With the recent passing of former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, many people reflected on the 20 years he ran GE and how the Massachusetts-born son of a train conductor remade that venerable company while increasing its value to shareholders. In a number of ways, those accomplishments and his keen insights on leadership and management made him the first celebrity CEO.
But what first crossed my mind was his love of golf. A good player whose handicap long hovered in the mid-single digits, he cherished every chance he had to tee it up and reveled in the joy of a shot well struck and a match hard fought. Jack also loved the close companionship the game provided and how it kept him grounded even after he had achieved rock-star status in the business world – and kept him sane in what was a pressure cooker of a job, no matter how high the price of GE stock climbed.
For many years, Jack and I belonged to the same Connecticut club, and we played dozens of rounds together. He fervently believed that golf was better when there was money on the line and in a fair amount of banter before, after and sometimes even during shots. The better he got to know you, the more ways he found to throw you off your game. But he took as good as he got and actually liked being razzed on the course, largely because no one at work ever gave him that kind of grief.
Case in point: One time during Bill Clinton’s presidency, Jack opined that he had become disillusioned with the man and no longer had any use for him. But a week later, there was a photograph in The New York Times of Welch and Clinton during a round on Martha’s Vineyard. Some people may have been starstruck, but as Jack’s regular golf partners, we were wholly unimpressed. And you can be sure that we chided him the next time we played for so shamelessly caving in to the leader of the free world.
Being a part of Jack’s foursome gave you two perspectives. As his partner, you had the sense of what it must be like to work for him. “C’mon, Steiny, you need to make this putt,†he’d implore as I lined up a crucial one, a crooked smile on his face but a piercing look in his blue eyes. The edict was clear. Perform, or else. And when you were his opponent, you found yourself battling a man who was both resolute and relentless. It made me think of how brutal it must have been to compete against him – and GE – in business.
Of course, Jack had his soft side. He was the only person who ever sent me a thank-you note – handwritten, no less – each time he competed in the three-day member-guest I helped run for a number of years. Jack was also among the first to support a caddie scholarship trust I co-founded. In addition to ponying up much-needed seed money, he cheerfully wrote letters of reference for caddies in search of jobs after graduating from the colleges we had helped make it possible for them to attend. And you can only imagine the weight one of those missives carried.
As great a CEO as Jack might have been, he was an even better golf guy. And that is saying something.
John Steinbreder