The first concise book of essential Welch-isms, abridged from the bestselling Get Better or Get Beaten
Jack Welch built a career out of fighting waste. 29 Leadership Secrets from Jack Welch follows in Welch's footsteps, boiling the legendary CEO's leadership successes down to 29 strategies that made GE the world's most competitive companyand Welch the world's most successful and admired CEO.
This all-in-one Welch reference updates material from Robert Slater's bestselling Get Better or Get Beaten, and is today's ultimate fast-paced, no-nonsense handbook on the ways of Jack Welch. It taps into the heart of Welch's courage, innovation, and leadership success by examining simple leadership secrets that include:
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Here's a quick read on the leadership principles of the former GE CEO who's often considered one of the 20th century's greatest business leaders. Though his reputation has been somewhat tarnished by his opulent retirement package as well as a messy divorce, his "GE Way" of management is still highly regarded. Slater, a long-time Welch watcher, offers an abridged version of his 2001 Welch tome, Get Better or Get Beaten. This version is perfect for airport reading, though it delivers little of the struggles and setbacks that must have helped form the backbone of Welch's wisdom. Instead we get the platitudes, presented in 29 highly formatted and easy-to-grab chapters. All the instruction is self-evident, told in tiny anecdotes, and followed by a set of "Welch Rules" ("Get the most out of your employees"; "Promote the three 'S's': speed, simplicity, and self-confidence"). There's food for thought here, but not very much of it. This volume's selling point-its brevity-is also its downfall: it feels too much like leadership lite. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Robert Slater is the author of a number of bestselling business books, including four books on Jack Welch. A veteran journalist with more than 25 years of experience with Time, Newsweek, and UPI, Slater is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on General Electric and Jack Welch.
Robert Slater was born in New York City on October 1, 1943, and grew up in South Orange, New Jersey. He graduated from Columbia High School in 1962 and graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966, where he majored in political science. He received a masters of science degree in international relations from the London School of Economics in 1967. He worked for UPI and Time Magazine for many years, in both the United States and the Middle East. Slater has written 16 books about major business personalities before his new book on Donald Trump: ' The Titans of Takeover (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1987). ' Portraits in Silicon (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987). ' This ... .Is CBS: A Chronicle of 60 Years (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988). ' The New GE: How Jack Welch Revived an American Institution (Homewood, IL: Business One Irwin, 1993). ' Get Better or Get Beaten! 31 Leadership Secrets from GE's Jack Welch (Burr Ridge, IL: Irwin Professional Publishing, 1994). This book made the business best-seller list in Japan. ' SOROS: The Life, Times, and Trading Secrets of the World's Greatest Investor (Chicago, IL: Irwin Professional Publishing, 1996). This book profiles superinvestor George Soros, and it appeared on the Business Week best-seller list. ' Invest First, Investigate Later: And 23 Other Trading Secrets of George Soros, the Legendary Investor (Chicago, IL: Irwin Professional Publishing, 1996). ' John Bogle and the Vanguard Experiment: One Man's Quest to Transform the Mutual Fund Industry (Chicago, IL: Irwin Professional Publishing, 1996). This book profiles the most important business figure in the mutual fund field. ' Ovitz: The Inside Story of Hollywood's Most Controversial Power Broker (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1997). This book made the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times business best-seller lists. ' Jack Welch and the GE Way: Management Insights and Leadership Secrets of the Legendary CEO (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1998). This is an updated look at the business secrets of General Electric's chairman and chief executive officer. It made the Business Week and The Wall Street Journal best-seller lists. ' Saving Big Blue: Leadership Lessons & Turnaround Tactics of IBM's Lou Gerstner (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1999). ' The GE Way Fieldbook: Jack Welch's Battle Plan for Corporate Revolution (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 1999). ' The Eye of the Storm: How John Chambers Steered Cisco Systems Through the Technology Collapse (New York, NY: HarperBusiness, 2003). ' Magic Cancer Bullet: How a Tiny Orange Capsule May Rewrite Medical History (New York, NY: HarperBusiness, 2003), co-authored with Novartis CEO, Dan Vasella. ' The Wal-Mart Decade: How a New Generation of Leaders Turned Sam Walton's Legacy into the World's #1 Company (New York, NY: Portfolio, 2003). A paperback version was published in June 2004. ' Microsoft Rebooted: How Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer Re-Invented Their Company (New York, NY: Portfolio, 2004 ' No Such Thing as Over-Exposure: Inside the Life and Celebrity of Donald Trump (New Jersey, Pearson, Prentice Hall, February 2005)
This review is from: 29 Leadership Secrets From Jack Welch (Paperback)
This book reminds me of the best seller "Who Moved My Cheese". They are both written in oversized font and are about 100 pages long and both cover simple messages.
If the books were in a regular font they would be 30 pages??
Please do not get me wrong. But it is just a feeling one gets that they have been had, sold a bill of goods which is just a summary with comments for $10.
Somebody has written down a list of XX number of principle ideas or management techniques, and then expanded each idea to fill the 100 (30 real) pages.
It would be almost as effective to just make a list of them on one or two pages.
The upshot of all this is do not buy this book, but by Jack's book "Straight from the Gut", or buy Slater's book: "Jack Welch & The G.E. Way".
I prefer Jack's own book, and to me it beats many more sophisticated business books hands down. Business is not black and white.
Almost every day there is one crisis or problem or another, and Jack's story puts it all together plus conveys the energy and excitement that he brought to the job. Something is lost in the list approach.
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51 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 starsI wonder . . ., February 7, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: 29 Leadership Secrets From Jack Welch (Paperback)
There are many books about Jack Welch and all of them show and teach the corporate strategies and tactics this legendary manager implemented while at GE. Most of those titles portrait Welch as the successful business person everybody would like to be. However, I would like to warn the reader that the professional success of famous CEOs cost them their families. It's hard to believe how Welch was able to manage thousands of relations with millions of people at GE, while on the other side he failed on a relation with only one person: his wife. By the way, how many wives has he had??? Is that success??? In which planet???
Now about the book . . . it's a good title but only read it if you have never before read a title about Jack Welch or GE; if you had, it's more about the same old stuff, and I would recommend your spending your money in a smarter way.
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This review is from: 29 Leadership Secrets From Jack Welch (Paperback)
Jack Welch is a fabulously successful manager, but most small entrepreneurs are not. They are just getting by on a day to day basis with little planning and are subject to bankrupcy with every crisis. They don't have an MBA, and they don't have time to study the principles that would give them more time. This book is a quick, easy read, it re-aligns their thinking, and gets them on track to success. You can't give your struggling business acquaintances a better gift.
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