Superstar bosses fall from fashion

Jack Welch (left) has leadership lessons for us all

by the BBC News Online's James Arnold

On Friday night, a rather exclusive party is being thrown in the little town of Grotonville, New York state.

The bash is in honour of Jack Welch, who is stepping down after 20 years at the helm of General Electric (GE), the world's largest and arguably most admired company.

Mr Welch, who has never worked at any firm other than GE, is as much of a titan as his firm - the darling of thousands of press profiles and management handbooks.

But the man nicknamed "Neutron Jack" may also be among the last of his breed.

As the corporate and stock market boom of the last decade grinds to a lurching halt, chief executives are dropping like flies.

And the new generation of business leaders look likely to be a more modest, workmanlike bunch.

Jack and the journalists

Skim through the business press - especially the American business press - and it's hard to avoid Jack Welch.

Neutron Jack will be missed

Neutron Jack's retirement has been marked by a fresh outpouring of media praise.

"Farewell To Arms For GE's General," lamented the Washington Post; "Jack Welch... is the manager other managers most admire," gushed The Times of London.

And with good reason: Although GE was a mighty success story before Mr Welch took the controls, he is credited with pushing through the toughest and most effective business thinking.

In the process, he kept a potentially sluggish leviathan of a company at the vanguard of the corporate fashion.

Over the last decade, GE's shares have risen tenfold.

Tough at the top

But these are tough times for corporate bosses.

The global stock market slump, sparked in the spring of 2000 with a collapse in confidence on high-tech shares, has unleashed an unprecedented wave of corporate blood-letting.

According to recruitment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, sackings of US chief executives rose by 40% in the second half of last year.

"Job insecurity among CEOs now is higher than it was in the recession of the early 1990s," says Anthony Harling, a partner at executive head-hunters Heidrick & Struggles.

Many of these casualties were among defunct, or near-defunct, dot.coms.

But a significant number were at some of the best-respected corporate names - notably banks, and a swathe of old-economy giants that made fashionable but ill-timed lunges into telecoms or e-commerce.

Blood on the carpet

In recent months, the roster of high-profile sackings and resignations includes firms as diverse as finance giants CSFB and Schroders, once-promising tech firms Baltimore Technologies and Webvan, airline Aer Lingus and publishing house Emap.

Marconi's Lord Simpson was the most recent casualty

Most recently and notoriously, ailing telecoms equipment firm Marconi ousted its chairman and chief executive, after a disastrous collapse in its share price.

Even Jack Welch hasn't had everything his way.

Right at the end of his tenure, he was knocked sideways by the European Union's decision to block GE's merger with US avionics firm Honeywell.

Honeywell's chief resigned, and Mr Welch resisted calls to postpone his retirement.

Glad to be grey

Amid the corporate carnage, investors have shifted their allegiance away from flashy firms towards those seen as solid and reliable.

At the same time, the fashion among corporate bosses has shifted more towards the grey area of the spectrum.

Wacky bosses are out of fashion

During the boom of the 1980s and 1990s, bosses became personalities.

Fanned by the breathless plaudits of the business press, a string of flamboyant chiefs pushed their profiles higher than those of their companies - Virgin's Richard Branson being the best-known example.

Now, Mr Branson's reputation has taken a knock.

And many of the best-regarded firms are now run by quiet - even at times anonymous - leaders.

When everything was flowing along nicely, people did not look too closely," says Mr Harling.

"But in with the next generation of CEOs, there is far more concern over having a track record of operational effectiveness."

Safe pairs of hands

In the UK, the four firms generally most admired by investors - Tesco, Vodafone, BP Amoco and Shell - are conspicuous for their lack of management showbiz.

Although Vodafone is a determinedly new-economy company, its chief executive, Chris Gent, is a low-key, sober figure.

The young folk needed a helping hand

Perhaps not coincidentally, its shares have suffered less than those of some of its competitors in the tech-market downturn.

The same phenomenon has been mirrored in the surviving dot.coms, many of which have brought in grey-haired executives in place of the formerly lionised twenty-something entrepreneurs.

British internet retailer Lastminute.com installed an experienced supermarket boss as chairman last year - and has so far survived the market rout.

Internationally, straight-laced managers are playing a key role.

HP and Compaq: A sober-suited marriage

Michael Capellas and Carly Fiorina, the bosses of newly merged computer giants Compaq and Hewlett-Packard, are light-years away from the free-wheeling Silicon valley image.

And at Finnish mobile manufacturer Nokia, Jorma Ollila, its almost unknown chief executive, preaches a management technique known as "noyryys" - a Finnish term implying teamwork, rather than individual attainment.

The cult of personality

So is the glamour boss a thing of the past?

Not entirely, perhaps.

He took no nonsense from his staff

For one thing, the fascination with leadership and its mysteries still seems to run deep.

A glance at the best-seller lists among business books on Amazon.com reveals a persistent fascination with strong - even terrifying - personalities.

Among the most popular titles include books purporting to explain the management genius of such diverse characters as Confederate general Robert E Lee, President Abraham Lincoln, the US Marines and - oddest of all - Attila the Hun.

In the UK, there are even calls for England football manager Sven Goran Eriksson to apply his talents to the boardroom.

Europe's turn

And while Neutron Jack is on the way out, a handful of other charismatic managers are appearing.

No shrinking violet

In Europe, management has traditionally tended to be more corporate, and less individual, than in the UK or US.

But some European firms are only now starting to groom personality bosses.

On the same day that Mr Welch was celebrating his retirement, German automotive giant Volkswagen began the process of retiring chief executive Ferdinand Piech.

Tough, obsessive and successful, Mr Piech was Europe's closest equivalent to Mr Welch.

But while Neutron Jack is being replaced by a softly-spoken successor, Mr Piech's replacement is Bernd Pischetsrieder.

Mr Pischetsrieder is no shrinking violet, and is tipped to take individual management to a new level.

Neutron Jack's legacy lives on.