1935–2020 · American business executive · Chairman and CEO of General Electric, 1981–2001
John Francis “Jack” Welch Jr. ran General Electric for two decades, from 1981 until his retirement in 2001, and became the most imitated — and most argued-about — American chief executive of his generation. He was famous for dismantling GE’s elaborate corporate planning apparatus and replacing it with relentless attention to who held which job, a preference he later condensed into the line on this page. His memoir Jack: Straight from the Gut, written with John A. Byrne and published the year he stepped down, is where that preference is stated most plainly.