What name is given to Jack Welch's 20-70-10 employee ranking model at General Electric?

Jack Welch’s 20-70-10 employee-ranking model at General Electric was called the vitality curve.

The model divided employees into three broad groups: the top 20 percent, a “vital 70” percent who performed adequately, and the bottom 10 percent, whom Welch regarded as underperformers. Welch promoted rewarding the strongest employees and removing those in the lowest group.

Welch discussed the approach in his 2001 autobiography, Jack: Straight from the Gut, describing how GE businesses ranked senior executives as “A,” “B,” or “C” players. The labels reflected performance and leadership potential rather than job title. The model became closely associated with Welch’s tenure as GE chairman and CEO.

A common mix-up is “bell curve,” because the vitality curve is often represented as a distribution. However, “bell curve” is a general statistical shape, not the canonical name of Welch’s management practice. The nine-box grid is another employee-assessment tool, while a balanced scorecard measures organizational performance across several dimensions.