1: Jack Welch returned from his trip to Japan in 1993 on fire about the power of stretch goals.

As GE’s CEO, the story of the Japanese bullet train inspired him to rethink his approach to goal-setting, according to Charles Duhigg in Smarter Faster Better.

Within six months, every GE division had a stretch goal.

But there was a catch.

Jack and the division leaders didn’t always agree on … continue reading

1: The year was 1993.  GE CEO Jack Welch was in Japan when he heard a story about the country’s railway system.

After World War II, Japan’s economy had been decimated.

“A large portion of the country’s population lived in or between the cities of Tokyo and Osaka, which were separated by just 320 miles of train track,” Charles Duhigg writes in Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real … continue reading

1: “It was the late 1980s and GE was the second most valuable company in America,” Charles Duhigg writes in Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity.

“GE manufactured everything from lightbulbs to jet engines, refrigerators to railway cars,” Charles notes.

It was a massive enterprise employing more than 220,000 people.

The company’s leaders thought their formal goal-setting system was one of the keys to their success.… continue reading