Last month on September 7, I resigned the Chairman of GE.
It was April, 1981, when I took the CEO job of one of the biggest and the most prestigious companies in the U.S. at the age of 45, the youngest CEO in GE history. Since then, I have worked like hell to make GE namely the best and the most respected company in the world. In the end, I believe we created the greatest people factory in the world, a learning enterprise, with a boundaryless culture.

In the evening of September 6, there was a farewell party for me at Crotonville, a 52-acre GE campus full of green in Ossining, New York.

This is the management training center where I've delivered the vision to managers to make their business focus on No.1 or No.2 in the industry, to break through the hierarchy and bureaucracy spreading all over the organization. I tried to connect with managers deep in the organization, without my message being interpreted by layers of bosses. I saw it as a perfect place to spread ideas in an open give-and-take environment. Here we developed and put into practice our candid management programs such as "Six Sigma" and "Work-Out." Ultimately, Crotonville became a boiling pot for learning, our most important factory, our human factory.
I spent an extraordinary amount of time there. Over the course of 21 years, I had the chance to connect directly with nearly 18,000 GE leaders. Going there always rejuvenated me. It was one of my favorite parts of my job.
So this is the most suitable place for me to commemorate my farewell to GE.

The party was with about 200 people from my grade school friends to my successor, Jeff Immelt, many of whom told funny stories and episodes about me to tease and "roast" me. No boring greetings, no formal ceremonies-everybody knows well how I hate such bureaucratic rituals.

The highlight for me was having our Crotonville training center named to John F. Welch Leadership Development Center. But the entire evening was filled with great jokes and laughs, done by great comedians, mixed with warm speeches.
With such sweet memories vivid in mind, on September 11, I was in New York City to kick off the start of my national book tour. It was the very day my autobiography was published nationally. At 7:30 that morning, I had just finished a live segment on NBC's Today Show discussing the book. As we arrived at the news studio at 8:45 to do an interview with CNBC by satellite, we saw the attacks on both the World Trade Center and the U.S. Pentagon on the studio monitors.

Glued to the set in the NBC studio, we watched the destruction of the buildings that symbolized world commerce. As the event unfolded before our eyes, we were shocked and horrified. We felt deep pain and later anger against the terrorism that was damaging the City and cruelly taking the lives of thousands of innocent people and devastating their families in the process.
I spent two weeks alternately crying over the senseless loss of lives and at the same time swelling with pride over the heroism of our firefighters, police, and others. America has never been so unified. We are speaking with one voice against the forces of terrorism that threaten everyone everywhere. Our President is showing great leadership, and the entire country is supporting him.

The pride from this heroism and unity helps heal the pain we all suffered on that horrible September 11 day.

Throughout my 41 years at GE, I've had many ups and downs. In the media, I've gone from prince to pig and back again. And I've been called many things.
In the early days, when I worked in our fledging plastics group, some called me a crazy, wild man. When I became CEO two decades ago, Wall Street asked, "Jack who?"
When I tried to make GE more competitive by cutting back our workforce in the early 1980s, the media dubbed me "Neutron Jack." I've been No.1 or No.2 Jack, Services Jack, Global Jack, and, in more recent years, Six Sigma Jack and e-business Jack.
Those characterization said less about me and a lot more about the phases our company went through. Truth is, down deep, I've never really changed much from the boy my mother raised in Salem, Massachusetts.

This is the story of a lucky man, an unscripted, uncorporate type who managed to stumble and still move forward, to survive and even thrive in one of the world's most celebrated corporations. Yet it's also a small-town American story.

Mostly, though, this is a story of what others have done-thousands of smart, confident, and energized employees, whose efforts and their success are what have made my journey so rewarding.

2. Born as an only child. Loving mother and hardworking father

My mother was the most influential person in my life. Grace Welch taught me the value of competition, just as she taught me the pleasure of winning and the need to take defeat in stride.
If I have any leadership style, a way of getting the best out of people, I owe it to her.
She always insisted on facing the facts of a situation. One of her favorate expressions was "Don't kid yourself. That's the way it is." "If you don't study," she often warned, "you'll be nothing. Absolutely nothing. There are no shortcuts. Don't kid yourself!"

My relationship with my mother was powerful and unique, warm and reinforcing. She was my confidante, my best friend. I think it was that way partly because I was an only child, born to her late in life ( for those days ), when she was 36 and my dad was 41. My parents had tried unsuccessfully to have children for many years. So when I finally arrived in Peabody, Massachusetts, on November 19, 1935, my mother poured her love as if I were a found treasure.

I wasn't born with a silver spoon. I had something better-tons of love. My grandparents on both sides were Irish immigrants, and neither they nor my parents graduated from high school. I was nine when my parents bought our first house, a modest two-story masonry home on 15 Lovett Street, in an Irish working-class section of Salem, Massachusetts.
The house was across the street from a small factory. My father would often remind me that was a real plus. "You always want a factory for a neighbor. They're not around on the weekends. They don't bother you. They're quiet." I believed him, never recognizing that he was engaging in some confidence building himself.

My dad worked hard as a railroad conductor on the Boston & Maine commuter line between Boston and Newburyport. When "Big Jack" went off in the early morning at five in his pressed dark blue uniform, his white shirt starched to perfection by my mother, he looked like he could salute God himself. Nearly every day was the same, a ticket-punching journey through the same ten depots, over and over again: Newburyport, Ipswich, Hamilton/Wenham, North Beverly, Beverly, Salem, Swampscott, Lynn, the General Electric Works, Boston. And then back again, over some 40 miles of track.

Every workday, he looked forward to climbing back on the B&M train that he always thought of as his own. My father loved greeting the public and meeting interesting people. He moved through the center aisles of those passenger cars like an ambassador, with good humor, punching tickets and welcoming the familiar faces in the bench seats as if they were close friends.
His cheerful disposition on the train would often contrast with his quiet and withdrawn behavior at home. This would annoy my mother, who would complain, "Why don't you bring some of that baloney you pass out on the train home!" He seldom did.

My father was a diligent worker who put in long hours and never missed a day of work. If he got a bad weather report, he'd ask my mother to drive him to the station the night before. He would sleep in one of the cars on his train, so he'd be ready to go in the morning.
Rarely would he get home before seven at night, always picked up at the station in the family car by my mother. He'd come home with a bundle of newspapers under his arm, all of them left by his passengers on the train. From the age of six, I got my daily dose of current events and sports, thanks to the leftover Boston Globes, Heralds, and Records. Reading the papers every night became a lifelong addiction. I'm a news junkie to this day.

3. Mother's lessons

From my earliest years in school, my mother taught me the need to excel. She knew how to be tough with me, but also how to hug and kiss. She made sure I knew how wanted and loved I was. I'd come home with four As and a B on my report card, and my mother would want to know why I got the B. But she would always end the conversation congratulating and hugging me for the As.

She checked constantly to see if I did my homework, in much the same way that I continually follow up at work today. I can remember sitting in my upstairs bedroom, working away on the day's homework, only to hear her voice rising from the living room: "Have you done it yetH You better not come down until you've finished!"

But it was over the kitchen table, playing gin rummy with her, that I learned the fun and joy of competition. I remember racing across the street from the schoolyard for lunch when I was in the first grade, itching for the chance to play gin rummy with her. When she beat me, which was often, she'd put the winning cards on the table and shout, "Gin!" I'd get somad, but I couldn't wait to come home again and get the chance to beat her.
That was probably the start of my competitiveness, on the baseball diamond, the hockey rink, the golf course, and business.

Perhaps the greatest single gift she gave me was self-confidence. It's what I've looked for and tried to build in every executive who has ever worked with me. Confidence gives you courage and extends your reach. It lets you take greater risks and achieve far more than you ever thought possible.

My mother never managed people, but she knew all about building self-esteem. I grew up with a speech impediment, a stammer that wouldn't go away. Sometimes it led to comical, if not embarrassing, incidents. In college, I often orderd a tuna fish on white toast on Fridays when Catholics in those days couldn't eat meat. Inevitably, the waitress would return with not one but a pair of sandwiches, having heard my order as "ty-tuna sandwiches."

My mother served up the perfect excuse for my stuttering. "It's because you're so smart," she would tell me. "No one's tongue could keep up with a brain like yours." For years, in fact, I never worried about my stammer. I believed what she told me: that my mind worked faster than my mouth.

I didn't understand for many years just how much confidence she poured into me. Decades later, when looking at early pictures of me on my sports teams, I was amazed to see that almost always I was the shortest and smallest kid in the picture. In grade school, when I played guard on the basketball squad, I was almost three-quarters the size of several of the other players.
Yet I never knew it or felt it. Today, I look at those pictues and laugh at what a little shrimp I was. It's just ridiculous that I wasn't more conscious of my size. That tells you what a mother can do for you. She gave me that much confidence. She convinced me that I could be anyone I wanted to be. It was really up tome. "You just have to go for it," she would say.

4. Salem, boy's town

Salem was a great place for a boy to grow up. It was a town with a strong work ethic and good values. In those days, no one locked their doors. On Saturdays, parents didn't worry when their kids walked downtown to the Paramount, where a quarter bought you two movies and a box of popcorn, and you still had enough left for an ice cream on the way home. On Subdays, the churches were filled.

Every summer before I was old enough to work, the kids from the Salem playground took a special train to Old Orchard Beach, an amusement park in Maine. This was our summer highlight. We'd board the train at six-thirty A.M. and arrive there two hours later. Within a couple of hours, by running from ride to ride, most of us had used up the five bucks or so that we brought.

We still had a full day ahead of us and were broke. My friends and I would then comb the beach for rturnable bottles, going from blanket to blanket asking sunbathers for their empties. At two cents a bottle, that got us enough money for a hot dog and a few more rides before returning home.

Salem was a scrappy and competitive place. I was competitive, and my friends were, too. All of us were jocks, living to play one sport or another. We'd organize our own neighborhood baseball, basketball, football, and hockey games, playing at the Pit, a dusty piece of flat land surrounded by trees and backyards off North Street. We'd sweep the gravel flat in the spring and summer, choose up sides and teams, even schedule our own tournaments. We'd play from early in the morning until the town whistle blew at quarter to nine. The whistle was the signal to get home.
In those days, the city was broken up into neighborhood schools, which led to intense rivalries in every sport-even at the primary school level. I was the quarterback on the six-man Pickering Grammer School football team. I was pathetically slow, but I had a pretty good arm and a pair of teammates who coould really run. We won the Championship at Pickering. I also was the pitcher on our baseball team and learned to throw a sweeping curveball and a sharp drop.

At Salem High School, however, I found out that I peaked very early in both football and baseball. I was too slow to play football, and my devastating curve and drop at 12 didn't come with any more break at 16. My fastball couldn't crack a pane of glass. Hitters would just sit there and wait for it. I went from being a starting pitcher as a freshman to the bench as a senior. I was lucky tobe an okay jock in hockey, as captain and leading scorer of the high school team, but in college my lack of speed got me again, I had to give it up.

It was the final hockey game of a lousy season. We had won the first three games in my senior year at Salem High School, but had then lost the next half dozen games. So we badly wanted to win this last one against our archrival Beverly High. As co-captain of the team, the Salem Witches, I had scored a couple of goals, and we were feling pretty good about our chances.
It was a good game, pushed into overtime at 2-2.

But very quickly, the other team scored and we lost again, for the seventh time in a row. In a fit of frustration, I flung my hockey stick across the ice of the arena, skated after it, and headed back to the locker room. The team was already there, taking off their skates and uniforms. All of a sudden, the door opened and my Irish mother in a floral-pattened dress strode in. She went right for me, grabbing the top of my uniform.

"You punk!" she shouted in my face. "If you don't know how to lose, you'll never know how to win. If you don't know this, you shouldn't be playing."
I was mortified-in front of my friends-but what she said never left me.

5. Mother's Punishment

At 15, when I was crazy about baseball.
My parents made many sacrifices for me, making sure I had a great baseball glove or a good bicycle. And my father allowed my mother to spoil me, without ever taking any of the credit. And she did.

She took me to the bleachers in Fenway Park to watch Ted Williams play left field for the Boston Red Sox. A devout Catholic, she'd drive me to St. Thomas the Apostle Church so I could serve the six A.M. mass as an alter boy, with her praying in the first row of the right pew.
My mother was clearly the disciplinarian in the family. When my father once caught me on his train headed home after I'd skipped school to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in South Boston, he didn't say anything in front of my friends-even though all of us were juiced on some cheap 50-cents-a-bottle muscatel.

Instead he simply told my mother, who confronted me and doled out the punishment. Another time, I cut altar boy practice to play hockey on the frozen pond at Mack Park near my home. During the game, I fell through the ice and got completely soaked. To try to cover up what happened, I stripped off my wet clothes and hung them on a tree over a fire we built. We shivered in the January cold, waiting for our clothes to dry.

It was, I thought, a rather clever cover-up-until I walked through the front door.
It took a second for my mother to smell the smoke on my clothes. Ducking altar boy practice was a big deal to someone who hung a crucifix on the wall, prayed the rosary, and considered Father James Cronin, the longtime pastor of our church, a saint. So she sat me down, forced out a confession, and then delivered her own penance: whacking me with a damp shoe she'd just taken off my foot.

While she could be strict, she could also be a real "softie." Once, when I was not much more than 11 years old, I stole a ball from a carnival that came through town. You know, the type of lousy ball you throw to knock metal milk bottles off a pedestal to win a Kewpie doll.
It didn't take long before my mother found the ball and asked me where I got it. When I admitted that I had stolen it, she insisted that I go to Father Cronin, return the ball to him, and then confess what I did. Since all the priests knew me as an alter boy, I was convinced that they'd recognize me in the confessional the second I opened my mouth. I was scared of them.
I asked my mother if I could take the ball down to the North Canal, a murky river that ran through town, and toss it away. After negotiating with her, she let me have my way. She drove down to the bridge on North Street and watched as I threw the ball into the water.
Tough and aggressive, warm and generous, my mother was a great judge of character. She always had opinions of the people she met. She could "smell a phony a mile away."

She was extremely compassionate and generous to friends. If a relative or neighbor visited the house and complimented her on the water glasses in the breakfront, she wouldn't hesitate to give them away. On the other hand, if you crossed her, watch out. She could hold a grudge against anyone who betrayed her trust. I could just as easily be describing myself.

6. Mother's tears and golf

In 1950, I took up my lifelong passion, golf.
One of my strongest childhood memories is of climbing the stairs to my parents' second-floor flat in Salem, Massachusetts, and hearing my mother crying. I was only nine years old in July, 1945. I had never heard my mother cry before. When I walked through the doorway, she was standing over an ironing board in the kitchen, pressing my fahter's shirts. Tears were streaming down her face.

"Oh, God," she said. "Franklin Roosevelt has died."

I was stunned. I didn't know why the president's death would cause my mother such heartache. I didn't understand it at all. Yet I felt some of the same feelings when John Kennedy was assassinated 18 years later, and I was glued to the TV set.

My mother's reaction to Roosevelt's death came from her heartfelt belief that he had saved our country and our democracy. She put her faith in him and our government. So did my father. Both of them believed that the government served the will of the people, protected its citizens, and always did what was right.

For many years, I shared my parents' faith, but that faith has been severely tested on a number of occasions.

My father not only got me started on knowing what was going on outside Salem, he also taught me, through example, the value of hard work. And he did something else that would last a lifetime - he introduced me to golf. My father told me that big shots on his train were always talking about their golf games. He thought I ought to learn about this instead of the baseball, football, and hockey I was playing. Caddying was something the older kids in the neighborhood were doing. So with his push, I started early, caddying at the age of nine at the nearby Kernwood Country Club.

My mother would pick me up at school in the early afternoon and drive me over to the country club so I could get a head start on the other caddies. On Saturday mornings, my friends and I would sit on the curb outside the gate to Green Lawn Cemetery, waiting for a member of the golf club to pick us up in his car and bring us a few miles to the course.

Nearly everyone hoped to carry Ray Brady's clubs because he was the big tipper on the course, where tips were generally scarce. Otherwise, the $1.5 fee for a single 18 holes was about all you saw. We really worked for Monday mornings, when the grounds crew fixed the course. That was caddies' morning, when we would take the lost balls we found and use our taped-up clubs to play 18 holes. We'd get there at the crack of dawn because they threw us off promptly at noon.
Caddying gave me the chance to make some money and, more important, learn the game. I also got early exposure to people who had achieved some level of success. I got a very early look at how attractive or how big a jackass someone can be by watching their behavior on a golf course.

Besides caddying, I worked a number of jobs. For a while, I delivered the Salem Evening News. I worked at the local post office during the holiday season. For about three years, I sold shoes on commission at the Thom McCan store on Essex Street. We got seven cents a pair for selling regular shoes. If you sold the "turkeys," the 11E wingtips with the purple toes and the white trim, you'd get a quarter or fifty cents. I'd always bring them out, fit them to a pair of stinky feet, and say, "These look good on you." What I'd say for an extra quarter in those days!

One summer job really taught me a lesson. It convinced me what I didn't want to do. I was operating a drill press at a game plant in town. My job was to take a small piece of cork, drill a hole through it by pushing down a pedal with my foot. Every day, I did thousands of them. Talk about frustration. I'd go home with headaches. I hated it. I didn't last three weeks, but it taught me a lot.

7. High school to Umass

My graduation photograph at high school in 1953.
I was caddying for one of the stingiest members of the Kernwood Country Club, when I was a senior in high school. By that time, I had been a caddy there for eight years - which was probably a littile too long for my own good. We got to the sixth hole, a tee where the drive had to go only about a hundred yards to carry the pond. This day, my guy topped his ball straight into the water. It landed at least ten feet into the muddy pond. He asked me to take my shoes and socks off and wade into the pond after his ball.

I refused, and when he insisted I told him to go to hell. I tossed his clubs into the water, told him to get his ball and clubs himself, and ran off the course.
It was a stupid thing to do, even worse than flinging my hockey stick across the ice. Even though my mother was disappointed, because this incident cost me the club's caddy scholarship, she seemed to understand what I felt and didn't make as much of a big deal out of it as she might have.

An even greater disappointment was losing an opportunity to go to four years of college for free on a naval ROTC scholarship program. Three of us at Salem High passed the naval exam: me and two of my best friends, George Ryan and Mike Tivnan. My dad got state rpresentatives to send letters of recommendation on my behalf, and I went through a battery of interviews for the program. My friends made it. George got a free ride to Tufts. Mike went to Columbia. I was hoping to go to Dartmouth or Columbia, but the navy turned me down.
I never found out why.

Ironically, the rejection turned out to be a great break. At Salem High, I was a good student who worked hard for his grades, but no one would have accused me of being brilliant. So I applied to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the state school, where the tuition was fifty bucks a semester. For less than $1,000, including room and board, I could get a degree.
Except for a cousin, I was the first in my family to go to college. I had no family role models to follow, other than my uncle who worked as an engineer as an "engineer" at the power station in Salem. Being an engineer sounded good to me. I found out early I liked chemistry, so I took up chemical engineeing.

I knew so little about college that I almost didn't get there. I didn't take the SATs, assuming instead that the scores on my ROTC naval exams were enough. I didn't get my acceptance letter from Umass until June, 1953, just a few days before I graduated from high school. I must have been on the wait list-but I never realized it. Getting into a less competitive school, rather than the Columbia or Dartmouth I wanted, would in the end give me a tremendous advantage. The caliber of the competition I faced at Umass in those days made it easier to shine.
And though I was never short on confidence, my first week at college in the fall of 1953 was a tough one. I was so homesick that my mother had to drive three hours to the Amherst campus
to see me. She tried to pump me up.

"Look at these kids around here. They're not thinking about coming home. You're just as good as they are, even better."
She was right. I had never really been away from home, not even to an overnight camp. Here I was totally wiped out by the experience of going away to school. I wasn't anywhere near as prepared for college as some of the other students. There were kids from New England prep schools and prestigious Boston Latin who were way ahead of me in math. I also found physics very hard.
My mother would have none of it. The pep talk worked. My anxieties went away within a week.

8. Enter graduate school in Illinois

University of Massachusetts campus at Amherst.
I struggled through my freshman year but did well on my exams, posting something like a 3.7 grade-point average, and made the dean's list every one of my four years. In my sophomore year, I pledged Phi Sigma Kappa and moved into their fraternity house by the campus pond. Our fraternity, ranked at or near the top in beer consumption, had more late night poker games and better parties than most.

It was a great crowd of guys, and although we were on probation once or twice, I was able to play hard and still get the work done. I loved the atmosphere there.
I also had my professors at Umass, especially Ernie Lindsey, head of the Cemical Engineering Department, making me something of a pet project. He liked me and pushed me through the program, as if I were his son. As with my mother, his support gave me a lot of confidence. I got summer jobs in chemical engineering at Sun Oil near Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, and at Columbia Southern, now PPG Industries, in Ohio. In 1957, I was one of the university's two best students graduating with a degree in chemical engineering. If I'd gone to MIT, I might have been in the middle of the pile. My proud parents bought me a brand-new Volkswagen Beetle as a graduation present.

During my senior year, I was being courted by many different companies. I had lots of good offers. But my professors convinced me to go to graduate school. I turned down the corporate offers and decided to go to the University of Illinois at Champaine, where I was offered a fellowship. The school was consisitently ranked among the top five graduate programs in chemical engineering. It was a great school for my major.

I had been on campus no more than two weeks when I met a pretty girl and asked her out. Our Saturday night date went so well that we ended up just off a campus parking lot in the woods. The windows in my VW had gotten foggy when all of a sudden a light flashed through. It was the campus police, and we were caught in an awkward position. I froze, terrified of the consequences.

In those days, things were quite different. The 1950s were conservative times, and we were in the conservative Midwest. The police took us both down to the campus station and kept us there until four or five in the morning before sending us home.

My life flashed before me. I thought I was about to loose everything: my fellowship, my chance to get a graduate degree, my career. But most of all, I thought about my mother's reaction when she found out what I had done. My fate would be decided after a Monday meeting with the university provost, who would determine the disciplinary action.

On Sunday morning, I gathered up the nerve to call the chairman of the Chemical Engineering Department, Dr. Harry Drickamer. I knew him only by his gruff reputation. Scared as I was, I thought he was my only hope.
"Dr. Drickamer," I said, "I have a real problem. The campus police caught me messing around. I'm devastated by it, and I need help."
I was practically wetting my pants telling him what had happened.
"Damn," he responded. "Of all the graduate students I've had here, you are the first guy to do something like that. I'll take care of this, but you better keep your pants on from now on!"
Whatever Drickamer did saved my butt. I still had to go through a difficult meeting with the provost, but I wasn't thrown out of the school.

9. To be Dr. Welch

University of Illinois at Champaine.
Yet that frightening incident got me much closer to Dr. Harry Drickamer. We formed a wonderful relationship. He, too, treated me like a son. We bet on football games. We argued over things in the news. In the hallways, Harry would tease me mercilessly, always ragging me about the Red Sox or my already thinning hair.

He became an important influence in my life, a mentor throughout my graduate years. I needed the help. At Illinois, I wasn't as well prepared as the kids from Brooklyn Politechnic, Columbia, or Minnesota. So in my first year, I struggled there as well. I had to really fight for my grades. I wasn't by any stretch of the imagination a star.

After my first year at Illinois in 1958, when I was to graduate with my master's degree, the country was in recession. Instead of having twenty job offers, I got two: one from an Oklahoma oil refinery near Tulsa and another from the Ethyl Corp. in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On the airplane for my Ethyl interview, I was traveling with one of my associates from the University of Illinois when something odd happened. The stewardess came back and said, "Mr. Welch, would you like a drink?" She then turned to my colleague and said, "Dr. Gaertner, would you like a drink?"

I thought that "Dr." Gaertner sounded a lot better than "Mr." Welch. All I had to do was stay a couple of more years. So with not much more foresight than that, I stayed at the university and went for my Ph.D. It helped that the job market wasn't very good. It also helped that I really liked my Illinois professors, especially Drickamer and my thesis adviser, Dr. Jim Westwater.
In graduate school, especially in a Ph.D. program, you live in the lab. You come in at eight in the morning and go home at eleven at night. Sometimes you felt like you were judged on the number of hours your lights were on. My thesis was on condensation in steam-supply systems. So I spent hours vaporizing water and watching it condense on a copper plate.

Day after day, I snapped high-speed photographs of the geometry of the condensing drops on the surface. I developed heat-transfer equations from these experiments. The funny thing about a graduate thesis is that you get so hooked on it, you think you're doing Nobel prize work.
With Jim Westwater's strong support, I got my Ph.D. in three years, faster than almost anyone. It took the typical grad student four to five years to get a Ph.D. I was hardly the program's resident genius. To pass the program's two-language requirement, one summer I studied French and German day and night for three straight months. I went into an exam room and tipped my head. Everything I had put in my brain poured out the other side. I managed to pass
the exams, my "knowledge" emptied the moment I handed in those exams.

Despite not being smartest, I did have the focus to get the work done. Some of the more intelligent people in the program had trouble finishing their theses. They couldn't bring them to a conclusion. My impatience helped me.

I have always felt that chemical engineering was one of the best backgrounds for a business career, because both the classwork and required thesis teach you one important lesson: There are no finite answers to many questions. What really counted was your thought process.
The same is true for most business problems. The process helps you get closer to the darker shade of gray. There are rarely black-or-white answers. More often than not, business is smell, feel, and touch as much as or more than numbers. If we wait for the perfect answer, the world will pass us by.

10. Marriage and enter GE

Members of the GE chemical development group in the early 1960s.
By the time I left Illinois in 1960, I had decided what I liked and wanted to do and, just as important, what I wasn't so good at. My technical skills were pretty good, but I wasn't the best scientist by any means. Compared to many of my classmates, I was outgoing, someone who loved people more than books, and sports more than scientific developments. I figured those skills and interests were best suited for a job that bridged the laboratory and the commercial world.

Knowing that was a little bit like knowing I was a pretty good ahtlete-but far from a very good one. What I wanted to do made me something from most Ph.D.s.
Besides a degree, long-term friendships, and a way of thinking through problems, Illinois gave me something else: a great wife. I first spotted Carolyn Osburn at the Catholic church on campus. She attended mass, just as I did. I didn't meet her, however, until a mutual friend introduced us in a bar in downtown Champaign.

Carolyn was tall, pretty, sophisticated, and intelligent. She had graduated with honors from Marrietta College and was on a $1,500-a-year fellowship at Illinois, getting her master's in English literature. After our first date at a basketball game in January 1959, we were always together. Five months later, we were engaged, and on November 21, two days after my 24th birthday, we were married in her hometown of Arlington Heights, Illinois.
We spent the bulk of our honeymoon driving my Volkswagen across the country and into Canada, with me interviewing for jobs. I was lucky enough to have several offers, but two fit: one from Exxon, to work in a development laboratory in Baytown, Texas, and one from GE, to work in a new chemical development operation in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

GE invited me to Pittsfield, where I met with Dr. Dan Fox, a scientist in charge of the company's new chemical concepts. That job appealed to me most. The development group was small. It was working on new plastics, and I liked the idea of going back to Massachusetts. Like my earlier professors, Fox struck me as someone who was smart and whom I could trust. In Fox, I saw a coach and a role of model who brought the best out of everyone who worked with him.
He was already something of a hero inside GE because he had discovered Lexan plastic for the company. GE began selling Lexan in 1957. A potential replacement for glass and metal, it was used for everything from electric coffeemakers to the light covers on the wings of supersonic aircraft.

Fox, like most inventors, was already on the next project, becoming champion for a new thermoplastic called PPO (polyphenylene oxide). He convinced me that PPO was going to be the next great thing. He described its unique ability to withstand high temperatures. It had the potential to replace hot-water copper piping and stainless-steel medical instruments. He capped off the selling job by telling me that I would be the first employee in charge of getting the plastic out of the lab and into production. I accepted within a week.

What I didn't know when I showed up for work my first day on October 17, 1960, was how quickly I would become frustrated.
When Carolyn and I arrived in Pittsfield, I was expecting at least a little of the seductive treatment to continue. We came to GE with little more than change in our pockets. We had driven 950 miles from Illinois in my fading black Volkswagen. When GE recruited me, the company had laid out a cushy red carpet.

Quickly, my new boss, development manager Burt Coplan, made it clear that the wooing process was over. He could not have been more charming during the interview process. He asked me if my wife and I had already found an apartment in town. When I told him we were staying at the local hotel, he said, "Well, we don't cover that, you know." He just saw it as his job to try to scrimp on everything. He acted as if GE were on the verge of bankruptcy.
The romance that brought me to GE was evaporating.

11. Getting out of the Pile
Reuben Gutoff, right, and me, left.
Soon after I joined in GE in the autumn of 1960, Carolyn and I moved into a small, first-floor flat in a two-story wood-frame house on First Street, where the landlady was so chintzy with the heat that we had to knock on the walls to get her to put the thermostat up. Even then, she'd often shout through the paper-thin walls for Carolyn or me to "wear a sweater!"

Everything that first year wasn't awful. There were things I liked: the autonomy to design and build a new pilot plant for PPO and the sense of being part of a team in what felt like a small company.

I designed the kettles to test the bigger batches and built them at a local machine shop. We constructed a pilot plant from scratch in a small outbuilding in the back of our offices. Each day, we'd run several experiments, testing different processes.
For someone just off a college campus, it was a real adventure.
At least twice a month, I'd jump into my car and drive 55 miles to GE's central research and development lab in Schenectady, New York, where the plastic was invented. I'd spend the day working with researchers and scientists, always trying to excite them about the product's potential.

In those days, the central lab was funded entirely by corporate, so there was no direct incentive for the lab's scientists to focus their efforts on any one business or, for that matter, any commercialization. The scientists liked doing advanced research. The game was to get them to put time into the development of your project after the invention phase.

In spite of the good stuff, I was getting more frustrated every day. The penny-wise behavior continued. In a redbrick building on Plastics Avenue, four of us shared a small, cramped office. We had to make do with only two phones, scrambling to pass them around the desks. On business trips, we were asked to double up in hotel rooms.

In 1961, I had been working at GE for a year as an engineer making $10,500 when my first boss handed me a $1,000 raise. I was okay with it - until I found out later that day that I got exactly what all four of us sharing an office received. I thought I deserved more than the "standard" increase.

I talked to my boss, and the discussion went nowhere.
Frustrated, I started looking for another job.
I felt trapped in the "pile" near the bottom of a big organization. I wanted out.
For me, the "standard" $1,000 raise was the proverbial last straw.
So I went to the boss, Coplan, and quit. Just as I was about to drive my car back across the country again, Coplan's boss called me. Reuben Gutoff, a younger executive, invited Carolyn and me out to a dinner at a nice restaurant in Pittsfield.

Gutoff was no stranger. We had met in several business reviews. We had made a connection because I would always give him more than he expected. As a junior development engineer, I had given him a complete cost and physical property analysis of our new plastic versus every major competing product offered by major competitors in the world.
What I was trying to do was "get out of the pile." If I had just answered his questions, it would have been tough to get noticed. To set myself apart from the crowd, I thought I had to think bigger than the questions posed. I wanted to provide not only the answer, but an unexpected fresh perspective.

Gutoff obviously noticed. Over dinner, for four straight hours, he was hell-bent on keeping me at GE. He made his pitch, promising to give me a bigger raise and, more important, vowing to keep the bureaucracy of the company out of my way. I was surprised to learn that he shared my frustration with the bureaucracy.
This time I was lucky, because many GE bosses would have been happy to let me go. I undoubtedly was a pain in the ass to Coplan.

Gutoff's recognition-that he considered me different and special-made a powerful impression. Ever since that time, differentiation has been a basic part of how I manage. Differentiation is all about being extreme, rewarding the best and weeding out the ineffective. Rigorous differentiation delivers real stars-and stars build great businesses.
Some contend that differentiation is nuts-bad for morale.

They say that differential treatment erodes the very idea of teamwork. Not in my world. You build strong teams by treating individuals differently. Just look at the way baseball teams pay 20-game winning pitchers and 40-plus home run hitters. The relative contributions of those players are easy to measure-their stats jump out at you-yet they are still part of a team.
Everybody's got to feel they have a stake in the game. But that doesn't mean everyone on the team has to be treated the same way.

Gutoff reinforced that it was no different in business. Winning teams come from differentiation, rewarding the best and removing the weakest, always fighting to raise the bar.
I was lucky to get out of the pile and learn this my very first year at GE-the hard way, by nearly quitting the company.

12. Blowing the Roof Off

With colleagues from GE's plastic business division in the early 1970s.
It was the spring day in 1963, early in my GE career. I was 28 years old and had been with the company for all of three years. It was one of the most frightening experiences of my life.
I was sitting in my office in Pittsfield, just across the street from the pilot plant, when the explosion occurred. It was a huge blast that blew the roof off the building and knocked out all the windows on the top floor.

With the sound of the explosion still ringing in my ears, I raced out of my office and toward the redbrick plant 100 yards away on Plastics Avenue. A big chunk of roof and ceiling had collapsed onto the floor. Roof shingles and shards of glass were scattered everywhere. Clouds of smoke and dust hung over the building.
Miraculously, no one was seriously injured.

We were experimenting with a chemical process. We were bubbling oxygen through a highly volatile solution in a large tank. An unexplainable spark set off the explosion.
As the boss, I was clearly at fault.
The next day, I had to drive 100 miles to Bridgeport, Connecticut, to explain to a corporate group executive, Charlie Reed, why the accident occurred.

I knew I could explain why the blast went off, and I had some ideas on how to fix the problem.
A Ph.D. in chemical engineering from MIT, Charlie understood what could happen when you were working at high temperatures with volatile materials.
His concern was what I had learned from the explosion and if I thought I could fix the reactor process. He questioned whether we should continue to move forward on the project. It was all intellect, no emotion or anger.

"It's better that we learned about this problem now rather than later when we had a large-scale operation going," he said.
Charlie's reaction made a huge impression on me.
When people make mistakes, the last thing they need is discipline. It's time for encouragement and confidence building. The job at this point is to restore self-confidence. I think "pilling on" when someone is down is one of the worst things any of us can do.

It can happen anywhere. You see the "Vortex" when leaders lose their confidence, begin to panic, and spiral downward into a hole of self-doubt.
By 1964, our project to make a new plastic had come a long way. We were getting close to a product we could sell. Charlie Reed got the board to approve our new plastics plant in 1964.
With the general manager's slot open, I went after it.
After a dinner in town with Gutoff, I followed him and jumped into his car.
"Why not me for general manager's job?" I said.

"Are you kidding?" Gutoff asked. "Jack, you don't know anything about marketing. That's what this new product introduction is all about."
I wouldn't take no for an answer. I stayed in Gutoff's car for well over an hour, pounding him with my qualification for the job-thin as they might be.
Over the next seven days or so, I called him with additional arguments to bolster my case. Within a week, he called and asked me to come down to his office.
"You SOB," he said. "You convinced me to give you the job, and I'm going to do it. You better deliver."

I didn't have long to celebrate.
Just after getting new job and breaking ground on the site, we found out that our PPO product had a serious flaw. Aging tests began to show that over time it became brittle and cracked under the high temperatures it was designed to withstand. There was just no way that it would make it as a replacement for hot-water copper pipes-one of its biggest potential markets.
It took six frantic months before we worked our way out of the problem. I practically lived in the lab during that time. We tried everything. The team leader eventually found the solution by blending PPO with low-cost polystyrene and some rubber.

We had to juggle the plant design to take care of the blending process, but it worked.
The blended plastic was called Noryl and eventually became a winning product that today does more than $1 billion in worldwide sales.

What made it work was a crazy band of people who believed we could do almost anything.
When we landed an order of $500 for plastic pellets, we'd stop off for beers on the way home to celebrate.

Every early promotion, every bonus, and every raise were also cause for celebration. When I got a $3,000 bonus in 1964, I threw a party for all the employees at the new house we had just purchased in town.

We grew rapidly from 1965 to 1968 and then I got the next big break. In early June of 1968, nearly eight years after joining GE, I was promoted to general manager of the $26 million plastics business. This was a big deal, making me, at 32, the company's youngest general manager.

13. My parents' death

My mother Grace, the perfect woman to me.
Life appeared to be perfect. There was only one regret.
I could no longer share my success with my parents.
My mother had died on January 25, 1965, which was the saddest day of my life. She was only 66 years old but had been suffering from heart trouble for many years. I had been an undergraduate at UMass in Amherst when she had her first heart attack.

I was so upset then that after my aunt called with the news, I literally rushed out of the doem and began running down the highway to Salem, about 110 miles away. I was too filled with emotion to stand and wait by the side of the road as I was thumbing a ride back home.
After a three-week stay in the hospital, she went home, rested, and recovered. This was all before beta-blockers and bypass surgery. ( They would save my own life years later.) She suffered another heart attack three years later and went through the same routine. Three years after that, she had her third and final one. She and my father were in Florida on vacation at the time. I had given them $1,000 out of my bonus that year to help them escape a tough New England winter.

That money meant a lot to both of us. When I handed it to her, she burst with pride. She had always provided me with everything I had from the day I was born. My modest $1,000 gift was a chance to finally give her something in return. To her, it reflected the success "her product" was enjoying. She was so proud of me. Thank God I did it. One of my great regrets is not being able to give her all the things I could if she were alive today.

When my father told me that my mother was in a Fort Lauderdale hospital, I immediately flew down from Pittsfield and went straight to her room. She was in bad shape, weak and frail. The night she died, I remember sitting with her when she asked me to wash her back. I sponged her back clean with warm water and soap, and she was so happy I would do that. Afterward, my dad and I returned to the one-bedroom efficiency motel where they had been staying.
We never saw her alive again.

I was devastated. My father and aunt returned to Salem by train with my mother's body, while I drove my dad's car back home. I drove north all night long. I cried and kicked the car the whole way. I felt cheated, angry, and mad at God for taking my mother from me.
By the time I got home, I had cried myself out. At a funeral parlor in Salem, all our relatives, neighbors, and hundreds of friends I didn't know showed up, each with a story my mother told about her son, Jackie.

Inevitably, every story she bored her friends with spoke of her pride in me.
My father also took her death hard. Now it was so sad to see him refuse to adjust to life without her.

Without my mother, he was a lost soldier. She had kept him on a strict salt-free diet because he was suffering from edema. Now he became indifferent about what he ate; soon the water retention made his face puffy, and he began to gain weight.

He just ate himself to death with the wrong foods. He retained so much water that he was put in the hospital. I rushed back from a business trip in Europe. By the time I reached his bedside, he had died. Just 15 months after my mother's death, on April 22, 1966, my father passed away. He was 71 years old.

I was thrown for a loop. My mother and father were gone, and I was feeling awfully sorry for myself. I was lucky to have my wife, Carolyn, there to pick up the pieces. She was strong, quick-witted, and always supportive. She reminded me how lucky I was to have a great family, with three healthy kids, Kathy, John, and Anne. ( Mark would come later in April of 1968.) She was a real rock for me, not only then but on many other occasions.

When I worried about the consequences of rocking the boat at work, Carolyn would encourage me to do exactly what I thought was right-regardless of what others at GE might think. After each promotion, she and the kids would celebrate by decorating the house and driveway with colorful streamers.

Following my promotion to general manager of plastics, I had a 1969 interview with the Monogram, the company magazine. When the writer referred to me as "Dr.Welch," I shot back, "I don't make house calls, so call me Jack!" -a quote he included in the article.
I was now ready to act as a businessman and not an engineer, so I was anxious to bag the Dr. Welch moniker.

14. Quick promotion to Vice President

Thirty-seven GE divisions contributed to the Apollo project that placed the first men on the moon in 1969.

In 1969, I boasted that we grew the plastics business more in my first year as general manager than in the previous ten years. What an ass I was-so completely full of myself. Without regard for any of the previous leaders of the business, I claimed we would break all the sales and profit records.

When I got the entire plastics operation, which included Lexan, I really believed I had inherited gold. Compared to Noryl, Lexan was a thoroughbred. It was clear as glass and tough as steel. It was flame resistant and lightweight.

For years, we had been selling a blended product in Noryl, and we were always trying to get it to work. We were the second-class citizens with the second-class product. With a lower selling price, we managed to get it into business machine housings, lawn sprinklers, hair dryers, disposable razor cartridges, and color televisions. But we had to fight for every 500-pound order. When we finally got Lexan, I thought we could take on the world and was cocky enough to say so.

The statement was even more outrageous since the company's view of plastics was a lot less flattering. Plastics was not so profitable, but was just getting to breakeven.
Nevertheless, the future looked very bright. This was a time when forecasters believed that plastics would be the fastest-growing industry over the next decade-faster than computers and electronics. Even the movies were getting into it. In The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman was encouraged to get a career in "plastics!"

We added marketing people and began promoting the plastics business as if it were Tide detergent.

We hired a professional baseball pitching star to be in our ads. We filmed a TV commercial with a bull in a china shop, except all the china made from Lexan plastic didn't break when the bull wreaked havoc on the set. We'd aired the radio spots between seven-thirty and eight A.M., when our target customers, the automotive engineers, were stuck in traffic jams on their way to their General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler offices. We had billboards promoting Lexan on all the roads leading to work.

Dennis McLain, at that time a thirty-game winner with the Detroit Tigers, hurled fastballs at me while I was holding up a Lexan plastic sheet in the parking lot of our Detroit office. The local press covered the event. All this promotion got a lot of attention, because it was really different marketing for an industrial plastic.

Because our five-person office in Detroit was competing against Dupont's 40-person office, we had to be faster and more creative. We took on the big chemical companies and did well because we could outrun them.We were using the strength of a big company and trying to run with the speed of a small company.

Obviously, I wasn't a natural fit for the corporation. I had little respect or tolerance for protocol. I was an impatient manager, especially with people who didn't perform.
I was blunt and candid and, some thought, rude. My language could be coarse and impolitic.
I loved "constructive conflict" and thought open and honest debates about business brought out the best decisions. I never hid my thoughts and feelings. During a business discussion, I could get so emotionally involved that I'd stammer out what others might consider outrageous things. A couple of favorites were "My six-yaer-old kid could do better than that!" or "Don't Walter Cronkite me!" ( That was understood by everyone to mean: "You report the bad news, but you don't tell me how you're going to fix it.")

People who couldn't fit into this informal and entrepreneurial environment left or were asked to leave. I cut my losses quickly on bad hires that didn't perform. People who were arrogant or pompous didn't last very long. Those who delivered took home outsize salary increases and bonuses, just as I now did.
I "kicked," but I also "hugged."

By 1970, we had beaten my boastful prediction by more than doubling the plastics business in less than three years.
In 1971, I was promoted to vice president of the chemical and metallurgical division, the job as head of a $400 million (sales) group of businesses, and it brought a bunch of new challenges. I had spent 11 years in GE working in the plastics arena. Now I had to figure out how to run a whole portfolio of materials businesses, including carbide cutting tools, industrial diamonds, insulating materials, and electro-materials products-and do it all with very different people.

My first job was to get a close look at my team. With a couple of exceptions, I found them wanting. I'm the first to admit I could be impulsive in removing people during those early days.
But no one should ever be surprised when they are asked to leave. By the time I met with managers I was about to replace, I would have had at least two or three conversations to express my disappointment and to give them the chance to turn things around. I would follow up every business review with a handwritten note.

I can't remember a single instance where someone felt shocked or blindsided when our final conversation took place. When it's time for the final conversation, the subject quickly gets to "What's my deal?"
At that point, the biggest challenge is to get everyone focused on the future. Assure them that this is another transition in their life when they can make a new start. They can move on to another environment where all past warts are forgotten.
I've seen many people go on to better and happier lives after leaving jobs that just weren't working. All of us have a responsibility to try to make that happen.

15. To be a group executive and my hiring effort

GE's new sector chief, 1973.
During June of 1973, I got my next big break. Reuben Gutoff was promoted to head of strategic planning for the entire company, and I got his job as group executive at the age of 37. The promotion meant that I had to move to corporate headquarters. Besides the chemical and metallurgical division I already managed from Pittsfield, I was now responsible for a number of other businesses : medical systems, appliance components, electric components.
It was a diverse portfolio of products with over $2 billion in annual sales. The group employed 46,000 people and had 44 factories in the United States, plus operations in Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, and Turkey.

GE would move its headquarters from New York to Fairfield in August 1974.
There was only one problem-a very big one. I didn't want to move to the new headquarters in Fairfield.

Over the 13 years I had lived in Pittsfield, I had constructed the ideal life for my family and me. From our cramped apartment in 1960, Carolyn and I had moved into a succession of homes until we owned what I thought was one of the best houses in town.
We had a network of good friends. Our four children were still young and in local public schools. Pittsfield was a great place to bring up kids, with mountains and lakes just minutes away. I had a spectacular group of friends at the Pittsfield Country Club, where we played "life and death" games of golf and paddle tennis. I played hockey in a town pickup league well into my thirties. I knew just about everybody.

I really felt like the big fish in a little pond. I didn't want to give it up. Pittsfield had another advantage: It kept me out of the rat race at headquarters.
I flew to New York to see a vice chairman, my new direct boss. I asked him to let me stay in Pittsfield. I argued that most of my time would be spent in the field with the businesses. I promised I would never be late for the monthly meetings at headquarters. He finally said yes.
I moved out of my old office on Plastics Avenue and set up shop with a five-person staff in a suite of offices on the second floor of the Berkshire Hilton in Pittsfield.
This new job gave me the chance to put together a new team. I found a staff of bright, savvy, street-smart people with complementary skills in finance, human resources, strategy, and law. I was lucky to get two strong GE executives for finance and human resources from "the system." I went outside for my strategic planner and found one from a consulting industry. Last, I again promoted my former general counsel to the top legal job in the group.
You couldn't have found a more diverse band of characters-some GE insiders and a pair from the outside world. All of us were earthy, without pretense or formality-always blunt.
Without a corporate boss in sight, we wore sweaters and jeans to work. We shouted back and forth through the open doors. The place had the feel of a college dorm.
We spent most of our time in the field doing people and strategy reviews. We chartered a Citation jet that got us around easily. I was so excited to have a plane.
Carolyn saw it another way. "Jack, you're such a fool," she said. "They let you have the plane so you can work yourself to death."
She had a point, but I loved it, anyway. Often, we'd leave on a Monday morning and wouldn't return until Friday night.
Trying to oversee these diverse businesses in remote locations, I realized-more than ever before-how much my success would depend on the people I hired. I understood the importance of getting the right people. It was clear that when I found someone great, it made all the difference in the world.
I learned a lot of this the hard way-by making some big mistakes. One of my most common errors was to hire on appearances. In marketing, I'd sometimes recruit good-looking, slick-talking packages. Some of those were good, and some were just empty suits.
I made other "beauties." I was 30 when I began hiring in Asia. Obviously, I couldn't speak Japanese. I had little feel for the culture. So I did the obvious. If a Japanese candidate spoke English well, I usually hired him. It took me a while to find out that using language as a "hiring screen" was a marginal idea at best.
Many of my hiring mistakes reflected my own silly prejudices. Probably because I went to UMass-a former agricultural school that was just emerging in engineering-academic pedigrees impressed me. For engineering talent, I'd try to hire MIT, Princeton, and Cal Tech graduates. Often, I found out that where they came from wouldn't determine how good they'd be.
In the early days, I fell in love with great resume filled with degrees in different disciplines. They could be bright and intellectually curious, but they often turned out to be unfocused dabblers, unwilling to commit, lacking intensity and passion for any one thing.
Eventually, I learned that I was really looking for people who were filled with passion and a desire to get things done. A resume didn't tell me much about that inner hunger. I had to "feel" it.
16. From group executive to sector executive
A team of about 80 researchers worked tirelessly to develop an advanced CT scanner in 1976.
In this new group job, I discovered that the only business I would ever know in my blood was plastics. This was a big transition in my thinking. I could no longer have fingertip control of all the details. That made my obsession about people even more intense.
My HR partner, Ralf Hubregsen, and I began going out to the businesses, spending a full day in a room first with the general manager and his HR executive and then with all his direct reports. After 10 or 12 hours of heated discussion, I'd come away with a pretty good sense of talent we had at the top two or three levels of the business.
The reaction was total shock. No one was used to these intense personal discussions about the strengths and weaknesses of every individual on their team.
The leaders in the field who bore the brunt of these exchanges were the four divisional vice presidents who reported to me: Julian Charlier in medical, Walt Robb in chemical and metallurgical, George Farnsworth in electronic components, Fred Holt in appliance components.
George and Fred were the first two mainstream GE corporate officers I ever managed. They often thought I was off the wall but seemed to respect my enthusiasm, if nothing else. Both were wise GE veterans, and Fred, probably 20 years older than me, saw me like a stomachache that would soon pass.
One day during a HR review, Fred was giving a glowing appraisal of a guy I knew.
"Fred, how the hell could you write this? He's not that good. We both know this guy is a turkey. This appraisal is ridiculous."
To my surprise, Fred agreed.
"Do you want to see the real one?" he asked. "I can't send this to headquarters. They'd want me to kill this guy."
Fred wasn't alone in those days. He thought he was being a nice guy, protecting people who weren't up to their jobs. That's just the way it was. No one wanted to deliver bad news. In those days it was standard to fill out your appraisal form by writing that your career objective was at least your boss's job. The boss's response usually was "fully qualified to assume next position"-even if both knew it wasn't true.
Many of these "kind" performance appraisals would come back to haunt me in the early 1980s when we had to downsize the company. That "false kindness" only misled people and made their layoff an even greater shock than it should have been.
Charlier was a Belgian who had a grandiose idea every minute but wasn't much into following up on them. We had finally decided that he would be better back in Europe at another company.
To replace him, I made a call to Walt Robb. "You love technology, and you're curious," I said. " You're the perfect guy to run the medical business."
Walt thought I was crazy. He was the head of the chemical and metallurgical division, one of GE's biggest and most profitable businesses, with $500 million in sales. He had been in that job only four months and liked it. Now I was asking him to take over our medical business with half the revenue-and it was losing money. Walt had trouble seeing my offer as "the opportunity of a lifetime." He took the job, intrigued by the technology and some of my own SB.
Shortly after Walt got there, EMI, the English electronics company, had a major breakthrough, the CT (computed tomography) scanner. The advance posed a major threat to our existing X-ray business, but it was a huge challenge and really got our competitive juices flowing.
Walt, who had gotten his start at GE's research lab, went right back to his scientist friends for help. My only contribution was to follow the team's progress weekly, serving at times as a cattle prod and on other occasions a cheerleader. About 80 people worked round-the-clock to create a product that would give us faster and better images than the EMI model. Researchers practically lived in the lab, eating out of pizza boxes.
By early 1976, they were taking orders for the $650,000 machine.
Once again I saw the benefits of acting like a small company. Giving the project visibility, putting great people on it, and giving them plenty of money continues to be the best formula for success.
The CT changed the medical business forever. An unprofitable operation with $215 million in sales when Walt took it over is now, in 2000, one of GE's jewels, with operating profit of $1.7 billion on over $7 billion of sales.
From 1971 to 1977, my responsibility broadened continually from running a $100 million business to a $400 million division and soon a $2 billion group. I learned the importance of people, supporting the best and removing the weakest.
Toward the end of 1977, I got a call from Reg in Fairfield. He wanted to see me, and it was urgent. I was there the next morning.
"I think highly of you," Reg said, "but Jack, you don't understand General Electric. You've only seen 10 percent of the company. GE's a lot more than that. I have a new job for you-sector executive for the consumer products businesses. But Jack, this job is in Fairfield. You can't be a big fish in a small pond anymore. If you want to be considered for bigger things, you're going to have to come here."
I was thrilled to get another promotion. Carolyn was eager to move on. She was looking forward to a fresh new start in a new place and felt the move would help our four kids grow. By now, two of our four kids, Kathy and John, were in high school, Anne was in the ninth grade, and Mark was in the fifth.
There was a hierarchy at GE, with all 29 levels and dozens of titles and promotions, from a lab to a unit to a subsection to a section to a department, then a division and a group. The sector jobs were rated level 27, just two small steps from the 29 level attached to Reg's own job.
This was a big move. It put me in the race for Reg's job. I was exited by the possibilities, but apprehensive about whether the Pittsfield act would play in the Fairfield bureaucracy.
17. Into a bigger pond
GE's top management in the 70s. Chairman Reg Jones is center.
In December 1977, I was one of five sector executives, who had all been publicly identified as candidates in a horse race for Reg Jones' job, along with two corporate staffers, the chief financial officer and the senior vice president for corporate planning.
The five sector executives were all located in the west building of the two-building Fairfield complex, and my office was on the third floor, the farthest away through the wide hallway from Chairman's office.
The place was very quiet and formal-cold and unwelcoming. I didn't know many of the hundreds of people who worked in headquarters. What really made me feel alone was the loss of my good friend and supporter in Fairfield. Forget about all that "small fish in big pond" stuff. I felt like a minnow in an ocean.
From day one, the succession process was thick with politics. You could feel the tension in the building every day. Whenever the sector executives were in town, we'd usually end up in an uncomfortable situation in the corporate dining room for lunch. We'd munch on sandwiches, always being careful about what we said. It was awful.
There was one problem for me. My new direct boss, Vice Chairman, Dave Dance, favored another candidate in the race-his longtime protégé, Stan Gault, who, like Dance, had invested virtually his entire career in our appliance business. Dance's support for Gault was obvious and visible.
It was the first time in my 17 years at GE that I had a boss who was not rooting for me. There is probably nothing worse in business than to work for a boss who doesn't want you to win. This can happen anywhere, at any level-and probably occurs more often than we think. Until I came to work for Dance, I had never had it happen to me.
The other vice chairman also had his favorites in the race. I was not one of them.
What gave me hope was that the two vice chairmen didn't have much of relationship with each other or with Reg, who hadn't chosen them in the first place. Reg had inherited both vice chairmen from his predecessor. Both had been rivals for the job. They weren't bad guys-but they were disappointed that they didn't get Reg's job.
I survived the experience only by doing what I thought was right. I trusted Reg and the system to be fair.
The field became my refuge from the politics. Fortunately, to do the job right, I needed to spend as little time in Fairfield as possible. The team behind me was talented -and mobile. I went after the new job just as I always had in Pittsfield. We'd typically start a review at 7:30 A.M. and then spend hours peeling back the onion again. Rarely would we finish before 8 or 9 at night, when we'd go out to dinner together to review the day's session and size up the talent in each business.
The most difficult issues to deal with would be in the appliance business. Changes in direction could be perceived as shots at my predecessors Dance and Gault. They had run the appliance operations for more than a decade. They had plans for massive expansion of appliance parks in the U.S. Their ambitious plans reflected the company's conventional view of the business's potential. It had been driven by the glow of the postwar era, when a rising middle class filled its new kitchens with new appliances.
For years, headquarters had been hearing a fairly optimistic view of appliances. In Louisville, an army of economists, strategic planners, and finance people were believers in and advocates for the business. They didn't want to admit that the days of postwar growth were rapidly changing. They weren't alone. Their expansive view was shared by much of American industry.
But our look said growth would slow. The big expansion plans needed to be reexamined. While sales and profits were okay, productivity was steadily declining.
Armed with my group's analysis, I went to Dance to recommend a significant cutback in the business he had managed for so many years. I was prepared for Dance to fight, but he didn't. Instead, I think he might have seen my recommendation as further proof of my impulsiveness. He approved my plan.
We moved quickly to make the business in Louisville more competitive by significantly downsizing what we had, scrapping plans for building appliance parks.
The layoffs were not popular in Louisville. I was fortunate to have an alley of managers who had the courage to act on our new plans. They did make us more competitive, improved our profitability, and kept us going.
In appliances, similar actions have gone on for more than 20 years. A business that employed just over 47,000 people in 1977 today employs less than half that total, some 19,800 salaried and hourly workers. These downsizings are awful, as hardworking people get hammered by competitive change. In difficult businesses these changes never end. I can't tell you how often I was asked in the early 1980s. "Is it over now?"
Unfortunately, it's never over.
A lot of products that fueled the postwar boom simply became commodities, products with wafer-thin margins in slow-growing markets. In order to stay alive in the business, we had to manufacture more of these products outside the U.S. The price of a refrigerator today is $700 to $800 down from an average of $1,000 to $1,200 in 1980.
18. GE Credit and Cox deal. Uncertainty of the chairman race
GE Credit's logo.
Of all the business I was given as a sector executive in 1977, none seemed more promising to me than GE Credit Corp. Like plastics, it was well out of the mainstream, and like plastics, I sensed it was filled with growth potential.
We entered the business in 1933 almost by default, helping our appliance dealers move their inventories of refrigerators and stoves in the midst of the Depression by providing consumers with credit. Then we branched out and financed construction equipment. By the late 1970s, GE Credit had become diversified but was still small. By then, we were financing manufactured houses, second mortgages, commercial real estate, industrial loans and leases, and private-label credit cards.
In those early days, I didn't understand the intricacies of finance. I had the staff prepare a book that translated all the jargon into layman's terms. I called it "finance for little forks," but it was just what I needed. I studied it like I was back in grad school, so I could be conversant with the people in the business.
My gut told me that compared to the industrial operations I did know, this business seemed as easy way to make money. You didn't have to invest heavily in R&D and build factories. The business was all about intellectual capital-finding smart and creative people and then using GE's strong balance sheet. This thing looked like a "gold mine" to me.
Nowhere was the finance/manufacturing comparison more obvious than in profits per employee. With fewer than 7,000 employees, GE Credit's net income in 1977 was $67 million. In contrast, it took a payroll of more than 47,000 employees in appliances to make $100 million.
I'm sure this is obvious to almost everyone today-but to me it was a big insight in 1977. After all, I was a chemical engineer who had known only about "making things."
GE Credit wasn't doing badly in the late 1970s. Its profits and business grew every year. I just didn't think it was growing fast enough given its vast opportunity. In my early meetings with the leaders of the business in the spring of 1978, I was underwhelmed by the people in the organization. I'd gather them together in a room and grill them about the ins and outs of their business. "Let's pretend we're in high school," I said, "Take me through the basics."
I recall asking a pretty simple question of one of our insurance leaders. During his presentation, he had been using a couple of terms that I was unfamiliar with. So I interrupted him to ask: "What's the difference between 'facultative' and 'treaty' insurance?" After fumbling through a long answer for several minutes, an answer I wasn't getting, he finally blurted out in exasperation, "How do you expect me to teach you in five minutes what it has taken me 25 years to learn!"
Needless to say, he didn't last long.
The insurance anecdote wasn't an isolated incident. It was par for the course. If GE Credit could make as much money as it did with the existing people, I wondered how much more potential the business would have if it were filled with nothing but A players.
Over the next couple of years, we changed more than half of the leadership team in GE Credit. Many of the newcomers were recruited from other parts of GE. Many came from deep down in the organizations. They made a big difference. GE Credit grew to be GE Capital, which has grown explosively. In 2000, the business had $5.2 billion in earnings, with more than 89,000 employees-thanks to an incredible succession of leaders.
Not everything I touched turned out so well. I pursued a major acquisition to increase our exposure in the broadcast business in vain.
I negotiated the purchase of the Cox Communications cable and broadcasting operations. In the spring of 1978, I sold the board of directors on the deal, confident that the acquisition was a very good one for GE. We believed cable had a great future and was on the verge of breaking out.
Over the next 14 months, as we worked to get all the necessary approvals at the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), cable TV began to explode. As time for FCC approval dragged on, the Cox family began to raise the price tag on the deal. With the price escalating every time we met with the Cox people, I was coming to conclusion that the deal couldn't get done at any price. Losing this big deal in the politically charged atmosphere of succession race was a potential disaster. I finally decided we had to walk.
I informed Reg about my decision during the summer of 1979. He agreed but asked me to explain the rationale to the full board at its next meeting. I did, and later I found out that some directors liked the fact that I could walk away from a deal.
Everyone in the Reg's succession race was trying to outshine everyone else. We were all working our butts off trying to differentiate ourselves. This was a horse race, all the jockeys and horses were blind. No one, other than Reg, knew who was ahead or behind in the race. And Reg wasn't about to tell any candidate where he stood in the game.
At the time, there was much I didn't know about the succession process. I had no idea then that the initial list of 19 candidates put together in late 1974 failed to include my name. I didn't know that when the list was narrowed to ten names by early 1975, I still wasn't on it. I didn't know that the human resources executive had kept me out of the lists. One official HR view of me stated at the time: "Not on best candidate list despite past operating success. Intimidating subordinate relationships. Seeds of company stewardship concerns." Despite such reservations, Reg insisted on tossing me into the mix.
My nose and my gut sensed that Reg approved of what I was doing, but I was still nagged by doubts. Those uncertainties caused me to consider leaving GE in the midst of the race. Like everyone at GE, I was always getting contacted by headhunters. This time, with the self-doubts swirling in me, I reacted positively to a telephone call from the search firm, and looked at the CEO job at Allied Chemical.
In retrospect, I was testing the waters, not really wanting to leave GE but not sure where I stood in the race. That lack of self-confidence was rearing its ugly head.
19. Airplane interview
Reg Jones, on the right, and me.
In late January 1979, Reg asked me inside his office and closed the door for what I later understood to be one of the first of his famous "airplane interviews" with all the candidates.
"Jack, you and I are flying in one of the company planes, and the plane crashes," said Reg. "Who should be the next chairman of General Electric?"
Most candidates, including me, immediately and instinctively tried to crawl out of the wreckage and take control of the company. Reg politely explained that wasn't possible. We were both on the plane.
I tried to argue that I had survived the crash.
"No, no," he said, "you and I are killed. Who should be the chairman?"
I fumbled around, struggling with the answer. I told him I was so confident that I was the best candidate for the job that it was hard for me to give another name.
"Wait a minute," Reg said. "You're done. Who should get the job?"
I finally told Reg my vote would go to Ed Hood, who ran the technical products and services business. "He's thoughtful and smart, and I'd make Tom Vanderslice the number two guy. Tom's decisive, and tough as nails. They would complement each other well." Tom ran the power systems sector and, like me, lacked support from either vice chairman.
Then Reg asked my views of each of the other contenders, drawing out my assessment of their strengths and weaknesses. He wanted to know how I rated each guy on intelligence, leadership, integrity, and public image. He was trying to find out who could work with whom. In these interviews, repeated over several months, Reg gathered the opinions of all the top executives, including senior officers who weren't in the race.
Another time, in June, Reg asked me to come in again.
"We're flying in a plane, and the plane crashes. Jack, this time I'm done, but you live. Now who should be the chairman of GE?"
"That's better. I'm the guy," I said without hesitation.
Reg asked who should be on my leadership team. I told him that among all the candidates in the race, I would most want to work with Hood and Burlingame. Once again, I emphasized that the best fit with me would be Hood. I added Burlingame because I genuinely respected his intelligence, his analytical abilities, and his comfort with himself
"Okay, if you're the man, what do you see ahead as the major challenges facing the company?"
I told Reg exactly what I thought, as I'm sure every candidate did. Reg shared our views and thoughts with the Management Development and Compensation Committee of the board. When Reg tallied up the results of these sessions in which he had asked each person to name three executives for the top leadership team, I fared much better. Gault still got the most votes (seven), while Hood and I were tied with six each.
Through these interviews, Reg kept his usual poker face. He never gave any of us a hint if we were in good shape or not. I wasn't at all sure that he would eventually pick me. He was an English statesman, and I was an Irish street kid.
Reg and I were clearly very different people. But we also had a lot of hidden similarities. Both of us were hardworking people from modest backgrounds. Our success in the only company either of us ever worked for was a tribute to the organization's meritocracy.
We both loved numbers and analyses. We both did our homework and showed little tolerance for anyone who didn't.
The first big break in the race came in early August 1979. After a board outing at a country club in New York, Reg sat down with his two vice chairmen and told them he was going to narrow the race down to three candidates: myself, Burlingame, and Hood.
The remaining candidates would keep their current jobs or leave the company. He said he would ask the board the next morning for approval to name the three of us as vice chairmen. Both Parker and Dance would have to retire by the end of the year. The next morning, the board swung Reg's way, and made the vote unanimous. Over the next few months, Gault, Vanderslice, Al Way (CFO), Parker, and Dance left the company.
At 44, I was the youngest of the three final candidates. John was 58. Ed was 50.
Reg made one final request of all the candidates. He asked each of us to write a detailed memo that assessed our own performance, and also to write about our personal growth and how we met what the corporation should bring to society. I crafted an eight-page memo to overcome my immature image, noting, "I feel I have the intellectual capacity, breadth, discipline, and most of all the leadership."
And on December 15, 1980, Reg came into my office to embrace me. Reg told me that he had recommended me for the job and the board unanimously supported it. He explained that Hood and Burlingame would stay as my vice chairmen and that he would spend the next three months to help me through the transition until I officially took over on April 1. Reg had the courage to pick someone who was 180 degrees from what was then the "model GE executive."
20. New CEO against superficial congeniality
A photo taken when I became chairman in April 1981.
On April 1, 1981, I finally had the job of Chairman and CEO of GE.
Outwardly, I had a pretty good dose of self-confidence, taken as self-assured and tough. But inwardly, I still had plenty of insecurities. Whenever I had to get up in front of people, I struggled with my speech impediment. I fussed with a comb-over to disguise my receding hairline. And when someone asked me how tall I was, I had myself believing I was at least an inch and a half taller than the five feet eight I really was.
I came to the job without many of the external CEO skills. I had rarely dealt with anyone in Washington. I had little experience dealing with the media. Many of the Wall Street analysts and our 500,000-plus shareholders had no idea who Jack Welch was and whether he would be able to fill the shoes of the most admired businessman in America.
But I did know what I wanted the company to "feel" like. I wasn't calling it "culture" in those days, but that's what it was. I knew I had to change.
The company had many strength. It was a $25 billion corporation, earning $1.5 billion a year, with 404,000 employees. It had a triple-A balance sheet, and its products and services permeated almost every part of the GNP, from toasters to power plants. Some employees proudly described the company as a "super-tanker"-strong and steady in the water. I respected that but wanted the company to be more like a speedboat, fast and agile, able to turn on a dime.
I wanted GE to be a company filled with self-confident entrepreneurs who would face reality every day. We had to act faster and get the damn bureaucracy out of the way.
The reality was that at the end of 1980, GE was a formal and massive bureaucracy, with too many layers of management. It was ruled by more than 25,000 managers who each averaged seven direct reports in a hierarchy with as many as a dozen levels between the factory floor and my office. More than 130 executives held the rank of vice president or above, with all kinds of titles and support staffs behind each one. ( Today, in a company six times as large, we have roughly 25 percent more vice presidents. We have fewer managers, and most now average over 15 direct reports, not seven, with in most cases fewer than six layers between the shop floor and the CEO.)
It didn't take very long to bump up against some of the worst practices.
A head of our R&D operations wanted to give me a series of cards with written questions for our upcoming planning sessions with GE business leaders. I looked through the cards, surprised to see corporate crib sheets filled with "I gotcha" questions.
"What the hell am I supposed to do with these?"
"I always give the corporate executive office these questions. That let them show the operating people that they studied the planning books," he replied.
"This is crazy," I said. "These meetings got to be spontaneous. I want to see their stuff for the first time and react to it." What was the purpose of being CEO if I couldn't ask my own questions? The corporate staff had its rear end to the field-and it was too busy "kissing up" to the bosses.
The corporate executive office, including my vice chairmen, wasn't the only group at headquarters getting crib sheets. For every business review, headquarters people loaded up their own staff heads with questions.
These thick planning books were the lifeblood of the bureaucracy. Some GE staffers in Fairfield actually graded them, even assigning points to the pizzazz of each cover. It was nuts.
We had dozens of people routinely going through what I considered "dead books." All my career, I never wanted to see a planning book before the person presented it. To me, the value of these sessions wasn't in the books. It was in the heads and the hearts of the people who were coming into Fairfield. I wanted to drill down, to get beyond the binders and into the thinking that went into them. I needed to see the business leaders' body language and the passion they poured into their arguments.
There were too many passive reviews. And there were rituals that were waste of everyone's time. I wanted to break the cycle of these dog-and-pony shows. Hierarchy's role to passively "review and approve" had to go.
After that, at every occasion I could meet with corporate executives and business leaders, we spent time discussing the just-concluded planning sessions and how they could be improved. Even with my staff team, creating an open dialogue was difficult. Only those I worked closely with were willing to let it rip. Most of the guys didn't want to stick their neck out.
Having been in the field, I had a strong prejudice against most of the headquarters staff. I felt they practiced what could be called "superficial congeniality"-pleasant on the surface, with distrust and savagery roiling beneath it. The phrase seems to sum up how bureaucrats typically behave, smiling in front of you but always looking for a "gotcha" behind your back.
I thought we needed a revolution. It was obvious we weren't going to get one with this team.
21. Reform at Nuclear business
The infamous Three Mile Island nuclear reactor. (AP)
I spent most of 1981 with a team in the field reviewing businesses-just as I had done for ten years. I had a good feel for about a third of the company and wanted to dig into the rest.
I quickly found that the bureaucracy was nothing compared to what I would see in some of GE's other operations. The bigger the business, the less engaged people seemed to be. Too many people were just going through the motions. Passion was hard to find.
The home of our power turbine business was particularly frustrating. It had been our flagship business for GE for a long time, replacing lighting, as the core of the company. It had great technology, and its gas turbines were the envy of the world. With $2 billion in sales and 26,000 employees, it was important-and it "acted" important, despite only making $61 million of net income.
Power represented much of what had to change, not the technology and products, but the attitudes. Too many managers considered their positions as rewards for service to the company, a career capstone rather than a fresh opportunity. The long-cycle nature of the business, with product life cycles and order backlogs measured in years, only compounded the lack of pace, excitement, and energy.
In the spring of 1981, I visited our nuclear reactor business in San Jose, California. Nuclear power was one of GE's three big 1960s ventures, along with computers and aircraft engines. No business was undergoing more change than the nuclear power industry at that moment. Only two years earlier, in 1979, the Three Mile Island reactor accident in Pennsylvania put an end to what little public support remained for nuclear energy. Ironically, this once promising GE business would become the perfect role model for my "reality" theme.
The people who worked in San Jose were among the best and brightest of their time. Coming out of graduate school in the 1950s and 1960s, they had invested their lives in the promise of nuclear energy.
During my two-day review, the leadership team presented a rosy plan, assuming three new orders for nuclear reactors a year. The business saw the Three Mile Island disaster as little more than a blip. Their view was completely at odds with reality. They had received no new orders in the past two years and had suffered a $13 million loss in 1980.
I listened for a while before interrupting with what they saw as a bombshell.
"Guys, you're not going to get three orders a year," I said. "In my opinion, you'll never get another order for a nuclear reactor in the U.S."
They were shocked. They argued, with not-so-subtle implication being, "Jack, you really don't understand this business."
I loved their passion, even though I felt it was misdirected. Their arguments contained a lot of emotion but few facts. I asked them to redo the plan on the assumption they'd never get another U.S. order for a reactor.
"You figure out how to make a business out of selling just fuel and nuclear services to the installed base," I said.
At the time, GE had 72 active reactors in service. Safety was the principal preoccupation of both utility managers and government.
I had thrown a bucket of cold water on their dreams. They resorted in frustration to one of the favorite "when all else fails" arguments heard in business.
"If we take the orders out of the plan, you'll kill morale and you'll never be able to mobilize the business when the orders come back."
That wasn't the first or the last time I heard desperate business teams use the argument. That reasoning falls into the same category as the other plea I often heard during tough times: "You've cut all the fat out. Now you're into bone and you'll ruin the business if we cut more."
Both arguments don't make it. They're both weak. Management always has a tendency to take the smallest bite of the cost apple. Inevitably, managers have to keep going back, again and again, to cut more as markets deteriorate. All this does is create more uncertainty for employees. I've never seen a business ruined because it reduced its costs too much, too fast.
When good times come again, I've always seen business teams mobilize quickly and take advantage of the situation.
By the fall of 1981, the team had a plan and was prepared to implement it. They reduced the size of the salaried employees in the reactor business from 2,410 in 1980 to 160 by 1985. They eliminated most of the reactor infrastructure and focused only on research for advanced reactors in the event of the day would come when the world's view of nuclear changed. The service business became very successful and was an early indicator that service could play a huge role in GE's future. With its success, nuclear's overall net earnings grew from $14 million in 1981 to $78 million in 1982, and to $116 million in 1983.
Their story of success was one of the thrills of my early days as CEO. It had little to do with economics but a lot to do with the company "feel" I was looking for. The people who engineered the transformation were not "typical Jack Welch types." They weren't young, or confrontational. They didn't see the bureaucracy as the enemy. They were GE careerists and mainstreamers.
The opportunity to make heroes out of people who were not obvious Welch disciples was a breakthrough. It sent a clear message: you didn't have to fit a certain stereotype to be successful in the new GE. You could be a hero no matter what you looked like or how you acted. All you had to do was face reality and perform.
"Don't kid yourself. It is the way it is." My mother's admonition to me many years ago was just as important for GE.
22. No.1, No.2 vision
Home appliances were GE's main business until the 1970s.
On December 8, 1981, I delivered my big message on the "New GE" in front of Wall Street's analysts. It was my first public statement on where I wanted to take GE.
It was intended to describe the winners of the future. They would be companies that "insist upon being number one or number two in every business they are in the number one or two leanest, lowest-cost, worldwide producers of quality goods and services... The managements and companies in the eighties that don't do this, that hang on to losers for whatever reason tradition, sentiment, their own management weaknesses won't be around in 1990,"
Being No. 1 or No. 2 wasn't merely an objective. It was a requirement.
I moved into "soft" issues like reality, quality, excellence, and the "human element." To be a winner, we had to couple the "hard" central idea of being No. 1 or No. 2 in growth markets with intangible "soft" values to get the "feel" that would define our new culture.
Many of the audience looked at me with blank stares, apparently not interested in my presentation. One of our staffers overheard one analyst moan, "We don't know what the hell he's talking about." Wall Street yawned. The stock went up all of 12 cents. I was probably lucky it didn't drop.
I was sure the ideas were right. I just hadn't brought them to life.
Everything we did over the next 20 years, stumbling two steps forward, one back, was toward the vision that I laid out that day.
The central idea came from my earlier experience with good and bad businesses and was supported by the thinking of Peter Drucker. I began reading Peter's work in the late 1970s, and Reg introduced us during my transition to CEO. If there was ever a genuine management sage, it is Peter.
The clarity of No. 1 or No. 2 came from a pair of very tough questions Drucker posed: "If you weren't already in the business, would you enter today?" And if the answer is no, "What are you going to do about it?"
Simple questions but like much that is simple, they were also profound.
At the time, no one in or outside the company perceived a crisis. GE was an American icon, the tenth largest corporation by size and Market capitalization. The Asian assault had been coming for many years, swamping one industry after another; radios, cameras, televisions, steel, ships, and finally autos. We saw it in our television manufacturing business as global competition particularly from the Japanese began eating up profits. We had several vulnerable businesses, including housewares and consumer electronics.
Even today, we'll have these crazy conversations where people will say, "Well, you're making a profit. What's wrong?"
Well, in some cases, there's a lot wrong. If it's a business without a long-range competitive solution, it's just a matter of time before it's over.
The No. 1 or No. 2, "fix, sell, or close" strategy passed the simplicity test.
Like every goal and initiative we've ever launched, I repeated the No. 1 or No. 2 message over and over again until I nearly gagged on the words.
In the first two years, the No. 1 or No.2 strategy generated a lot of action most of it small. We sold 71 businesses and product lines, receiving a little over $500 million for them. These were peanuts, but the cultural significance of this churning was felt throughout the company, especially the sale of central air-conditioning business.
With three plants and 2,300 employees, it was not one of GE's larger businesses, and it wasn't profitable. Its sale to Trane Co. in mid-1982 for $135 million in cash raised eyebrows, because air-conditioning was right in the belly of our company. It was a division in our major appliance operations in Lousville. Yet its market share of 10 percent paled in comparison with the other GE appliance businesses.
I disliked the business the first time I was exposed to it as a sector executive. I felt it had no control of its destiny. You sold the GE-branded products to a local distributor. How the distributor installed them and how it serviced its customers reflected directly back on GE. We were frequently getting customer complaints that had nothing to do with us. We were being tarred by something we had no control over.
Because of our low market share, our competitors had the best distributors and independent contractors. For GE, this was a flawed business.
The air-conditioning sale to Trane reinforced my thinking that putting a weak operation into a stronger business was a true win-win for everyone. Trane was a market leader. With the sale, our air-conditioning people became part of a winning team. A month after the sale, a phone call confirmed my thinking. I called the general manager of our former business, Stan Gorski, who had joined Trane with the divestiture.
"Stan, how's it going?" I asked.
"Jack, I love it here," he said. "When I get up in the morning and come to work, my boss is thinking about air-conditioning all day. He loves air-conditioning. He thinks it's wonderful. Every time I talked to you on the phone, it was about some customer complaint or my margins. You hated air-conditioning. Jack, today we're all winners and we all feel it. In Louisville, I was the orphan."
"Stan, you've made my day," I said, before hanging up.
The air-conditioning deal also established another basic principle. We used $135 million from its sale to help pay to restructure other businesses. Every business we sold was treated the same way. We never put those gains into net income. Instead, we used them to improve the company's competitiveness.
In late 1983, we sold the housewares business within a few weeks of my first call with the market leading competitor for $300 million.
Employees in many of the traditional businesses were upset. I got my first blast of angry letters from employees. GE traditionalists claimed that the company benefited greatly by having our name and logo on these household products. We commissioned a quick study that showed just the opposite. The consumers' perception of a GE hair dryer, toaster or steam iron was okay but in no way valuable to the company. On the other hand, major appliances at that time and even today continue to rate highly with consumers.
Which businesses should be developed and which to be sold or closed I defined by drawing three circles and by dividing our businesses into one of three categories: core manufacturing, technology, and services. Inside the core circle, for example, I put lighting, major appliances, motors, turbines, transportation, and contractor equipment. Some of the operations including air-conditioning, housewares, television manufacturing, and audio products, even though regarded as the heart of the old GE, were outside of the circles.
There was the turmoil and firestorm going on inside much of GE. And there was a lot more to come, a helluva lot more.
23. "Neutron Jack"
My strategy chart, in which the divisions to be retained are circled and those to be discarded are not.
Among GE's 42 strategic business units, which one should be maintained and which one should be changed? To answer this question, I drew three circles and divided our businesses into one of three categories: core manufacturing, technology, and services. Inside the core circle, for example, I put lighting, major appliances, motors, turbines, transportation, and contractor equipment. Any business outside the circles, we would fix, sell, or close.
For people who worked in businesses inside the circles, it created a certain sense of security and pride. But it raised all kinds of hell within organizations placed outside the circles, particularly in operations that were the heart of old GE, including central air-conditioning, housewares, television manufacturing, audio products, and semiconductors. The people in these "fix, sell, or close" businesses were naturally upset. They felt angry and betrayed. The turmoil, angst, and confusion were everywhere, caused by the outright sale of businesses, and the cutbacks now occurring in many parts of GE.
We went from 411,000 employees at the end of 1980 to 299,000 by the end of 1985. During that time we newly recruited 6,000 people. Of the 118,000 people who left the GE payroll, about 37,000 were in businesses we sold, but 81,000 people lost their jobs for productivity reasons. Throughout the company, people were struggling to come to grips with the uncertainty.
I was adding fuel to the fire by investing millions of dollars in what some might call "nonproductive" things. I was building a fitness center, guesthouse, and conference center at headquarters and laying plans for a major upgrade of Crotonville, our management development center. My take on this was that all theses investments, at a cost of nearly $75 million, were consistent with the "soft" values of excellence I had outlined in front of the Wall Street analysts before.
But people weren't buying it. For them, it was a total disconnect.
I used every opportunity to reach out. In early 1982, I began holding roundtable discussions every other week with groups of 25 or so employees over coffee. One question inevitably dominated those sessions: "How can you justify spending money on treadmills, bedrooms, and conference centers when you're closing down plants and laying off staff?" I knew I had to try to win people over, one by one. I'd argue that the spending and the cutting were consistent with where we needed to go.
I wanted to change the rules of engagement, asking for more from fewer. I was insisting that we had to have only the best people. If you wanted excellence, at a minimum, the ambience had to reflect excellence.
I thought a gym would provide an informal place to bring together all shapes, sizes, layers, and functions. I wanted to create a first-class place where people could stay, work, and interact.
The traditionalists were shocked. I persevered because I wanted to create a first-rate informal family atmosphere and needed this ambience to get it. Everywhere I went, I was preaching the need for excellence in everything we did.
By mid-1982, Newsweek magazine was the first publication to pick up the moniker "Neutron Jack," the guy who removed the people but left the buildings standing.
I hated, and it hurt. But I hated bureaucracy and waste even more.
I served as a corporate chairman for the United Way campaign in the early 1980s. Time after time, as I visited with CEOs to strong-arm them for contributions, I'd hear them say, "We'd like to give it to you, but we can't," or, "We can't give as much as we did in the past. Things are too tough." This experience bolstered my notion that only healthy, growing, vibrant companies can carry out their responsibilities to people and their communities.
In late February 1982, TV program 60 Minutes accused us of "putting profits ahead of people." IBM, which at that time still promoted the concept of lifetime employment, launched an advertising campaign touting its nonlayoff policies in 1985. IBM's tagline: "cjobs may come and go. But people shouldn't." Several GE managers brought the ads to our Crotonville classes and pointedly asked, "What's your reaction to this?" Sadly for the IBM people, their day would come as the company lost competitiveness.
Any organization that thinks it can guarantee job security is going down a dead end. Only satisfied customers can give people job security. Not companies. Now people had to be focused on the competitive world, where no business was a safe haven for employment unless it was winning in the marketplace.
The psychological contract between the corporation and its employees had to change. I wanted to create a new contract, making GE jobs the best in the world for people willing to compete. We'd do everything to give them the skills to have "lifetime employability," even if we couldn't guarantee them "lifetime employment."
The speech I had to give 1,000 times was, "We didn't fire the people. We fired the positions, and the people had to go."
I took another solid hit in early August of 1984 when Fortune magazine put me at the top of its list of "The Ten Toughest Bosses in America." "Working for him is like a war," an anonymous former employee claimed to the magazine. "A lot of people get shot up; the survivors go on to the next battle."
24. Human Factory
GE employees are evaluated using the "vitality curve" method.
From 1981 to 1986, we made a big change at Crotonville, our management development center, which is an hour's drive by car from the Fairfield headquarters.
With the help of its chief, Jim Baughman, former Harvard Business School professor, I wanted to change everything: the students, the faculty, the content, and the physical appearance of the facilities. I wanted it focused on leadership development, not specific functional training. I wanted it to be the place to reach the hearts and minds of the company's best people the inspirational glue that held things together as we changed.
In the early 1980s, many managers left confused and troubled. I took all the reviews seriously, trying to bring what I learned from their responses into the next class. By the mid-1980s, the responses were showing more buy-in. After hearing the strategy and the vision, they said they understood it better.
In 1984, I started going to Crotonville for every one of our top three management classes. I never lectured nor preached. I loved the wide-open exchanges. I wanted everyone to push back and challenge.
I asked questions such as: "What are the strengths and weaknesses of GE?" "What are the major frustrations you deal with?" " What would you do in your first 30 days if you are appointed CEO of GE tomorrow?"
On case studies, we tackled real GE issues. I'd also ask each person to be prepared to describe a leadership dilemma they faced in the past 12 months, such as a plant closing, a work transfer, a difficult firing, or the sale or purchase of a business. I'd bring my own experiences into the classroom to tee up these discussions.
By 1988, some 5,000 GE employees were going to Crotonville for various courses every year. People were saying that the message and vision made sense. But they often added, "That's not the way it is back home." Damn it, after all this effort, the message still wasn't getting all the way through.
"We have to re-create Crotonville openness all over the company." Jim and I stretched out an idea that would become a GE game-changer called Work-Out. Groups of 40 to 100 employees were invited to share their views on the business and the bureaucracy that got in their way, particularly approvals, reports, meetings, and measurements.
Work-Out meant just what the words implied: taking unnecessary work out of the system. Toward this end, we expected every business to hold hundreds of Work-Outs. This was going to be a massive program.
A typical Work-Out lasted two to three days. We insisted managers make on-the-spot decisions on each proposal. If a yes-or-no decision couldn't be made on the spot, the manager's quality was questioned, and there was an agreed-upon date for a decision. As people saw their ideas getting instantly implemented, it became a true bureaucracy buster.
By mid-1992, more than 200,000 GE employees had been involved in Work-Outs.
Work-Out helped us to create a culture where everyone began playing a part, where everyone's ideas began to count, and where leaders led rather than controlled. They coached rather than preached and they got better results.
That intense people focus defines managing at GE. In the end, that's what GE is.
We build great people, who then build great products and services.
In manufacturing, we try to stamp out variance. With people, variance is everything.
Differentiation isn't easy. Finding a way to differentiate people across a large company has been one of the hardest things to do.
We were always groping for a better way to evaluate the organization. We eventually found one we really liked. We called it the vitality curve. Every year, we'd ask each of GE's businesses to rank all of their top executives. The basic concept was we forced our business leaders to differentiate their leadership. They had to identify the people in their organizations that they consider in the top 20% as A, the vital 70% as B, and finally the bottom 10% as C. The C players generally had to go. Ranking employees on a 20-70-10 grid forces managers to make tough decisions. Managers who can't differentiate soon find themselves in the C category.
The vitality curve must be supported by the reward system: salary increases, stock options, and promotions. The As should be getting raises that are two to three times the size given to the Bs. Bs should get solid increases recognizing their contributions every year. Cs must get nothing. Losing an A is a sin. We conduct postmortems on every A we lose and hold management accountable for those losses.
Dealing with the bottom 10 is tougher. The first time new managers name their weakest players, they do it readily. The second year, it's more difficult. By the third year, it's war.
Some think it's cruel or brutal to remove the bottom 10% of our people. It isn't. It's just the opposite. What I think is brutal and "false kindness" is keeping people around who aren't going to grow and prosper. There's no cruelty like waiting and telling people late in their careers that they don't belong just when their job options are limited and they're putting their children through college or paying off big mortgages.
We never resorted to "across the board" cutbacks or pay freezes, two old management favorites to reduce costs. Carried out under the guise of "sharing the pain," both actions are examples of people not wanting to face reality and differentiation.
That's not managing or leading. Edicts to impose a uniform 10 percent layoff policy or a wage freeze undermine the need to take care of the best.
25. RCA Deal
Announcing the acquisition of RCA in 1985; I am in the center.
We made the $6.3 billion acquisition of RCA in 1985. We bought RCA primarily to get NBC. What came with would transform us. From my first meeting with Bradshow, Chairman of RCA, to final board approval, it had taken 36 days to nail down the largest non-oil merger in history. The deal was a turning point for GE.
Out of the blue, I got a call from a friend who asked me if I'd like to meet with Brad. We got together in my friend's New York apartment and we found out we liked each other. The next day, I put together a team to dig through RCA. We wallowed through all the pros and cons of the acquisition, and put a $3.5 billion valuation on the broadcast business. If we could stomach paying about $2.5 billion for everything else, then the deal could be a home run.
Another meeting between Brad and I were set up at Brad's duplex in midtown Manhattan. "I'd like to buy your company," I told him, and tried a price in the $61-a-share range, more than $13 higher than RCA's stock was trading at that time. We negotiated several times and the deal closed when I gave Brad $66.50 probably 50 cents more than he expected. I always tried to leave some goodwill on the table when the seller's ongoing involvement was important to the company's success.
The critics, and there were many, focused on GE getting into the network business. They asked, "What in the world was a light bulb company doing buying a TV network?" The RCA acquisition gave us a great network and a lot more strategic chips at the table. It also sparked a new, energized GE. We had been going through lots of turmoil with our restructuring and downsizing. The deal changed the atmosphere. I remember walking up to the stage for the opening session of our operating managers meeting in Boca that January, a few weeks after the acquisition was announced. All of a sudden, some 500 people in the room stood up in a spontaneous ovation. RCA became the kick-start to a new era.
Once the deal closed, we sold RCA's nonstrategic assets, including records, carpeting, and insurance. Within a year of the deal, we had $1.3 billion of our $6.3 billion back.
We immediately integrated the RCA and GE operations that complemented each other. We reduced overhead by putting joint teams together that met with me every week. The team's objective was 1+1=1: one GE and one RCA staff professional would equal one in the merged company. The integration teams agreed that the best from each company would get the jobs.
The first chip that we played in the RCA deal was the TV manufacturing business. In June 1987, I was in France, where I met Alain Gomez, the chairman of Thomson, France's government-owned electronics company. Both our companies had businesses that needed help. Thomson had a very weak No.4 or No.5 medical imaging business that I wanted. I offered our TV manufacturing business, which he liked the idea immediately. Alain saw the trade as a way to unload his losing medical business and overnight become the No.1 producer of television sets in the world. He knew that his TV sets business was too small to compete against the Japanese.
Our domestic consumer electronics business had $3 billion in annual sales and 31,000 employees. Thomson's medical equipment business had $750 million in annual revenues.
The trade would triple our market share in Europe to over 15%, giving us a presence against our biggest competitor, Siemens. Within six weeks, the deal was done and announced in July. Besides the swap, Thomson gave us $1 billion in cash and a patent portfolio that for 15 years threw off $100 million annually in after-tax dollars.
Our move out of TVs, however, was a tough nut for many to swallow. Media critics claimed we were bowing to Japanese competition by selling out. Some attacked the deal as un-American. I even got called a chicken for running away from a fight.
The criticism was media nonsense at its best. We ended up with a more global, high-tech medical business and a lot of cash. Thomson and GE both stayed with it and ultimately made each business successful.
In the fall of 1988, we found the solution for our semiconductor business which I never liked. Harris Corp. Chairman Jack Hartley called me to feel me out on buying the business. We took dinner at GE headquarters, and two months later, the deal was done. Harris got the GE people, the facilities, and the business, and we received $206 million in cash.
We also concluded to move out of aerospace. In 1989, the cold war was over. There was too much capacity chasing too little business. The one company that seemed to be a good fit was Martin Marietta, a pure aerospace business.
In late October of 1992, I met Martin Marietta CEO Norm Augustin and suggested a private dinner at GE headquarters. He came and we shook hands. It took only 27 days to announce what was then the largest deal in the history of the aerospace industry. MM couldn't raise much more than $2 billion for the $3 billion deal. We agreed to make us owners of 25% of MM by obtaining its convertible preferred stock. Two years later, MM itself would merge with Lockheed. By the time we sold our MM position in 1994, our convertible note had doubled the value of the original $3 billion deal.
The Martin Marietta and Harris transactions and the Thomson trade were possible because of the chips acquired with RCA. The scale created by combining businesses was the key.
26. Divorce and marriage
Jane and I, newly married in 1991.
Unfortunately, while I was doing the biggest deal of my professional career, the biggest merger in my personal life was ending.
Carolyn and I had been having difficulty in our marriage for many years. Through all my GE years, I was the ultimate workaholic, while she did a great job raising our four kids. All of them were on their way and doing well. Katherine, our oldest, had graduated from Duke University and was in her first year at Harvard Business School. After getting an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia, my oldest son, John, was getting his master's degree in chemical engineering at Illinois. Our other daughter, Anne, graduated from Brown University and was going to the Harvard School of Architecture for her master's degree. Our youngest son, Mark, was in his freshman year at the University of Vermont.
Carolyn and I simply found ourselves on different paths. I wanted her to stay at home as a housewife, but she wanted to develop a new career outside after she finished taking care of children. She devoted herself to support me climb up the corporate ladder, but our relationships went clumsy soon after I reached the top position. Other than our friendship and mutual respect, we had little in common. It was difficult and painful, but we divorced amicably after 28 years of marriage in April 1987. It was our relief that our children were already grown up and understanding. If they were small, they would be seriously hurt by the divorce of parents.
Carolyn went to law school, got law degree, and eventually married her undergraduate sweetheart, who is also a lawyer.
Suddenly, I found myself single again. Being single and having money was like standing six feet four with a full head of hair. Everyone is trying to fix you up, and you get lots of date with interesting and attractive women.
Nothing really clicked until Walter Wriston and his wife, Kathy, arranged a blind date with Jane Beasley, an attractive attorney who worked for Kathy's brother at the New York law firm Shearman & Sterling.
In October 1987, we went out to dinner with the Wristons at an Italian restaurant in New York. With Walter sitting there, the date was a little stiff. But Jane and I left at 10 P.M. and went on to close the bar at Café Luxembourg. It took a second date over burgers at Smith & Wollensky, both of us arriving in leather jackets and blue jeans, to really make the match.
Jane is bright, tough, witty, and 17 years younger than I am. She is down-to-earth in every way. Jane is from a small town in Alabama. As a kid, she picked butter beans at 5:30 A.M. on her father's farm until her back ached. Her mother was a teacher, and she was a tomboy in a family with three brothers. She went to law school at the University of Kentucky and then came to New York to become a mergers and acquisitions lawyer.
At first, Jane had no interest in marrying me. In the summer of 1988, I invited her to Nantucket for the weekend. On Friday night, we went out to dinner. The next morning, I woke up, got dressed, and started to walk out the door.
"Where the hell are you going?" she asked.
"I'm going to play golf."
"You're kidding," she said. "I had to practically sign away my birthright to get this weekend off and you're going golfing?"
I honestly didn't know any better. I built my summerhouse just beside the best golf course in the island resort. I worked hard all week and then on Saturday morning I went out to play golf with the guys. This time, I knew this routine was over.
When we started to get serious, we had the "why it won't work" talk. I told her it bothered me that she didn't ski or play golf. She told me it bothered her that I didn't go to the opera. We made a deal: I agreed to go to the opera if she agreed to ski and golf. I really wanted a full-time partner, someone who would be willing to put up with my schedule and travel with me on business trips. Jane would have to give up her career. She took a leave of absence to try it out and, luckily for me, decided to make this her full-time occupation.
We got married in April 1989 at our house in Nantucket, with my four kids present. For the next few years, I went to the opera, calling it "husband duty" until Jane later relieved me of the obligation.
Teaching her golf took me to a whole new level. We got better together. Even though she had never played golf before meeting me, Jane won the club championship at Sankaty Head in Nantucket four years in a row and I won it twice. She's become the perfect partner.
27. Relationships with Japan
Attending a party in Japan in May 2001.
Ever since the world genius inventor Thomas Edison founded the company in 1870s, GE has always been a global trading company. At the turn of the last century, GE built the largest power plant in Japan. GE's relationship with Japan has grown steadily and decisively after the World War II.
I first came to Japan as a young manager in what was the "plastics operation," which was a small venture at GE then, and I arrived in Tokyo in search of partners and markets. I was lucky to meet and shake hands on a joint venture with Hiroyasu Nagase, the head of Nagase & Co. GE brought the product and technology to the deal. Nagase brought its knowledge of Japan's complex distribution.
In the late 1970s, when we needed a partner to break into the Japanese medical equipment market, we chose Yokogawa, the medical instrumentation and electronics company. The success of our deals with Nagase and Yokogawa reinforced the idea that our most successful partnerships are with smaller companies that feel the project is critical to their operations. Whenever there was an issue to work out, our people could get to the top-and not have to work through a massive bureaucracy.
I remember being frustrated by how long the Japanese took to make a decision. But when they made one, you could bet your house on it. In over 35 years, almost every business relationship I had in Japan turned into an enduring personal friendship.
In the 1980s, I visited Europe and Asia once a year to review current operations as CEO. We were in the process of trying to launch a factory automation effort, by selling the concept of "factory of the future." I had admired Fanuc of Japan and its head, Dr. Seiuemon Inaba. They were the clear market leaders in numerical controls for machine tools. I asked my Japanese staff to set the stage for my meeting with Dr. Inaba in New York in November 1985.
We hit it off immediately. We agreed to establish a 50/50 joint venture in factory automation. At $200 million in 1986, it was the biggest international deal that we had done in the 1980s.
I've seen first-hand the value of a Japanese handshake on a deal. It is more valuable than an ironclad written contract in most parts of the world. The loyalty of our business partners, their commitment to excellence, and their devotion to quality have never wavered. Neither has my deep respect for so many of the Japanese people I call friends.
When the Japanese economy began to sour in the mid-1990s, our GE Capital made a head start prompted by Japan's deregulation and opening of its financial market to foreign investment.
The first deal in 1994 was to acquire Minebea, the $1 billion consumer finance company subsidiary of a ball-bearing company.
By 1998, we really hit stride. The GE Capital team made two more deals that year in life insurance, consumer finance, and leasing that put us on the map as a big player in financial services in Japan. The first one in February was a $575 million joint venture with Toho Mutual Life Insurance. The second deal, announced in July 1998, was our $6 billion acquisition of the consumer loan business of Lake, Japan's fifth largest consumer finance company. This was a highly complicated deal with a virtually bankrupt company that took nearly three years of work to complete.
After we acquired Lake, I was playing golf with the well-known private investor Warren Buffet when he told me he really loved the transaction we'd just completed in Japan. I didn't think of him as being all that global, but he has more tentacles out than anyone.
"How do you know about Lake?" I asked.
"That's one of the best deals I've seen," he said. "If you weren't there, I would have taken that one."
In the early 1990s, we kept pushing our global growth by moving our best people into global assignments. In the early years of globalization, we had to use U.S. expatriates. But we accelerated the development of a global face for GE by forcing a rigorous reduction of U.S. expatriates. More locals had to be promoted faster to key jobs. In the first year of doing this, we reduced our expenses by over $200 million. When we have someone from the United States in Japan on a $150,000 salary, it costs the company over $500,000. I constantly reminded our business leaders, "would you rather have three to four smart University of Tokyo graduates who know the country and the language, or a friend of yours from down the hall?"
But I also found it difficult to get the best male Japanese graduates to join foreign companies in Japan. Finally, it dawned on me. One of our best opportunities to differentiate GE from Japanese companies was to focus on women. Women were not the preferred hires for Japanese companies, and few had progressed far in their organizations.
Fortunately, we had an ideal Japanese-speaking U.S. woman to become head of human resources for GE Japan. I gave her a million dollars for an advertising campaign to position GE as "the employer of choice for women."
What I didn't know was how much talent we already had in place. In May 2001, when Jeff and I were on a Japanese business trip, we had a private dinner with 14 of our high-potential women. Jeff and I had never been with a more impressive young crowd. It confirmed for me how big the opportunity could be.
28. Being a CEO
Talking to Queen Elizabeth II and former U.S. President George Bush at a dinner in May 1991.
Being a CEO is the nuts!
The schedule is packed, with many hours blocked out a year in advance, yet every day manages to bring new crises that butcher your calendar. The days are crazy long, yet the hours race by because you're always fighting for more time. Heavy pressures with big decisions in the real game. The job never leaves you no matter what you're doing-what's on your mind is always so absorbing.
It's full of the thrill of winning and the pain of losing. Like any job, it has its pluses and minuses-but the good sure overwhelms the bad. You get paid a lot, but the real payoff is in the fun.
There are all kinds of boring external functions. I was invited to a lot of black-tie dinners and industry association meetings. The best thing is, I didn't have to go. Some of the dinners are real special, like the White House State Dinners you wish your parents were alive to see.
There's no such thing as a typical day. While I was working on my biography in late May, I happened to have a day that was packed wall-to-wall, with many long meetings.
The day started at 8:30 A.M. with what we often call "Deal Day," when the GE Capital board met for its monthly session. We had a full plate to review the 11 deals, ranging from a bid for a bankrupt life insurance company in Japan with $5.5 billion in assets to a $500 million loan for a power plant in Mississippi. CEO of GE Capital introduced the rational for each deal and GE treasurer showed the analysis of each deal with his personal recommendation. It took us over 4 hours to go through 11 deals, and Nine got approved. One $4 billion acquisition was sent back for a further look, while a $111 million deal to finance four office properties in New York City was killed.
When the meeting broke up, I grabbed a sandwich in the hall and brought it back into a conference room for a strategizing session on our pending acquisition of Honeywell. We had several Honeywell guys from Phoenix for the meeting and we were in the midst of a hearing before the European Commission. We discussed about the possible problems of getting EC approval of the deal. It took two full hours.
The next session started after 3 P.M., which was one I always looked forward to because it was all about people: a wrap-up of the field visits over the previous six weeks.
During our field visits, we often "discover" three or four stars in every business and excitedly think up new opportunities for them. When we finally get to this wrap-up meeting, we inevitably find that we've slotted each new "star" in at least three to five different jobs. This session helps us sort through what we promised in the field and leads to an intense discussion about just which executives we'll shift from one business to another. We discussed plans for executives ranked in the bottom 10 %. Sometimes, the bottom 10 in one business are better than some of the people ranked in the middle of another business. This always creates a lot of heat.
The meeting didn't end until after 8 P.M., and the last thing I was thinking about was going back to the damn book of my autobiography.
Here I'll take a shot at sharing some of the ideas that worked for me as effective formulas for being a CEO.
*Maintaining integrity. I may not have been right all the time, but people always knew they were getting it straight and honest. It sets the tone in the organization. The organization takes its cue from the person on top. I always told our business leaders their personal intensity determined their organization's intensity.
*Creating informality. Bureaucracy strangles. Informality liberates. Creating an informal atmosphere is a competitive advantage. Bureaucracy can be the ultimate insulator. Informality is about making sure everybody counts no matter his or her position or title is. It's a wide-open spirit where everyone feels they can let it rip. Passion, chemistry, and idea flow from any level at any place are what matter.
*Building up self-confidence. There is a fine line between arrogance and self-confidence. Arrogance is a killer, having no ear to others' words. The true test of self-confidence is the courage to be open-to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. Self-confident people aren't afraid to have their views challenged.
*People first, strategy second. Getting the right people in the right place is a lot more important than developing a strategy. This truth applied to all kind of businesses. Without the right leaders developing and owning them, we'd get good-looking presentations and so-so results.
*Differentiation develops great organization. Differentiation is as tough an issue as any manager faces. Anybody who finds it easy doesn't belong in the organization, and anyone who can't do it falls in the same category.
*Field first. I always reminded myself: Headquarters doesn't make anything or sell anything. Banging around the field was my best shot at getting some idea about what was really going on.
29. New Guy
Myself and my successor Jeff Immelt, on the right, in November 2000.
Making the pick of successor is namely the most difficult task and decision for CEO. Some companies have run through five or six different CEOs during my years as chairman. I didn't want that to happen at GE. CEO is the source of image and reputation of the company and also the symbol of its integrity, which should not be so frequently changed.
That's what I was thinking about when we started on this road in the spring of 1994. I was 58 then, with seven years to go. When I appointed Bill Conaty our new senior VP for human resources in November 1993, I told him that our biggest job was to select the next CEO for the company.
I approached the whole process with these thoughts:
One, I wanted my successor to be GE's unquestioned leader.
Two, I wanted to take the politics out of the process.
Three, I wanted to be sure the board was deeply involved in the decision. Going forward, our directors needed to be united behind one person.
And four, I wanted to pick someone young enough to be in the job for at least a decade.
We always had our hit-by-a-truck succession plan: a short list of people who could take over if something happened to me. Now, for the first time, we looked beyond an emergency and cast a wider net, to get at those with the potential to take over in 2001. Our VPs for executive development and I did come up with 23 candidates. The youngest was 36, and the oldest was 58. The field included CEOs of several of our businesses as well as young vice presidents. These were the best prospects we had in 1994.
We mapped out developmental plan for each of the candidates, plotting promotions for everyone until the year 2000. We wanted to give the younger ones broader, deeper, and more global exposure in several businesses.
We made our first formal pitch on succession to the management development committee of the board in June 1994. We showed the directors the "ideal CEO" list, the names of all 23 candidates. From that moment on, all the key decisions in their careers were made with succession in mind. We kept throwing new tests in front of them.
We began formal board reviews on succession every June and December. To help the directors form judgements outside the boardroom, they played golf with the candidates every April and got together every July for golf or tennis. We had an annual Christmas party with spouses.
Four years after the first list, the original 23 had been narrowed to eight serious candidates in June 1998. We settled on the final three by the end of 1998, and the media began cranking up the pressure as the chairman race was already well-known for public.
Three candidates were: Jim McNerney, CEO of aircraft engines, Bob Nardelli, CEO of power systems, and Jeff Immelt, CEO of medical systems.
The most important lesson I took from my own succession was the need to take out all the internal politics. So I kept all three in the field in their current jobs-Bob in Schenectady, Jim in Cincinnati, and Jeff in Milwaukee-allowing each to focus on nothing but his business. Not politics. And not maneuvering in a new bureaucratic layer in the organization.
I didn't need a close-up view. I had frequently visited their fields and I had been hanging around with these three for years.
They all were outstanding in their accomplishment, showing great leadership. I was so proud of all three. Every one is a little different here or there, but all of them are terrific human beings. All were running their businesses at record margins, at record market shares, and with the highest employee morale ever. They were the best treasures that GE could be proud of.
But I had to choose one and what would be the best for the unchosen two? For me, this was an emotional decision. There was a lot of blood, sweat, family, and feelings to it. I never had trouble making decisions. This one was different. It was agonizing.
I've had plenty of ideas, good and bad, but I got a really good one during a weekend in June 2000 with the CEO decision pending in December. It came in the shower. I often do some of my best thinking there. Because I was sure two of the three would leave, I decided to "lose" them on my terms.
I called and explained my idea to the three. Nonetheless, it came as a surprise to them.
"Well, are you telling me I'm either up or out?" asked one.
"Yea, that's it. You threw the gauntlet down by telling me you are going to leave if it didn't work out. I'm saying, 'Okay, here's the guy who is going to replace you. Now you train him for six months.'"
None of them thought it was the greatest thing that ever happened, but they understood it really was in the company's best interests.
It was at the end of October that I decided to choose Jeff and made my recommendation to the board. After the board unanimously and wholeheartedly approved Jeff as chairman-elect over the Thanksgiving holidays in late November, I called Jeff and invited him and his family to my condo at Palm Beach in Florida.
When he pulled his car into my driveway, I had my arms around him, saying exactly what Reg Jones said to me 20 years earlier:
"Congratulations, Mr. Chairman!"
As we hugged, I felt we were closing the loop.
After the celebration, I went on the corporate plane alone and flew to the each nearest airport to the places where Jim and Bob had vacations. I met them each alone and told about the result. They were heavily disappointed but nodded to my words. We shook hands and hugged.
Within 10days after the announcement of new CEO of GE, Jim was chosen to be CEO of 3M, and Bob was picked to be CEO of Home Depot.
30. Not the ending, but the beginning
With grandson Luke in June.
In GE we have had anonymous on-line surveys every year since 1994. We are happy to find the results to have more than 90% of the responses were favorable when asked if an employee's career with GE has had a "favorable impact on me and my family."
In 20 years as a CEO, I've noticed the job is close to 75% about people and 25% about other stuff. I worked with some of the smartest, most creative, and competitive people in the world-many a lot smarter than I was. I'm very proud of working together with them to create a great company, the best organization.
On leaving GE, I told the employees that GE had to change more in the next decade than it had in the past 20 years. "Forget about yesterday. Prepare for tomorrow. Change, as you have never seen it, at speeds you've never seen." I said. I believe they can do it.
At every moment of my life, I've been lucky to have people at my side whose support, encouragement, and love made all the difference in the world. They filled my journey with great fun and learning. They often made me look better than I am.
During this column, My Personal History, are running, I have been notified that there were many favorable responses coming in to The Nikkei Shimbun from the readers with questions and their opinions on my story. I was terribly pleased to hear that many were strongly impressed with my mother, saying: "I'm encouraged to have a baby," or "I'm learning a lot about child caring." They really strengthened my pride in my beloved mother. I also felt happy to hear many readers shared with me about the hardship and difficulty of management.
The 30-day installments of this series are based on the first autobiography, Jack: Straight from the Gut, which is near 500 pages in English, and about 700 pages in total of two volumes in Japanese translation. This column story is an excerpt, about 10% of the original book. I sincerely hope the Nikkei readers will further enjoy the book, in which I described in detail especially my management philosophy and practices.
Among the questions our readers have made, they wanted to know my view on perspectives of Japan's future.
As the country now wrestles with its economic future, I remain optimistic. My optimism for Japan's future is great. Time after time, Japanese companies raised the bar of excellence in one industry after another and set standards of higher quality, lower cost and ever more value. No company has better symbolized the spirit of innovation and superior quality than Sony. Akio Morita and Sony became synonymous with innovation, and that tradition continues to expand today led by Chairman Nobuyuki Idei and his Sony team. Tokyo Electric Power and its CEOs from Gaishi Hiraiwa to Nobuya Minami, tried to demonstrate opening the Japanese market to the world and also worked hard to ease political tensions between Japan and the U.S.
The transformation toward recovery is under way, but it will take time-and it will be difficult and painful. It will take courageous leaders like our partners, but Japan has many of them: Fujio Mitarai of Canon, Isao Kaneko of JAL, Kichisaburo Nomura of ANA, Taizo Nishimuro of Toshiba, and Etsuhiko Shoyama of Hitachi, Chihiro Kanagawa of Shin-Etsu Chemical, among so many others. The Japan I know and love has much more to teach and contribute to the development of the world, and I'm confident will continue to do so.
Other questions were focused on my personal future.
Yes, I was suggested to take high position in the U.S. government or to run for political office. But I honestly don't have any interest in the government or politics. I dislike political negotiations, and the bureaucracy is the very thing I have hated and fought throughout my career. I don't want to restrain myself from speaking out or from free actions.
I'm not interested in the academic post, either. I like teaching, but I'd rather teach businessmen, especially managers, who are working hard in real life than students who have no experience in real life. I will not be joining company boards but will be a management advisor to several companies.
I'll fly to Tokyo next week to have some talks in Nikkei's special seminar. It will also be a good opportunity to meet my old friends I highly respect.
I am retired from GE, but not from life. This is not an ending, but a beginning of new life. I'm in quite good health now after I got heart bypass surgery in 1995. My wife Jane and I expect more relaxing time, which I am sure will come. (End)