Business Week has on online extra titled General Electric, the Immelt Way. Here's the opening.

"It has been a tumultuous five years for Jeffrey Immelt, who took over the top job at General Electric (GE) shortly before September 11, 2001. Amid war, post-Enron regulation, and investor boredom with blue-chip stocks, he has bought or sold businesses worth $100 billion. He has pushed for innovation and green technologies. Has it worked? Immelt thinks so, but investors have their doubts. GE stock (adjusted for splits and dividends) is worth less than it was the day he took over, and about a third below the highs of 2000."

This article is worth a read because Jeff Immelt has one of the toughest jobs in corporate America for two important reasons.

First, we're talking about one of the largest corporations in the world.  It's very, very, very hard to move the needle that measures the performance of anything that big.  Consider this. Increasing earnings by 10 percent at GE means adding $5 billion.  That's hefty growth, even if you're GE.

The other reason that Immelt's job is tough is that he's got a tough act to follow.  There are people who think that Immelt's predecessor, Jack Welch, was the single best CEO ever. Welch drove GE to twenty years of sustained growth.

In most companies, following an act like that would be almost suicidal, but there's good reason to believe that Immelt will succeed.  And the reasons have at least as much to do with GE's culture as they do with Immelt's abilities.

From its beginnings, over one hundred years ago, GE has been known for two things.  It has always been at the forefront of management thinking, and it has always been a place where quality people could rise to the top.

GE's very first CEO, Charles Coffin (CEO 1892-1912), developed organizational concepts that other corporations copied for years.  It took another GE CEO, Ralph Cordiner (CEO 1950-1963) to dismantle the organization. Under Cordiner, GE developed "blue books" that gave detailed guidance to GE managers for almost every occasion and situation.

Fred Borch (CEO 1963-1972) got rid of a computer company that Cordiner had bought and on Borch's watch GE developed the concept of strategic business units.  Reg Jones (CEO 1972-1981) developed a layer of sector executives and modified Borch's strategic planning processes.

When Jack Welch took over in 1981, he eliminated the strategic planning department that other companies were using as a model.  He also re-organized the company so aggressively that he cut 100,000 jobs and garnered the nickname, "Neutron Jack." At about five years into his tenure, a lot of people wondered if Jack Welch was going to be successful as GE's CEO.

Look at that brief history for a moment.  In the fifty years before Jeff Immelt became CEO, GE had four CEOs for an average tenure of twelve years each.  They call came from inside. They all did exactly what Immelt is doing now: ripping out some of the artifacts that were the legacy of their predecessor.

This is not something as simple or as silly as the Fortune cover story, Tearing up the Jack Welch playbook.  This is taking the best of Welch, figuring out what will work in the future and keeping it, while jettisoning anything that doesn't pass the test.

Yes, Jeff Immelt is taking GE green. He's pushing for more innovation and more contact with customers.  But he's not destroying the work that went before him.  Instead, he's growing out of it.

Wally Bock helps leaders at every level improve the performance and morale of the group they're responsible for. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless because it teaches through a story, the way human beings have always learned complex lessons best.

Performance Talk just got a rave review from Don Blohowiak. Read about it on his Leadership Now blog.