Larry Culp’s Grey Matter: Prioritizing Focus Over Synergy
Executive Perspectives
Recently Consello launched Grey Matter with Declan Kelly, a one-of-its-kind podcast interview series that takes you deep inside the minds of the most exceptional leaders, thinkers and operators in modern business.
Our first guest is one of the most respected but private CEOs in the world: Larry Culp, CEO and Chairman of GE Aerospace, who rescued GE from $140 billion in debt to become one of the world’s most valuable aerospace companies.
What emerged from our conversation was a window into how obsessive attention to the right details—applied with uncommon consistency—made it possible to achieve what many thought was impossible.
The Granularity of Responsibility
Larry Culp still has the payroll register from his grandfather’s welding shop. When you read those names, he admitted, you understand these were individuals with families whose weekly paycheck was critical to their wellbeing.
When he became CEO of GE in October 2018, responsible for hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, he saw a payroll register that had just gotten bigger. That granular view of responsibility and attention to detail became the foundation for much of what followed.
You can’t fix or address something at a level of detail you’re unwilling to see.
The Compounding Power of Marginal Gains
Larry has a basketball coach to thank for understanding how details accumulate into transformation. The coach told young Larry something that he admitted terrified him: “You either get better, or you get worse. But you don’t stay the same.”
If you practice the right details every day the compounding effect over weeks and months becomes dramatic. But it only works if the practice is detailed enough to matter.
Years later, when Larry was introduced to the Toyota Production System and kaizen, he recognized the same principle. Continuous improvement is about identifying the specific quarter-turn on a specific screw that will improve a specific process by a specific percentage.
Then doing it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.
Slowing Down to See Clearly
When Larry Culp took over as CEO in October 2018, GE was $140 billion in debt, with critics predicting collapse. In that environment, everything felt like a crisis. The instinct was to move fast, to react to everything at once and attempt to fix all problems simultaneously.
Instead, Larry’s response was to slow the game down.
Slowing down was about achieving the resolution necessary to see what actually mattered. When everything is moving at crisis speed, all details blur together. You’re swinging at a 96-mile-per-hour fastball while everyone’s screaming at you from the stands.
For GE, this translated into getting the sequence right, even if it takes longer. First, regain operational control so you understand your financial trajectory. Second, stabilize the balance sheet through detailed operational improvement. Third, begin systematic improvement across the portfolio. Not approximately, but in detail.
Everything else could wait.
Three Inches Below the Surface
Many leaders operate at an exceptionally high altitude. Larry operates three inches below the surface, where you can see what’s really happening.
Walking a factory floor, he’s conducting a diagnostic investigation at a level of detail most never reach. He’s looking at process flow, quality metrics, operator positioning, specific things that reveal whether you’re actually creating value or just creating the appearance of activity.
Larry traces this back to his early days at Danaher, when the company was small enough that there was no room for what he calls “PowerPoint and other forms of superficial management.” You couldn’t present well and hope the details sorted themselves out. You had to understand the details yourself, specifically enough that you could see when something was genuinely improving versus when someone was just telling you it was improving.
When GE was in its darkest days, Larry’s conviction that the company could survive didn’t rely on reports assuring him the brand was strong. It came from detailed conversations with customers who said specifically: “We need GE. This product matters. If you fix this specific issue, we’ll buy more.”
The Wisdom of Accumulated Specifics
Near the end of our conversation, Consello Founder, Chairman, and CEO Declan Kelly asked Larry what advice he’d give the next generation of leaders. His answer was characteristically precise: “You just need reps.”
If you’re making decisions at high altitude, based on presentations and recommendations, you learn slowly because the feedback is abstract. If you’re making decisions at operational detail, where you can see specific cause and effect, you learn exponentially faster. Get that ratio right early in your career, accumulate enough detailed decisions, and by the time you’re leading a company you’ve developed instincts that look like genius but are actually just accumulated pattern recognition.
What This Reveals About Leadership Now
The bar for exceptional leadership continues to rise. Digital speed, geopolitical factors, market pressures, information moving faster than understanding. In that environment, the gap between leaders who operate at altitude and leaders who operate at operational detail is becoming decisive. We see it every day at Consello.
Superficial management worked when change was slow enough that you could course-correct before abstract strategies collided with concrete reality. That grace period is gone. The distance between strategic plans and operational truth gets exposed almost instantly now. Leaders who can’t see detail get found out faster than ever before.
Could he have imagined as a kid in that welding shop that this approach would one day save one of the world’s most iconic companies? Never, he said. But what can be determined from observing him is the future belongs to leaders who understand that you either get better or you get worse, that there is no standing still, and that getting better only happens at a level of detail most leaders are unwilling to sustain.
The story continues. They’re not done yet. There are still screws that need tightening.
The views and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent those of The Consello Group. Consello is not responsible for and has not verified for accuracy any of the information contained herein. Any discussion of general market activity, industry or sector trends, or other broad-based economic, market, political or regulatory conditions should not be construed as research or advice and should not be relied upon. In addition, nothing in these materials constitutes a guarantee, projection or prediction of future events or results.
