One of GE's long‐standing management tenets has been the belief that businesses must be, or become, number one or number two in their marketplaces. We managed by that tenet for years, and enjoyed the business success that came, over time, from implementing it. But, once again, insidious bureaucracy crept into the definition of number one or number two and began to lead management teams to define their markets more and more narrowly to assure that their business would fit the one‐or‐two share definition.