No other person in America could write a book on management and garner the praise that Jack Welch gets. Endorsements for his new book, written with his new wife, Suzy Welch, begin with a blurb on the book's cover by Warren E. Buffett: “No other management book will ever be needed” --- and that's coming from a legendary executive and investor who's not known for hyperbole.
On the back cover, the praise continues from Tom Brokaw, Bill Gates and Rudy Giuliani. Gates sums up the value of the book best: “A candid and comprehensive look at how to succeed in business --- for everyone from college graduates to CEOs.”
I agree with Gates and will use "Winning" as one of several required texts in my Media Management and Leadership graduate course this coming fall. I've been teaching graduate management courses for 17 years at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and at the New School University, and Welch's book is one of, if not the, best book on management I've read. It ranks up there with " The Functions of the Executive," "The Practice of Management," "In Search of Excellence," "Built to Last," "Leading Change," "Good to Great," "Execution," "What Really Works" and anything by Peter Drucker, John Kotter or Warren Bennis.
When I heaped praise on the book to a good friend who was the highly successful CEO of three major media companies, he said, “Nothing new…same old Welch.” I don't think my friend was judging Welch's book --- I suspect he was thinking more of Welch's reputation for being a spotlight-seeking narcissist whose outrageously rich perks from a grateful General Electric board of directors made headlines a couple of years ago during a messy divorce from his second wife and his subsequent marriage to former Harvard Business Review editor Suzy Wetlaufer (now Suzy Welch).
I suppose it's trite to repeat the old saw about not judging a book by its cover (or its author's extra-curricula peccadillos), but that notion applies to "Winning ." Sure, managers have heard much of what Welch preaches from thousands of articles and books about him during his reign as the quintessential CEO of the second half of the twentieth century (GM's Alfred Sloan held that lofty position in the first half). Sure, there is little new here . And, sure, a lot of Welch's ideas are not original with him.
His concept of making a company's top HR person the second most important executive was implemented by the great Japanese entrepreneur Konosuke Matsushita and reported in " The Art of Japanese Management" by Pascale and Athos in 1981, the year Welch became CEO of GE. His ideas about budgets being exercises in “minimalization” that tend to de-motivate managers is based on principles of goal-setting presented by Locke and his colleagues in the late 1960s and applied to corporate budgeting by Michael Jensen in the Harvard Business Review (“Corporate Budgeting is Broken—Let's Fix It,” November, 2001) .
But few big company CEOs paid attention to the lessons of Matsushita . Welch did. No big company CEO realized how debilitating the process of corporate budgeting was and how counterproductive it was to link bonuses to making budgets. Welch did. In "Winning," Welch puts these and other sound management and leadership concepts into clear focus in a folksy, typically Welch straight-talking style --- that is why his book should be a must read for anyone interested in management, from CEOs to people just starting their careers in business.
"Winning" is divided into four sections: “Underneath it All,” “Your Company,” Your Competition” and “Your Career.” In the “Underneath it All” section, Welch writes chapters about “Mission and Values,” “Candor,” “Differentiation,” and “Voice and Dignity.” These first four chapters lay the foundations of his leadership philosophy.
His concept that “effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible” boils down mission statements to their essential core so that readers don't have to read tomes or articles about mission and values. Welch says all that needs to be said concisely. Notice I wrote “says.” That's because I first listened to Welch read the book himself on my iPod --- an Audible.com e-book --- an efficient way to ingest a book. I recommend it to anyone who's busy and has an auditory style of learning, as I do.
In the “Your Company” section, Welch talks/writes about leadership, hiring, people management, letting people go, change, and crisis management. His chapter on hiring is a gem and should be read and his guidelines followed by anyone who hires people. It's better than the dozen or so books I've read about how to interview and hire people.
In the “Your Competition” section, he goes into strategy, budgeting, organic growth, mergers and acquisitions, and the “six sigma” management principles he used at GE . The budgeting chapter is a gem and proposes the right way to budget and pay compensation for budget achievement --- a system that too few companies have adopted.
The “Your Career” section will be particularly useful to people beginning their careers or those who want to accelerate their careers and get promoted. (Hint: politics are out, results-oriented performance is in).
The weakest and most self-absorbed section is the final one titled “Tying Up Loose Ends,” in which Welch answers questions that people have asked him at seminars and conferences. Skip it, because I'm not sure you'll care whether or not he's going to enter politics or how his golf game is doing; I know I didn't.
Finally, it will be a tragedy if CEOs don't read "Winning" because they think they've heard it all before and an even bigger tragedy if they don't change the way they manage according to Welch's wise counsel. If they don't change, their companies will never have the chance to be as good or as profitable as GE is.
