For 15 years, Sayed-Amr (Sisso) El-Hamamsy toiled under the daunting shadow cast by fabled executive Jack Welch.

While many General Electric employees despised Welch for a ruthless, win-at-all-costs style, El-Hamamsy reflects on his time at GE with fondness and admiration for Welch’s uncanny ability to maximize profits (GE’s market cap is in excess of $400 billion).

And El-Hamamsy, who left GE in January to join Calgary-based Wi-LAN as chief operating officer, is determined to help instill some of Welch’s principles into the young wireless data communications company.

The long-time GE high-tech manager takes great pride in having attained “master black belt” status, a rank associated with the company’s Six Sigma quality-control movement practised religiously with Welch at the helm.

Sayed-Amr El Hamamsy

“Being a master black belt meant that I was a trainer of people and had responsibility for a lab of about 100 people,” says El-Hamamsy, who spent his entire GE career under Welch, who is now winding down a 20-year tenure as CEO this year.

“Every business unit had to be No. 1 or No. 2 in its market area. GE is a company driven by results, achieving targets, stretching targets, going higher and higher. Relentless is a word often used at GE and I think the results have shown. And a lot of that I bring with me to this job.

“For a 300,000-person company, Jack would basically turn us on a dime. Every year, he had a meeting with his managers and he’d say: ‘This year we’re going to do this.’ And the company does it. Boom!”

El-Hamamsy clenches a fist to punctuate “Neutron Jack’s” bare-knuckled leadership.

El-Hamamsy relates a humorous anecdote about Welch’s intimidating presences — or at least it is humorous now.

“I had a scary experience with Jack,” smiles El-Hamamsy, whose last post at GE was as e-engineering leader in charge of digitalizing the company for the Internet.

During a management course, El-Hamamsy and his superior were invited for drinks at a bar with Welch. “I was working in lighting electronics at the time and our goal was to bring the costs down. My boss said: ‘Jack, this is my lighting electronics guru.’

“Jack looks at me and says: ‘What’s the cost going to be?’ I was thinking: ‘He’s the big boss, what does he know?’ I said: ‘Oh, we’ll make it as low as possible.’ He just stared at me. My boss was elbowing me from behind and saying: ‘Give him a number.’ Finally, I gave the number. He said: ‘Good.’

“He was testing to see if I knew. I passed that one with flying colours. I think if I didn’t have the right answer, he’d have fired my boss. He would have said: ‘Your team is not on board with that number.’

“There was a lot of hatred (for Welch), then a lot of respect. He was very intimidating but in a positive way.”

El-Hamamsy says his decision to join Wi-LAN and Cairo University engineering classmate Hatim Zaghloul was easy because he knew that he would have to uproot his family from New York to further his career at GE anyway and felt he’d gained a diversity of experience to fit the new role.

“I felt Wi-LAN was at a point where it needed my capabilities more than ever before. Hatim and I had talked for several years about this.”

El-Hamamsy dubs Wi-LAN CEO and long-time friend Zaghloul a “mini-Jack Welch for a vision that characterizes Jack.”

While a hostile environment was anticipated for Wi-LAN’s recent annual general meeting, shell-shocked shareholders who have watched the stock crash from $94 to $4 were surprisingly restrained and cordial. El-Hamamsy attributes that to the widespread blood-letting of stock prices — even the likes of GE haven’t been spared — and Zaghloul’s charismatic style and infectious enthusiasm.

“I think Hatim addresses the questions (from shareholders) fairly. There’s no waffling. And I also think it really comes from inside, that he really believes what he’s saying. Which is very important because then it makes us believe what he’s saying and then we make it happen.”

Shareholders were also assuaged by a timely pre-meeting announcement that Wi-LAN had signed a three-year original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement to supply wireless bridges and antenna systems to Symbol Technologies. The first year of the deal will be worth $5 million.

In contrast to GE, El-Hamamsy likens Wi-LAN as a youthful prospect on the verge of maturation.

“It’s like a young kid and you want to raise him the right way. There are a lot of (GE’s) principles that we can use. For instance, there should be no compromise on delivery. If you commit to a date and a time and a performance, you meet your commitment. That’s something we have to incorporate if it’s not already there.

“We also have to understand what makes our customers happy and we’re working towards that.

“Maturity is a key for us now. To this point, there have been a lot of technical demos and so on, but now it’s got to be products and production.”