Considering the leadership at Motorola and General Electric provided by stalwarts such as Bob Galvin and Jack Welch, respectively, I believe that two leaders with totally different styles can get similar results using the same tools. When I worked at Motorola in Bob Galvin’s time, there was a rule that any employee who had worked more than 10 years at the company couldn’t be laid off without Galvin’s permission. On the other hand, a default rule to lay off 10 percent of its personnel every year was a common practice at GE. Both rules worked.Betsy Morris’s recent feature article "Sorry, Jack: The new business rules” in Fortunemagazine articulates that rules proven in the past may not work well today. I also believe that the past doesn’t guarantee the future. I have the highest regard for Jack Welch because of his accomplishments at GE, but I don’t agree with the "10 percent out every year" rule. W. Edwards Deming taught us that one shouldn’t grade employees, because their performance is affected by the systems of the organization. Statistically, employee performance exhibits a normal distribution. The challenge is to improve the average performance of employees in an organization, rather than terminate the bottom 10 percent.

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