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. I’ve kept my stock, I cheer for Larry, so I really have nothing other than wanting to support. Time’s been my friend. Look at it now. Let everybody that’s out there do their own analysis. I don’t need to do it for them. Sometimes, things just take time to unfold … If there’s a couple hundred CEOs and thousands of people who say, ‘I’m glad I worked with Jeff, he taught me, he helped me, he was there when I needed him’—that would make me really happy.”
