From GE’s hot seat to Substack: Jeff Immelt reflects on a new chapter and why now is the time to get candid
In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady interviews Jeff Immelt about a new project. The big leadership story: Delta looks beyond the main cabin. The markets: U.S. futures surge after Nvidia’s new PC ‘superchip’ sparks a software rally. Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune. Good morning. My first question for Jeff Immelt after reading his raw recollections of life after GE on his new Substack, the Long View, was, why now? It’s been nine years since Immelt suddenly stepped down as CEO—a time that he described in his post as “one of the saddest moments of my life.” He’s written a book about it, talked about it and moved on to a new chapter as a Stanford lecturer and venture partner at New Enterprise Associates. The conglomerate he led for 16 years no longer exists, split into three Fortune 500 public companies: GE HealthCare Technologies, GE Vernova and GE Aerospace. Having covered Immelt from the start of his tenure through the tough times and beyond, I was eager to know what moves him now and what he’s learned along the way. We spoke yesterday by phone—below are excerpts from our conversation. Why now? “One of the things I learned when I did the book was to think about life in longhand, not bullet points. I take better notes. I think about things more fully. Other than the GE team, the people I spend the most time talking to are CEO friends of mine and (their questions) are: How did you find your way? What are you going to do? It’s all about life stuff, so I thought about writing about that and just decided that a book was just too heavy a lift, given all the other things I want to do. So this is about wanting to think about the stuff I was doing in longhand, but also recognizing that the journey I had been on, millions of people were going on.” On what he wants people to see as his GE legacy. “I’m completely past it. That did not come easily, by the way. And the second thing I’d say is, look, I own a lot of stock. I̵