Jack: Straight from the Gut [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Review Summary: This autobiography of Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001, primarily focuses on the key initiatives (such as focusing on businesses with #1 or #2 market shares, selecting the best executive prospects, creating a learning organization, expanding GE Capital, Six Sigma, e-business development, and the attempted acquisition of Honeywell) during his tenure as CEO.

The key principles behind his successful management style are spread throughout the book and summarized in part of chapter 24, "What This CEO Thing Is All About."

In most chapters, he briefly highlights the history and thinking that led to the initiative, shares a few examples of what went right and wrong, explains what his thoughts were while the initiative was occurring, and provides a scorecard for GE's performance.

What will be new to most people are a deeper exposure to his communications style, a balancing of what the popular press has said about events during his tenure, and a stronger flavor of his focus on improving the quality of GE's management teams.

The roots of his successful approaches will be easily found in the example of his mother, and his early experiences at GE.

Those who are looking for a management book will be disappointed in the volume.

Readers who want a lot more detail on the specific successes will often be disappointed as well. The book is very candid, but typically operates at a pretty superficial level.

Review: The bulk of this book is framed by the experience of being welcomed with "Congratulations, Mr. Chairman!" and given a hug by his predecessor, Reg Jones, and doing the same for his successor, Jeff Immelt. Jack Welch feels that in between those events he helped create "the greatest people factory in the world, a learning enterprise with a boundaryless culture." In looking back on his role, he sees it as being 75 percent about people, and 25 percent about everything else. He notes in his opening remarks to "please remember that every time you see the word I in these pages, it refers to all those colleagues and friends [as well] . . . ." The author's profits from this book are being donated to charity.

As someone who made his share of mistakes along the way (including blowing up a small chemical factory with an experiment early in his tenure at GE), Dr. Welch is aware of the need to recognize those who take big swings and miss the ball. Having grown up in the small plastics business in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he also strove to create "a small company spirit in a big-company body." His characterizations of himself are brutally frank prior to becoming CEO, and less so thereafter. One story that most will remember is how his mother upbraided him in the locker room for throwing his stick after the team lost its seventh straight hockey game in overtime. "You punk, if you don't know how to lose, you'll never know how to win." As a young man at GE he says, "I was brutally honest and outspoken. I was impatient and, to many, abrasive . . . [which included being] earthy, loud, and excitable." Throughout the experience at GE, he feels that "I never changed who I was."

He offers a lot of arguments for his views that are not always balanced by the views of others. He is defensive about his reputation for cutting jobs, but argues that he was doing what was needed. His self assessment is that "I took too long to act."

On contamination of the Hudson by PCBs, he is proud of GE's record and feels victimized by government. He asserts that all evidence to the contrary is just plain wrong.

What is my view of the most positive legacy of Jack Welch, after reading this book? He made important contributions in at least these areas:

(1) Creating a helpful model for how to locate, encourage, and develop managers with the right values and the ability to deliver good business results.

(2) Showing how to develop a financial services business from a manufacturing company base, something that has rarely been done successfully.

(3) Establishing a helpful example for how to change the management style of a major company away from centralized bureaucracies.

That's quite a lot compared with his contemporaries. Congratulations, Dr. Welch!

As a book about how to manage, few will find this more than a two or three star effort . . . but that was not the book's purpose. As an autobiography, few insights are present past chapter six, and all of the anecdotes about the initiatives while he was CEO simply retell the same story of a bright, results-oriented man who was constantly looking for a better way. In terms of being an autobiography, more than half the book could have been edited out. As a result of too much rambling at a superficial level, this is a three star autobiography. Clearly, Dr. Welch himself is a five-star effort. I combined these perspectives to assign the book a three star rating. Those who look at the book carefully in the absence of considering his track record may feel that I am too generous. A lot of his Deep Dives into the organization will impress many readers as little more than meddling micromanagement by someone with a very large ego.

After you read this book, I encourage you to think about what you would want to be able to say about yourself in an autobiography when you retire. What will your positive legacy be? How will people who don't know you perceive what you have to say about what you did and thought?

Work on improving yourself as the first step towards organizational progress!

REVIEW: If one word could sum up Jack Welch's career at GE it might be "results". And this is why many people will want to, and should, read this book. It is basically an autobiography of Jack Welch's GE years and does not dwell on deap management theory. However, those expecting to find a "silver bullet" of management or a quick three step program to executive success will be disappointed. Jack probably destroys his own myth-like reputation by revealing that his success was built on fairly basic good management practices. Jack has just embraced them and used focussed passion coupled with an obsession on people to produce great results. Most of the techniques Jack discusses will be known to most MBA graduates. Even the major initiatives that Jack used were derived from others: 1) "No. 1 or 2" Jack admits is derived from Peter Drucker, 2)Six sigma is derived in part from Motorola, 3) "Boundaryless behaviour" can said to be based on Peter Drucker's observation that there are no profit centers inside an organization, and 4) Jack was clearly not an early pioneer on "E-business". Yet he recognized the opportunities and produced results from them. The book probably won't become a classic, but it is still highly recommended reading for today's and tomorrow's managers of all kinds.

STRENGTHS: The book is a fairly easy and interesting read full of anecdotes and insites. It does a great job of showing the management task as art and discipline that can be learned, improved, and mastered rather than as personal charisma or other common stereotypes of leadership. Integrity and idea-sharing is as important as Golf at Augusta for one's personal relaxation as well as relationship-building.

WEAKNESSES: The minor weaknesses of the book relate to Jack's strong, competitive personality (and maybe ego) that show through in his writing. Despite that author's initial disclaimer to read "I" as meaning "we" I found Jack's lack of distinction between himself and GE to be minorly annoying. Parts of the book are filled with phrases like "I bought this $100 million company" when clearly "We" is appropriate [I know, I'm nit-picking]. Second (and this is almost excusable in an autobiography) Jack rarely gave the "other side" of the story when discussing major GE crises. For example, he just expects us to take his word that GE managers were meeting with DeBeers (basically a diamond monopoly company) for harmless reasons. Also, he never gives the EU's reasons for blocking the Honeywell merger, we're just supposed to accept his word that they were wrong.

Just read the autobiography and enjoy!

Review Summary: This autobiography of Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001, primarily focuses on the key initiatives (such as focusing on businesses with #1 or #2 market shares, selecting the best executive prospects, creating a learning organization, expanding GE Capital, Six Sigma, e-business development, and the attempted acquisition of Honeywell) during his tenure as CEO.

The key principles behind his successful management style are spread throughout the book and summarized in part of chapter 24, "What This CEO Thing Is All About."

In most chapters, he briefly highlights the history and thinking that led to the initiative, shares a few examples of what went right and wrong, explains what his thoughts were while the initiative was occurring, and provides a scorecard for GE's performance.

What will be new to most people are a deeper exposure to his communications style, a balancing of what the popular press has said about events during his tenure, and a stronger flavor of his focus on improving the quality of GE's management teams.

The roots of his successful approaches will be easily found in the example of his mother, and his early experiences at GE.

Those who are looking for a management book will be disappointed in the volume.

Readers who want a lot more detail on the specific successes will often be disappointed as well. The book is very candid, but typically operates at a pretty superficial level.

Review: The bulk of this book is framed by the experience of being welcomed with "Congratulations, Mr. Chairman!" and given a hug by his predecessor, Reg Jones, and doing the same for his successor, Jeff Immelt. Jack Welch feels that in between those events he helped create "the greatest people factory in the world, a learning enterprise with a boundaryless culture." In looking back on his role, he sees it as being 75 percent about people, and 25 percent about everything else. He notes in his opening remarks to "please remember that every time you see the word I in these pages, it refers to all those colleagues and friends [as well] . . . ." The author's profits from this book are being donated to charity.

As someone who made his share of mistakes along the way (including blowing up a small chemical factory with an experiment early in his tenure at GE), Dr. Welch is aware of the need to recognize those who take big swings and miss the ball. Having grown up in the small plastics business in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he also strove to create "a small company spirit in a big-company body." His characterizations of himself are brutally frank prior to becoming CEO, and less so thereafter. One story that most will remember is how his mother upbraided him in the locker room for throwing his stick after the team lost its seventh straight hockey game in overtime. "You punk, if you don't know how to lose, you'll never know how to win." As a young man at GE he says, "I was brutally honest and outspoken. I was impatient and, to many, abrasive . . . [which included being] earthy, loud, and excitable." Throughout the experience at GE, he feels that "I never changed who I was."

He offers a lot of arguments for his views that are not always balanced by the views of others. He is defensive about his reputation for cutting jobs, but argues that he was doing what was needed. His self assessment is that "I took too long to act."

On contamination of the Hudson by PCBs, he is proud of GE's record and feels victimized by government. He asserts that all evidence to the contrary is just plain wrong.

What is my view of the most positive legacy of Jack Welch, after reading this book? He made important contributions in at least these areas:

(1) Creating a helpful model for how to locate, encourage, and develop managers with the right values and the ability to deliver good business results.

(2) Showing how to develop a financial services business from a manufacturing company base, something that has rarely been done successfully.

(3) Establishing a helpful example for how to change the management style of a major company away from centralized bureaucracies.

That's quite a lot compared with his contemporaries. Congratulations, Dr. Welch!

As a book about how to manage, few will find this more than a two or three star effort . . . but that was not the book's purpose. As an autobiography, few insights are present past chapter six, and all of the anecdotes about the initiatives while he was CEO simply retell the same story of a bright, results-oriented man who was constantly looking for a better way. In terms of being an autobiography, more than half the book could have been edited out. As a result of too much rambling at a superficial level, this is a three star autobiography. Clearly, Dr. Welch himself is a five-star effort. I combined these perspectives to assign the book a three star rating. Those who look at the book carefully in the absence of considering his track record may feel that I am too generous. A lot of his Deep Dives into the organization will impress many readers as little more than meddling micromanagement by someone with a very large ego.

After you read this book, I encourage you to think about what you would want to be able to say about yourself in an autobiography when you retire. What will your positive legacy be? How will people who don't know you perceive what you have to say about what you did and thought?

Work on improving yourself as the first step towards organizational progress!