GE's Talent Machine: The Making of a CEO Founded in 1878 by Thomas Edison, General Electric is today a leading company in the generation, distribution and use of electrical energy in America and in the world. The company has been experimenting with successful business models since its creation and its human resources policy has been considered one of the most sophisticated for a century. It consists of a strong focus on human potential through executive development to the top of the company: this performance-based meritocracy has made GE a “CEO factory” for the company and for all of corporate America. In 2001, Jeff Immelt, the company's new leader, was faced with the problem of how to keep this talent machine running._____________________________________________________In the last half of the 20th century, four CEOs made GE's human resources management one of the most successful in the world. Faced with strong diversification (due to the Second World War), Ralph J. Cordiner (1950-1963) implemented a profound decentralization of corporate decisions, created the first corporate management university and intensified GE's dialogue with its managers (self-assessment , performance evaluation, career forecasts, succession plans…). His successor, Fred J. Borch (1963-1972), intensively diversified GE and accompanied the operation with the creation of the Executive Manpower Staff to centralize the company's high potential. Reginald H. Jones (1972-1981) first reduced the role of human resources in strategic planning, but ended up aggregating business groups by industry, thus again facilitating succession planning. John F. Welch, Jr. (1981-2001) restructured GE and based human resources policy on company performance through executive rankings and stock options. He heavy... half paper... the cruelty of GE's HR policy is obsolete. The human relations movement (circa 1929-1951) demonstrated the importance of job-oriented interpersonal skills for compatible people. relationships between employees, those in management positions and the customer, and the application of mechanical evaluation systems to a global human network can be, in a sense, right (because they bridge the gaps between divisions with different working methods ), but they are not attractive anymore. GE could become one of the best places to work in the world again if it showed incentives for creativity and personal development (outside the company). It is no longer rewarding for a high-potential executive to work in GE, an obsolete and highly polluting company that focuses exclusively on performance: it is the company itself that must rethink its image and its commitment to the happiness of its employees.