Afew days ago Jeff Immelt sent out a message to all 300,000 General Electric employees offering some tips for their summer reading. “I read between 50 and 70 books a year . . . split between history, novels and business,” the GE chief wrote. He went on to discuss a couple of titles before ending with a request: “Let me know what you are reading so that I can get smarter.”
The only explanation for this odd outpouring from the most important man in mainstream US corporate life is that he is trying to signal to his workforce that he’s not boring.
Alas, the text of the message rather proves the reverse. If there is one thing that unites interesting people it is that they don’t keep a tally of the number of books they’ve read in order to brag about it.