GE’s Immelt Urges MBAs to Dream Big, Work Hard

01 Sep 2005

GE’s Immelt Urges MBAs to Dream Big, Work Hard

Re: Jeff Immelt (MBA 1982); Brian Kreiter (MBA 2005)

Topics: Competency and Skills-Experience and Expertise Communication-Spoken Communication Psychology-Social and Collaborative Networks Education-Business Education Leadership-General

In June, Class Day speaker Jeffrey R. Immelt (MBA ’82), chairman and CEO of General Electric, sent 878 MBA graduates off into the world with a pep talk in which he cited competitiveness and creativity as keys to business success. Immelt also dispensed lots of hard-earned advice gleaned from his 23 years at GE, where he began his career as a sales manager in the plastics division.

When all is said and done, Immelt declared, “This degree you have, this thing called an MBA, is a little bit about the subject matter. But it’s more what’s in your heart, what’s inside you, that you take from here.” In his own career, Immelt said, that has meant experiencing and learning more deeply the import of four lessons that he initially absorbed at HBS: focus and discipline (“Very few jobs have been beneath my dignity; every job has taken focus and discipline”); managing and valuing people (“My job today is 30 to 40 percent about people, mainly teaching them how to compete in the 21st century”); judgment as to what constitutes a sound idea (“Being able to see through the chatter into those one or two things that make a difference”); and the importance of taking personal risk (“If you can’t face the world with a Harvard MBA and ‘go for it,’ there’s something wrong”).

Immelt’s appearance was preceded by a farewell address by student speaker Brian Kreiter (MBA ’05) and by the presentation of the class’s awards for teaching excellence to Assistant Professor Francisco de Asís Martínez-Jerez (Accounting and Control), Associate Professor Joshua Margolis (Organizational Behavior), Associate Professor Youngme Moon (Marketing), and Associate Professor Jan Rivkin (Strategy).