Final Thoughts

“Today, aspiring business leaders idolize the Steve Jobs and the Elon Musks of the world,” writes John Byrne, a Forbes.com contributor. “But before there was Steve or Bill, or Elon or Mark, there was Jack, the son of a railroad contractor.”

That Jack being Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of GE who died yesterday. Few people knew him better than Byrne, certainly no one among the crowd that topped their obits of Welch with well-worn epithets like “Neutron Jack.” Byrne was Welch’s biographer, completing the 2003 Jack: Straight from the Gut after more than 1,000 hours with Welch “at all times of the day and night, over pizza and beer, bowls of microwave popcorn, frozen yogurt and enough Bordeaux to stock a modest wine cellar.”

“What struck me most about Jack was his extraordinary ability to show both unrelenting toughness and sincere affection for the people in his orbit—often at the same moment,” writes Byrne, who recalls his time with Welch as “the most grueling and most exhilarating experience of my professional life.”