Jack Welch & The G.E. Way: Management Insights and Leadership Secrets of the Legendary CEO (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A recent Fortune poll cited General Electric Company as America's most admired company. Much of the credit went to Jack Welch, GE's chief executive for the past 17 years. During his tenure, GE's revenues and profits have grown enormously. Its share price has soared, making GE the world's most valuable company. And the key to GE's success, according to Jack Welch and the GE Way, is Welch's fanatical devotion to a personal philosophy of leadership. Author Robert Slater has made a growth industry of his own out of Welch, penning two previous books on him, The New GE in 1992 and Get Better or Get Beaten! two years later. The same territory was plowed in 1993 by Noel M. Tichy and Stratford Sherman in Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will.

In this book, Slater draws extensively on Welch's own words to deliver his now familiar message: keep it simple; face reality; embrace change; fight bureaucracy. Bromides these may be, but Slater's account of Welch's fierce efforts to lead a global, multifarious organization of 270,000 people does inspire admiration, even if it does not enable emulation. The book provides fresh insights into GE's shift toward service businesses, as with its takeover and transformation of NBC. Most timely are Welch's closing thoughts on trends in the global economy. Jack Welch and the GE Way is a must for the legions of "Welch-heads" out there and for anyone else interested in this brilliant leader's perspective on the future of business. --Barry Mitzman

From Publishers Weekly

Slater has written two previous books on General Electric chairman and CEO Jack Welch (The New GE, 1992; Get Better or Get Beaten!, 1994), so readers might wonder whether hard-driving Welch, stoic pioneer of downsizing, has anything new to add. Slater does not disappoint in this conversationally written, solid manual that, despite its promotional hype and adulatory tone, distills Welch's business philosophy?an amalgam of Zen-like axioms, bromides and tough-minded pragmatism?in a way that will reward managers at all levels who seek to create a learning environment and transform learning into action. Companies would do well to heed Welch's advice on how to foster an open-ended, informal work atmosphere that will encourage employees to speak out, breaking down the walls of hostility between managers and subordinates. Interweaving snippets of interviews with Welch, Slater (biographer of investor George Soros) competently traces GE's transition from manufacturing to a service-oriented enterprise, its takeover and turnaround of NBC, its expansion into financial services and overseas markets. Editor, Jeffrey Krames; agent, Chris Calhoun at Sterling Lord Literistic.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (July 31, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070581045
• ISBN-13: 978-0070581043
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #205,053 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A BLUEPRINT FOR ACHIEVING SUCCESS, March 31, 1999

By	Victor Koivurnaki([e-mail]) Harva... (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

This is Robert Slater's third book about Jack Welch, who has achieved almost mythic status in his 17 years as CEO of GE, making the company the wolds most valuable. This new book focuses on the lessons all businesses can learn from how Welch transformed GE from a manufacturing to a service centered business by embracing change, creating a boundaryless organization focussing on globalization and emphasizing communication. Slater is a Welch fan. I would also recommend reading Thomas F. O'Boyles muckraking work AT ANY COST, JACK WELCH, GENERAL ELECTRIC and THE PURSUIT OF PROFIT as an antidote to boosterism and an insight to the darker side and human cost of radical change in a giant corporation. After you have finished with Welch and GE read the refreshing 2000 PERCENT SOLUTION by Mitchell, Coles, and Metz for a wealth of information and freeing your organization from common practices that stall growth. Welch examples may inform us but Mitchell, Coles and Metz give us a blueprint for achieving success in our businesses and organizations and involving our employees in the process of exponential growth

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars TOP-NOTCH CEO........POORLY WRITTEN BOOK, September 26, 1999

By A Customer

There is no doubt about it, Jack Welch is one of the best CEO's ever. I put a low rating on the book. I couldn't stand the style. Half the book is quotes from a Welch speech...which is fine. However, the other half is just paraphrasing everything Jack says to a "T". Very very very very very very very redundant. You can get great take-aways from Jack's style. Unfortunately you have to read through the entire book. It's 10 pages of great leadership skills packed into 300+ pages.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Obsolete, February 20, 2003

By	Alemayehu Telahun (Schenectady, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This book has some nuggets but you do have to overcome some meandering. The author jumps from format to format sometimes turning the book into a Jack Welch biography and at other times acting as if the book were a serious business analysis of GE and the changes Welch brought. It fails as a biography and the business analysis is lightweight at best. It's not clear what this book is trying to deliver but what I got out of it were a cursory understanding of the challenges that GE faced and some sense of why Jack Welch succeeded. Now that Jack Welch is retired and has an autobiography "Straight from the Gut" this book is almost obsolete.