Customer Reviews

Jack: Straight from the Gut

5 star:		(119)
4 star:		(52)
3 star:		(43)
2 star:		(29)
1 star:		(26)

 

 

If you want to learn the names of every person who ever worked at GE during Jack Welch's 40 years there, you'll find this book invaluable. If you want to learn something about what made GE successful, however, good luck picking out the few saplings of wisdom from the thick forest of names.

Golf and tennis fans will also find the book fascinating for its endless catalog of golf and tennis resorts nationwide. Apparently being anywhere near the top at GE requires moving to Fairfield, Connecticut and aping the Lifestyles of the Bland and WASPy.

One interesting thing I learned is that GE went from 0 percent employee ownership to 31 percent during Jack Welch's tenure as CEO, primarily through granting of stock options to top managers such as Jack himself. Jack doesn't talk about this except to say that he's proud of the number. He doesn't get into the question of whether the investors from 1980 are happy now that they own less than 70 percent of the company. Nor does he talk about what would have happened to GE's earnings if they'd accounted for all of these stock options at time of issue.

The useful and interesting content in this book could have been presented in 75 pages if the editors and ghostwriter had been doing their jobs. But they weren't doing their jobs. So the readers all have to "give 110 percent" or "give 1000 percent". Maybe this is what Jack Welch wanted because he uses these expressions numerous times throughout Straight from the Gut.

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 read this book. It is basically an autobiography of Jack Welch's GE years and does not dwell on deap management theory. Those readers expecting a lot of new business theory or to learn how to repeat Jack's performance by reading about his secret methodology may be disappointed.

The management insights that Jack does reveal seem to me to be generally built on fairly well established (but poorly executed) management practices. Jack has just embraced them and used focussed passion coupled with an obsession on people to execute superbly and produce great results. For example, some of his major initiatives could be said to have been derived from existing management principles: 1) "No. 1 or 2" Jack admits is derived from Peter Drucker, 2)I believe 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 recommended reading for today's and tomorrow's managers and especially those interest in the man himself.

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.

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 $$$$$ 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 never explains the EU's reasons for blocking the Honeywell merger, assuming that it is so obviously wrong it's not worthy of explaination.

There's something a tad creepy about Jack Welch. Behind the tight smile is a man who, admittedly, is "full of himself." That's his blessing and curse. If you believe that building business empires is the sole aim of life, and it's worth sacrificing a marriage for, Welch is probably worth this saintliness being bestowed on him. But if you believe there is more to our existence than work and golf, this book is not for you.

There's some business wisdom in the book, but one must slog through a lot to get it.

Welch reminds me very much of the Frederic March character in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (based on Sloan Wilson's novel). Yes, he built a great business, but realized too late that he had lost much more than he had gained. This was a common profile in the post World War II American economy. Welch fits it to a T (or a W). And while his devotion to his mother's memory and teachings is touching, Freud would have had a field day with this book.

The book is not horrible by any means. But I could have done without the golf stuff. There are about half a dozen photos of Jack golfing in one place or another (including with that great American, Bill Clinton). It all comes off like a twenty-year-old's showing off (he has reproduced a score card from a golf round with Greg Norman!) than the reflections of a mature business leader.

There's a touch of this throughout, such as when he divorces wife #1, and suddenly observes: "Being single and having money was like standing six feet four with a full head of hair." As Chris Farley might have said when he played the motivational speaker: "Well Lah-De-Freakin'-Dah!"

I can see a whole new generation of baby MBA's lugging this book around like the Bible. If you are one, my message before you buy this book: Try the Bible instead, especially the book of Ecclesiastes. There, the Jack Welch-like king who built up all this wealth and honor for himself found, at the end of his life, that it was all meaningless, a "chasing after the wind."

Windy is a good word to describe this book. In fairness, Welch's co-writer (John A. Byrne), who was responsible for the prose, does a good job. The book is quite readable. But they gave Welch what, $8 million for this? I'd rather read the reflections of a successful elementary school teacher in the inner city, or two average people who value their marriage over their career plans, or a good philosopher. Not worth $30 bucks, or even $15 with various discounts.

I read 'Jack' in hardcover a couple of weeks after it came out, and found it easy reading...not a lot of meaty stuff though. Frankly, there are other books that cover the business of the Welch Style of Management better than Jack Welch (see, for instance, anything by Noel Tichy). Welch's track record at GE - validated by the market via the company's rise in market valuation during his tenure- speaks for itself.

Two things that did stick in my mind from the book were his brief mention and dismissal of his first wife (he barely notes her existence up until the point where he - essentially - discards her) and his summation of his second wife, Jane: "She has become the perfect partner."

As it turns out, I read this in the pre-Suzy Wetlaufer era. And like many readers, I feel like I got Jack-ed, because 'perfect partner' Jane ends up getting the 'first wife treatment' as well. And frankly, that 'perfect partner' line really sticks in my craw now. I wonder: just how much more of 'Jack' is some misdirection woven by its author?

To get the real story on Welch and his relationships, you need to turn to sources like the Wall Street Journal. Their excellent reporter James Bander broke the whole Harvard Business Review 'Jack on Jack' interview mess. And the Journal's compelling story about the Welch domestic battle "GE's Jack Welch Meets Match in Divorce Court" (see Nov. 27, 2002 edition) makes for outstanding reading.

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!

This book starts off well enough but soon bogs down into little more than a list of names and deals. There's no context and despite all the names little personal touch. "It was great" seems to be the main them of the book: everything was great: his wife (until he divorced her); his kids (whom he never seemed to see); endless dinner meetings (in which the name of the hotel is mentioned seemingly to provide some kind of grounding in reality). Terms like "Six Sigma" are thrown around without any kind of explanation. In all all Jack, the book, is very, very dull.

Wow, here's another guy who gave up everything for the company. Kids and family are hardly mentioned. The first divorce is explained and it's just what you expect. His first love is his job. That's great if that's what you want out of life. For me, it's a waste of time. There's little relevant information here for the person not wanting to climb the corporate ladder for the sake of climbing the corporate ladder. People like this must be needed to run the huge companies but it's not much of a commentary on someone's life. Welch was in the right place at the right time, had a knack for using other people in the right places, didn't flinch when they didn't meet his needs and clawed his way to the top. Somehow, reading this, I don't get the idea he did it as neatly or cleanly as it comes across in the book. There were people out to get him but he never appears to fight back, except with his superior intellect and skill. Yeah, right.
The book is OK but if your brain is on at all, you figure it out in the first two chapters. The last half is just about the deals "he" pulled off. Little is given in way of a case study or explanation that will benefit anyone. It's just a rehash of the glory days.
There are better books on the market for history, biography or improving your abilities.

Jack Welch's deep thought and subsequent action about GE were brilliant. The detail in this book, although often too much, underscores his complete dedication, intensity, and hard hard work. We see him working around the clock at this job, thinking about everything in it, never leaving it behind. We see how he developed his ideas, discarding tradition, and put them into action. As a stimulus to thought of how to analyze a business situation and then proceed, this book is invaluable.
However, if you are looking for insights into how to combine business and personal life, you won't find them in this book.
Welch did not put any of this intense energy, integrity, or thought into his personal life. All of his friends seemed to be from business. He says that he had a great family life, as evidenced by two family vacations per year. We never hear about his children except for their college pedigrees. From the narrative, non-stop meetings, phone calls, and travel it is clear he was hardly ever home. He clearly paid no attention to his valiant wife who raised their four children and then appears to have been dumped, or so alienated that she left when the last child left for college. Most thinking men and women will be disgusted that he disposed of that 28 year marriage in one page.
So.. a brilliant businessman, but that's it. Clearly not an all around role model.

Before I read this book, the primary source of my knowledge about Jack Welch was reading his annual letters to shareholders of GE. And, of course, the countless newspapers articles about Mr. Welch, detailing his Six Sigma program and how he turned GE from a bloated corporation to a lean efficient operation in which employees are empowered to make changes that make a difference. Like many people, I have given thought to whether the principles Welch developed for GE could apply to my business, particularly his mantra that he only wants to be in an industry in which he has tremendous market power. So I bought the book and gave it a read.

I found the book to be a very quick and easy book to read. My biggest question is whether the book accurately captures Mr. Welch's personality. I never met the man and had a general impression that he was one tough guy, primarily due to his "neutron jack" reputation when he fired thousands of GE employees. However, much to my surprise, Mr. Welch apparently does not take himself too seriously and the entire book is written in a self-effacing style with much humor. One of the reasons the book is so interesting and compelling is that Mr. Welch mixes chapters focussing on his business acumen with passages on the importance of friendship and things like golf.

I also was interested to learn that Mr. Welch can admit his mistakes. I found his discussion of GE's purchase of Kidder Peabody fascinating because it stressed the importance of truly understanding corporate cultures (and how to blend them)if a merger will ever have a chance to succeed. Similarly, the chapter on GE's failed purchase of Honeywell was also very interesting.

Of course, the book details many of Mr. Welch's successes, from his efforts to become CEO of GE as a young man to his purchase of RCA. Most of these efforts result from the no-nonsense, straight-from-the-gut candid management style that Mr. Welch steadily adhered to while transforming GE into one of the most disciplined profitable corporations in the world.

If you like to read business management books written by successful corporate leaders, this is a can't miss.

I've read this book and am bewildered why it has the status it does. But I've also wondered the same thing about Mr. Welch for some time as well, so I should've known what I was in for when I picked it up.

The writing seems a bit self-serving, the name-dropping is irritating, and there seems to be a bit missing from his early biography. However, there are some engaging elements.

But it's the larger picture that kept me baffled - and remains unresolved after reading this book. How has Welch come to hold the near-mythical status that he has in the corporate world? He took one of the nation's leading companies (in terms of innovative new products), gutted the research and development budget, and is proclaimed a hero. GE is now a company that buys companies that make things, rather than developing new things to make. On Wall Street, this and frequent downsizing (the surest way to bring a stock's price up) makes you a hero. But how clever do you have to be to drive a prosperous research enterprise into the ground?