Simon Sinek’s book titled “The Infinite Game” makes frequent mention of how Jack Welch and his finite mindset mentality instilled a toxic work culture among GE employees.
Jack Welch’s focus was always on “winning” with short term targets in order to outdo competition.Had it not been for the US government’s bail out in 2008 , GE would have become obsolete by now.
Jack Welch’s evaluation criteria for an employee was on two parameters:
- Performance
- Potential – This is nothing but future performance
As we can clearly see his evaluation criteria was solely based on performance with no focus on trust.This resulted in a “toxic” culture where employees were pitted against one another without feeling the need to collaborate.
This is a very good case study to showcase the value of trust and collaboration in “trusting teams” which form the basis of infinite mindset nurtured by organizations led by visionaries.