Jack Welch, the former chief executive officer of General Electric, championed the use of Six Sigma during his time at the helm of the multinational corporation. His dedication to the methodology is legendary, as is how Six Sigma drove improvements at the company in the 1990s.

Welch died March 1, 2020, at the age of 84. He ran General Electric from 1981 until 2000. During that time, the company’s revenue increased fivefold to reach $130 billion. Welch became one of the most famous CEOs in the world. His biography – “Jack: Straight From The Gut” – sold 10 million copies worldwide.

Welch reigned as a successful CEO during an era of many successful CEOs. And Six Sigma played a large part in his strategy, including offering training to management and helping key employees reach the Black Belt level in Six Sigma.

Welch’s Early Life

By the time he became CEO, Welch worked for 20 years in various positions with General Electric.

Born Nov. 19, 1935, in Peabody, Mass., Welch earned a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined GE in 1960 as an engineer in the plastics department. By 1968, he ran the department.

When Welch became CEO in 1981, he was only 45 years old and the youngest CEO in General Electric history.

Changes Made By Welch

When he became the CEO of General Electric, Welch made sweeping changes in how the business operated. As noted by the New York Times, “The Welch formula was a sharp break from the management style at large corporations through the 1970s, with cadres of middle managers and large planning departments.”

Welch took many business cues from the Japanese. He saw early on that companies in the island nation turned into powerhouses by creating more efficient and effective systems. Continuous process improvement had become a guiding principle there, as demonstrated by the use of Lean and Six Sigma methodologies.

In his book, Welch said he wanted a “company filled with self-confident entrepreneurs who would face reality every day.” He set about creating that atmosphere by installing such managerial changes as:

  • Eliminating unneeded bureaucracy
  • Globalizing the company’s business
  • Moving more into finance to serve growing customer demand
  • Moving out of manufacturing industries where GE no longer could compete with the Japanese, including making televisions and small household appliances

According to the Times, he also became known for his one-sentence nuggets of advice. They included: “Control your destiny, or someone else will”; “Be candid with everyone”; “Bureaucrats must be ridiculed and removed”; and “If we wait for the perfect answer, the world will pass us by.”

Implementing Six Sigma

Many attribute Welch’s success to the go-go business atmosphere of the 1980s, but it wasn’t until 1995 that he embraced Six Sigma. After seeing the success he had in implementing Six Sigma quality controls, many companies followed General Electric’s lead, according to the Financial Post.

After five years of implementing Six Sigma, General Electric reported savings of $12 billion.

Among the initiatives started by Welch included training for managers in Six Sigma and requiring them all to complete a Six Sigma project. Part of the training involved learning about DMAIC, which is a methodology used in Six Sigma to evaluate a process, identify areas where mistakes are being made and create long-lasting solutions. The acronym stands for define, measure, analyze, improve and control.

General Electric also brought in Master Black Belts to train key employees to become Black Belts.

Welch in His Own Words

In an interview, Welch described what a “Six Sigma company” should look like.

“I understand a Six Sigma company as a company whose management understands that variation is evil, that serving customers with what they want, when they want it, is, in fact, the winning game,” Welch said.

He said companies that use Six Sigma place customer needs above all else, then streamline services to meet those needs as efficiently as possible. He said, “You’ll have it in your bones to get outside your internal focus to your external focus. And everything you do internally will be thought of as, “How is it going to impact a customer?’”

Welch also said the understanding of Six Sigma needed to be ”deep in an organization and broad in an organization.”

Welch remains a controversial figure for some. But while some of the management philosophies outside of Six Sigma that Welch embraced have fallen out of favor, his success cannot be argued with. John A. Byrne, who co-authored Welch’s biography, told the Times that Welch “was the right person for the time. He was a whirlwind. And he absolutely loved business — the competition, the winning and the theater of it. Business was everything to him.”