After 12 years alongside America’s uber-boss, Badowski stands at the head of an elite group: assistants to powerful CEOs. They’re a unique subset of the nation’s 3.2 million secretaries, who continue to thrive despite bosses’ embrace of e-mail, voice mail and Palm VIIs. Gatekeeping is only part of their job–they’re also time managers, diplomats and priority-setters. Their work is so important that Gerard Roche, a top executive recruiter at Heidrick & Struggles, often factors in an assistant’s competence when sizing up CEO candidates. “They’re the most important asset an executive can have –a good one can double or triple his efficiency,” Roche says. And as business leaders like Welch have become as celebrated as rock stars, aides like Badowski have a front-row seat.
Controlling the corner office isn’t what Badowski, 43 and single, dreamed of while growing up a few miles from GE headquarters. She joined GE as a secretary at 19, then earned a bachelor’s degree in business by attending night school. In 1988, after 12 years working for various executives, she got her big break: an offer to move into a junior management job. Before she could accept, Welch called. His assistant had just quit, and her boss had recommended her. A little reluctantly, Badowski met with him, and they clicked. Both came from working-class families. They liked each other’s jokes. Despite qualms about remaining “just a secretary,” she signed on. Welch is glad she did. “Rosanne isn’t just my right arm, she’s my right arm and my left arm,” he says. Her skills don’t come cheap. Executive recruiters estimate that many experienced aides to CEOs earn more than $100,000, including bonuses and stock options, a figure Badowski doesn’t dispute.
She works just outside the remote-controlled sliding door to Welch’s spacious office. From her desk she manages tasks that range from mundane to complex. She maintains Welch’s 2,924-name computerized Rolodex and keeps his daily schedule, coding “D” for dinners, “R” for receptions and “G” for golf. (Note to shareholders: the datebook is full of Gs.)
She’s at her post before Welch’s day begins at 7:30, when he spends an appointmentless hour reading and making phone calls. Then comes a lineup of morning meetings. One recent day this month, they included a half hour reviewing new advertisements, 90 minutes with GE’s mergers-and-acquisitions team, then a long session polishing a presentation for analysts. After a desk lunch (preferred menu: turkey sandwich, grapes and Diet Orange Slice) come more meetings. Badowski knows Welch’s moods, and can sense when he’ll cut a meeting shorter than it was scheduled; she’ll use the extra time to squeeze in unscheduled phone calls or visitors. Says Welch: “This has been going on for 12 years –we sort of know what the other thinks.”
Other tasks require higher-level skills –and give her remarkable access to Welch’s decision making. When Welch travels, Badowski silently listens in on many of his phone conversations. As they’ve embraced e-mail (after Welch practiced with a learn-to-type CD-ROM last summer), Badowski has become his online gatekeeper, reading incoming e-mail (even from Bill Gates and Scott McNealy), deleting extraneous messages and prioritizing urgent ones. She attacks any paper destined for Welch –say, an analyst’s report –with highlighters, summarizing what’s crucial, excising what’s irrelevant and using Post-Its to suggest follow-up (“Should I schedule a meeting re this next week?”). “Whatever I hand him is very filtered, very focused,” Badowski says. “That’s what my job is: spending two hours on something so that it only takes him 30 seconds.”
Badowski stays until Welch’s day ends, typically between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. She puts in extra hours on weekends, doing paperwork and reading e-mail. The job demands sacrifices. She’s virtually hobbyless; she’s tried signing up for tennis lessons and local clubs, but usually has to cancel. She rarely takes vacations. She just called off a planned trip to China because she worries it would interfere with prepping for a business trip.
So how good a boss is America’s best manager? Even Welch makes occasional blunders. In 1993 he hired a third staffer to ease the burden on Badowski and his second assistant, Sue Baye (who handles correspondence). The new setup flopped. Says Badowski: “We’d spend all of our time debriefing each other, giving reports to the next shift.” Welch’s other brainstorms have worked better. Two years ago he began including Badowski on many of his business trips. She takes notes on meetings and monitors his e-mail; earlier this year he dictated the annual shareholder letter to her on a plane. “It makes travel time much more effective,” Welch says. “You don’t come back to mountains of work, you’re on top of things all the time… I wish I did it 15 years ago.”
GE’s chairman doesn’t always bring good things to Badowski’s life. She receives no gift on Secretary’s Day because both she and Welch dismiss it as a Hallmark holiday. Badowski shrugs off questions about Welch’s legendary impatience. But she does have a wish list. Welch’s days are so packed, she has trouble getting his attention to discuss scheduling. “I’d settle for two minutes a week,” she says. Like most employees, she’d like more feedback; though Welch pens long annual evaluations of GE’s key managers, Badowski hasn’t had a written review in nine years. “There should be one for the files, a written appraisal that I’ve done a good job,” she says. Welch replies that Badowski gets so much daily feedback that a written evaluation is unnecessary.
But any oversights pale beside the fondness that grows from years in close quarters. “He’s like a spouse that doesn’t say ‘I love you’ anymore,” Badowski says. “At the end of the day, you know you still love the person.” When she shopped for a house last year, Welch insisted on viewing properties before she made an offer, traipsing through homes with her, critiquing windows and driveways. He doesn’t give her explicit financial advice, but since she phones in most of his stock trades to his broker, she sometimes buys the same stocks for her account. (Welch is no Peter Lynch, though, and Badowski’s portfolio is a mixed bag.) Despite milewide differences in pay and status, their relationship has elements of an ordinary friendship. At 10:30 on a Sunday night in January, Badowski’s home phone rang. “Ro, did you see that play!” Welch yells. He was calling to commiserate over the Super Bowl.
Those phone calls may cease when Welch vacates his office next spring. Badowski would happily work for him in retirement if he asks, but he hasn’t yet. “This will be his big opportunity to dump me,” she jokes. She’d also be willing to serve GE’s new chief, since she knows all of the rumored candidates. Welch says only: “It will all work out… she’ll have a lot of options.” If she doesn’t, Melba Duncan, a Manhattan recruiter who specializes in hiring CEO assistants, says that after a decade alongside a superstar like Welch, Badowski might fetch up to $200,000 a year (including bonuses) at another company. When informed of that number, Badowski pauses. “What was her name again?” As the minutes tick off on Welch’s career, his assistant may be just hitting her stride.
