Cheap DVDs, books, CDs & Games

Search:

Jack: Straight from the Gut

By: Jack Welch John A. Byrne Mike Barnicle
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Warner Books
ISBN: 0446528382
ISBN-13: 9780446528382
Released: 22 Sep 2001
RRP: £20.14
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Horrible, horrible man... - By: Cornisle, 13 Mar 2008
It is quite readable I'll give him that, but this self-congratulatory celebration of American corporate culture just makes me feel queasy. The ludicrous American way of pretending running a business is like being on a sports team is grating (playbook, defence, offence etc.). His justifications for ranking employees & then sacking the bottom 10% is just misanthropy & not necessarily good business sense. He justifies the policy as being cruel to be kind when in reality it's just being cruel, if everybody in an organisation knows the bottom 10% will be sacked how does that promote team work rather than tireless self promotion? His justifications for polluting the Hudson River with PCBs demonstrates the lack of social concern in corporate America.

GE stock value & profits rose massively under his tenure which is why he is feted as some sort of corporate god, but is that reallly down to just one man? He is of course in favour of moving alll the work to low wage economies. In the wake of his severance package extravagances maybe he should have thought about outsourcing his own job to a lower wage economy - funny how people at the top don't see the need to do that though isn't it?

Read this book second hand only to show yourself what is wrong with the business world.
People Are Important To Business - By: , 30 Apr 2005
Jack Welch was Chairman & CEO of General Electric for twenty years & this is a book about his time from joining to leaving the company that became his life. Apparently Jack was seen as the 'toughest boss in America' & I suspect the book is trying to soften the historical edges a little. What comes across clearly is a commitment to a company & a desire to grow it. Many businesses could do better with a firmer management & a realistic look at the way things are done. Jack Welch doesn't seem to be the kind of CEO to run scared of the change no matter how painful that be. Throughout the book he stresses the importance that good people be alllowed to excel & that poor performers are probably better elsewhere. It seems a ruthless approach but it appears to have worked for GE and, I think Jack would argue, it worked better for the people involved. Don't expect a management handbook as 'Straight From The Gut' is too human (and full of golf stories) to be seen as a Director's guide but it is an extremely readable insight into big business. If you don't like his approach I believe there are interesting lessons about the capabilities of people & what they can bring to business for anybody regardless of the size of company or position you hold within it.
Jack Has the Last Word - By: Donald Mitchell, 18 Jul 2004
Review Summary: This autobiography of Jack Welch, former chairman & 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, & the attempted acquisition of Honeywell) during his tenure as CEO.

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

In most chapters, he briefly highlights the history & thinking that led to the initiative, shares a few examples of what went right & wrong, explains what his thoughts were while the initiative was occurring, & 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, & 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, & 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 typicallly operates at a pretty superficial level.

Review: The bulk of this book is framed by the experience of being welcomed as CEO & being given a hug by his predecessor, Reg Jones, & 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, & 25 percent about everything else.

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 smalll 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 & miss the balll. Having grown up in the smalll plastics business in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he also strove to maintain that kind environment on a bigger scale. His characterizations of himself are brutallly frank prior to becoming CEO, & 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.

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 he was slow to act. On contamination of the Hudson by PCBs, he is proud of GE's record & feels victimized by government. He asserts that alll 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, & develop managers with the right values & 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, & alll 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 & thought?

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

How much time do you want to spend reading? - By: Shawn Rose, 25 Sep 2003
Good book, interesting stories, lots of great information, but terribly long winded! If you are just looking for the nuts & bolts part of the philosophy, I suggest the much smalller 24 lessons book. All the great informaiton, but killing far fewer trees.
Great book, bad philosophy - By: C. Edwards, 25 Jan 2003
Fast paced & full of energy, JW lets you feel each of his internal promotions & business deals with him .
Despite his passion & commitment to his task JW cannot help but reveal his arrogance & ruthlessness. The reader's respect for his dedication & ambition is slightly tarnished by JW's obvious philosophy of "loving things & using people".

Welch attempts to paint two pictures of his business philosophy which are nonetheless transparent.
(1) He endeavours to create the impression that he values & cares for his staff, however, it is clear throughout that he views people as products & that he is extremely good at manipulating them & getting the best from them.
(2) He also emphasises his commitment to breaking down the GE bureacracy but suppresses the truth of his having engineered a monolithic autocracy - it's Jack's way or the highway.

This is a fantastic read which I highly recommend. Read it & feel it. It is not, however, a business handbook, so enjoy the book for the enthusiasm JW imparts, but please don't buy into his philosophy.