The 1991 GE CEO letter is a long, self-assured and self-congratulatory epistle by an entrenched and

confident CEO. It uses many rhetorical flourishes and subtle (and not so subtle) metaphors to evoke a
company whose leader’s vision and strategy has led to incredible financial feats – a company that can
increase revenues, earnings, and productivity despite having to endure “one of the most brutal economic
years most of us can remember.”

The letter has three important structural elements. First there is the short, powerful scene-setting,
alliterative opening line: “1991 was a tough, terrific year for GE”. Second is the textual highlighting, a sort
of visual aide-memoire using four keywords – “layers”, “speed”, “values” and “leadership” – in GE’s
management credo. Third is an affirmation, by means of anecdote or parable in the final paragraphs, that
the commitment of the CEO (and through him, GE) to “speed” and “boundarylessness” were “put to test”
at a meeting of “450 men and women who lead our company” and they “passed with flying colors”.

This is a bold letter written by a CEO firmly in control – one who is unafraid to boas that he has led the
company to an “astonishing success” (line 106) and managed “a total transformation of a century-old
Company culture” (lines 14-15). It is strongly rhetorical letter intended to convince readers that the
strategic pathway charted for GE by CEO Welch has been the right one. Welch present himself as a heroic
corporate warrior who fights successfully for increased revenues and earnings in a tough, recession-
affected global marketplace, a gladiator who relishes the thrill of battle.

GE, under Welch, is portrayed as capable of major feats – of bringing down the barriers to enhanced
productivity by embracing the sagacity of its CEO. Welch is a buster of GE’s functional boundaries and
barnacled bureaucracies. He is capable of “de-layering” GE, but the letter is silent on the implications of
this euphemism for employees. Presumably, the ethos is that employees are dispensable in the quest for
increased sales, earnings, and productivity. It seems clear that these people are the ones who do not
“deliver the commitments” (line 252) or who deliver on commitments but “do not share [core GE] values”
(line 256) or who do have “fresh, recently tested ideas and proven team building skills” that conform to
GE ideas (line 123-4).

Thus, conformity with the ideological values of the CEO (and through him, GE) is compulsory for those
who wish to retain their positions: deviation from core values is unlikely to be tolerated. As well, GE is
presented as a company fixated ideologically on serving the market and satisfying customers – it is
prepared to do this even in the face of the challenges posed by its metaphoric depiction of “global
marketplaces” as “brutally Darwinian” (line 60).

GE is a fast company, too. Speed is depicted as exhilarating, fun, exciting – and, axiomatically, as leading
to greater cash flow, greater earnings and higher market share. In Welch’s 1991 letter, speed receives
prominent treatment. It is described as a force of nature – it can “propel ideas and drive processes right
through functional barriers … in the rush to get to the marketplace” (lines 125 – 7). It is like a powerful
genie, one that GE has learned to unleash through “Boundary-bustling” (line 137) and other anti-
bureaucratic initiatives. Welch proclaims that “Speed exhilarates and energizes” (line 142); indeed, it
“transcends” (line 138). He itemizes vehicles and activities that embody the “fun and excitement”
“injected” by speed: “fast cars, fast boats, downhill skiing or a business process” (lines 142-3). But the first
three items on his list are sources of individual pleasure. Indeed, the “speed” described in this letter seems
suspiciously like the drug of the same name. This extolling of speed seems poorly considered. But perhaps
it was well-considered. Speeding up business processes may have pleasing outcomes for the corporation-
as-person and its leadership, but not for those outside the corporate elite.
Welch’s treatment of bureaucracy takes the form of a full rhetorical onslaught. He avers, “But to increase
productivity, you first have to clear away all the impediments that keep you from its achievement –
primarily the management layers, functional boundaries and all the other trappings of bureaucracy” (line
68-71). He thereby frames the ensuing discussion by characterizing bureaucracy as underbrush that must
be cleared away before “increase productivity” can be realized.

Some of the non-conventional metaphors that Welch uses in this demonization seem curiously inapt. For
example, he writes that “Leaders is highly layered organizations are like people who wear several sweaters
outside on a freezing winter day. They remain warm and comfortable but are blissfully ignorant of the
realities of their environment. They could be further from what’s going on” (lines 72-6). This is silly.
“People who wear several sweaters outside on a freezing winter day” are most certainly not “blissfully
ignorant of the realities of their environment”.

Welch also writes that “We’ve been trumpeting the removal of bureaucracy and layers at GE for several
years now…Layers insulate. They slow things down. They garble” (lines 77, 87). Thus, he associate the
word “bureaucracy” with the word “layers”. “Layer” is defined as “one thickness, course, or fold laid or
lying over or under another” and “a stratum”. While such a rhetorical move makes Welch’s sweater
metaphor understandable (although still inapt), it is a narrow view of bureaucratic structure. There are
undoubtedly bureaucracies whose individual units are separated by layers, inhibiting communication and
response. But this is only one rather extreme mode of organizing. And if by 1991, about ten years into his
tenure as CEO, Welch was still permitting such perverse types of bureaucratic structure to exist at GE,
then perhaps he wasn’t on top of his job. It seems more plausible that Welch, in his enthusiasm for
“productivity growth”, deployed whatever extreme metaphors were at hand.