Geneen

"When Geneen began picking up the pieces at ITT in 1959, he used a lifelong study of General Motors as his model. GM’s organizer, Alfred Sloan, was his personal hero; and the job of remaking ITT became a casting job in the General Motors’ mold. Finance was made a direct reporting function throughout ITT, engineering respon- sibility was centralized, and a large technical staff began to grow into dominance. ITT managers made in-depth studies of the policies under which General Motors op- erated. “If it’s good enough for General Motors, it’s good enough for ITT,” was the new anthem; and the Geneen- directed juggernaut began to roll on that high-octane formula."

"managed by their presidents. The organization consisted of a loose confederation of fifty-three companies and divi- sions, most of them involved in telecommunications and electronics businesses. Each company guarded its technical secrets and markets against incursion by the others as jealously as they did by competitors. The ITT system was plagued by financial mismanagement, excessively high production costs and duplication of effort. Geneen himself could not have written a better scenario in anticipation of his arrival on the scene."

"I urged Hal to purchase Hartford Fire Insurance. It was one of America’s oldest companies and, more significant, it had a strong, conservative, cash-heavy balance sheet. It would, I explained confidently, anchor the corporate strategy Geneen had been hoping to realize: its acquisition would make ITT an international conglomerate with a comfortable, financially sound balance between its U.S. assets and its foreign holdings."

"“Geneen’s law”: “Don’t wait until you get all the facts, because by then it will be too late.”"