00:00GE was on its deathbed and then a new CEO took over and engineered what may well be the biggest
00:06comeback in business history. GE was a legendary company that was founded by Thomas Edison in the
00:1219th century, yet this company went on very hard times around 2018. It had a debt load of $150
00:20billion and its other businesses weren't making enough money to pay down any of that debt.
00:25Larry Culp was called up by the board in this emergency situation to save GE essentially from
00:31bankruptcy. Part of the skills that turned GE around were the lean manufacturing techniques
00:37that Larry Culp first learned early in his career where he spent a week building air conditioners
00:43in a Japanese plant and as he told me, unless you've been yelled at in Japanese while building
00:48air conditioners in Tokyo, you haven't lived. His next move was dismantling the most famous
00:54conglomerate of all time by splitting it into three companies. Larry Culp wanted to change the
01:00GE culture, which he characterized as a shoot the messenger culture where you got in trouble if
01:05you brought up problems. He wanted to encourage the workers and the executives to bring up problems
01:10to find solutions mainly from the factory floor up. When Larry Culp took over as CEO of GE,
01:17its market cap had shrunk 80% from the peak to about $90 billion. That market cap today is approaching
01:25$700 billion, which would make the three companies combined the second largest industrial enterprise
01:31in America. For more on Culp's career, you can check out my full article on fortune.com.
