Shawn Tully, writing from New York for Fortune’s CEO Daily, described Larry Culp’s overhaul of GE as one of the most dramatic corporate rescues in modern business history.

“I was sure GE was going to file for Chapter 11,” Nelson Peltz told Tully recently. “Then Larry arrived and performed the most amazing rescue I’ve ever read about or borne witness to.”

Peltz was referring to Culp, who became GE’s CEO in 2018 at a time when the company’s market capitalization had fallen to $96 billion, more than 80% below its September 2000 peak. Today, the three companies created under Culp’s restructuring—GE Aerospace, which he leads, GE Healthcare, and GE Vernova—have a combined valuation of $689 billion.

Taken together, those businesses would rank among the largest industrial companies in the United States by market value, behind only Tesla, valued at $1.5 trillion. They would rank 16th overall, ahead of companies including Visa, J&J, and ExxonMobil. Since Culp’s arrival, the three companies have produced annualized returns of roughly 30%, about twice the record for the S&P 500.

The scale of that change is central to Tully’s account: GE’s recovery was not presented as a single financial maneuver, but as a multiyear restructuring that separated the company into more focused public businesses while putting operating discipline at the center of management.

To understand how Culp led the turnaround, Tully said the executive did not invite him to GE Aerospace’s executive offices near Cincinnati. Instead, Culp chose to “go gemba,” using the Japanese term for the place where real work happens: the factory floor.

Culp took Tully through GE’s historic plant in Lynn, Massachusetts, which manufactures engines for military aircraft including the F-16 fighter jet and Apache helicopters. Wearing a GE polo shirt and steel-toed shoes, Culp pointed to the rooms where work crews meet each morning to move operating metrics from “red” to “green” by identifying ways to get critical parts to the stations that need them.

Culp said that flow charts and presentation decks produced at headquarters can hide what is actually happening inside an operation. In his view, the best way to understand whether a business is functioning well or poorly is to observe the work directly on the factory floor.

That emphasis reflects lean-management practices associated with terms such as “gemba” and “kaizen,” which focus on seeing work firsthand and making continuous improvements to process, quality, and flow. In Tully’s telling, those methods were not treated as jargon, but as the operating language Culp used to connect strategy with day-to-day execution.

Tully wrote that what stood out most about Culp was his combination of polish, versatility, and connection with workers. He described Culp as a leader capable of making a case on tariffs to President Trump or testifying before the Senate, while also maintaining strong rapport with front-line employees.

According to people familiar with his approach, when Culp conducts a “kaizen” session at a plant, he spends time explaining to union representatives how productivity gains are being achieved and what those improvements could mean for workers. His argument, they said, is that higher sales can eventually support more jobs.

A former Danaher manager, now a CEO, recalled being struck by his first encounter with Culp when Culp was running Danaher. During a week-long kaizen session at a plant in Saginaw, Michigan, the former manager said Culp drew lines on the floor with a sensei from Japan and helped move machines from one station to another alongside engineers and welders.

“Every day he’d talk to the Teamster leaders, building a relationship with them. He wanted their buy-in,” the former manager said.

The experience showed the manager the importance of a leader being willing to work directly with employees and requiring the same hands-on commitment from lieutenants.

The original Fortune story was featured on Fortune.com. CEO Daily can be contacted via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com.