Overview

I learned in sports that, while everyone wants to win and hates to lose, if you do lose, you cannot dwell on the last loss if you want to win the next battle. As I returned to Evendale, GE had just suffered a big loss. The air force and the navy had asked GE and Pratt & Whitney to compete on engines to power their new F-15 Eagle and F-14 Tomcat. The contract would be a winner-take-all proposition. Pratt & Whitney won with their TF30 on the F-14 and their F100 on the F-15. Bob Hawkins was the chief engineer, and Jim Worsham was the project manager for our entry. Jim took the loss very hard, and he was riding everyone in the engineering community.

When I was appointed to head Advanced Engineering, I think it was partly to cool him down, and he took it as a great affront. He did not know who I was, nor did he care to, but he made it quite clear that he did not appreciate my presence. The first week that I was there was really tough. Jim was the kind of guy who would walk through walls to get the job done. In one instance, he burst in on Bob Hawkins working in his office and demanded that he come out and look at all of the vacant desks.

"No wonder we can't make it here," Worsham accosted him, pointing at the unpopulated office. "It's empty!"

"Jim," Hawkins tried to...