Did Jack Welch Model Sow Seeds of G.E.'s Decline?

For Fortune magazine in 1999, Jack Welch, then General Electric's chief executive, wasn't just the country's best executive, or the manager of the year, but nothing less than the best manager of the 20th century, “far and away the most influential manager of his generation.”

Mr. Welch himself was more circumspect. “My success will be determined by how well my successor grows it in the next 20 years,” he said at a management conference that year.