Winning - Jack Welch [0]
Welch
with Suzy Welch
WINNING
To the thousands of men and women
who cared enough about business to raise their hands
The authors’ profits from this book are being donated to charity.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
“Every Day, There Is a New Question”
UNDERNEATH IT ALL
1. MISSION AND VALUES
So Much Hot Air About Something So Real
2. CANDOR
The Biggest Dirty Little Secret in Business
3. DIFFERENTIATION
Cruel and Darwinian? Try Fair and Effective
4. VOICE AND DIGNITY
Every Brain in the Game
YOUR COMPANY
5. LEADERSHIP
It’s Not Just About You
6. HIRING
What Winners Are Made Of
7. PEOPLE MANAGEMENT
You’ve Got the Right Players. Now What?
8. PARTING WAYS
Letting Go Is Hard to Do
9. CHANGE
Mountains Do Move
10. CRISIS MANAGEMENT
From Oh-God-No to Yes-We’re-Fine
YOUR COMPETITION
11. STRATEGY
It’s All in the Sauce
12. BUDGETING
Reinventing the Ritual
13. ORGANIC GROWTH
So You Want to Start Something New
14. MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS
Deal Heat and Other Deadly Sins
15. SIX SIGMA
Better Than a Trip to the Dentist
YOUR CAREER
16. THE RIGHT JOB
Find It and You’ll Never Really Work Again
17. GETTING PROMOTED
Sorry, No Shortcuts
18. HARD SPOTS
That Damn Boss
19. WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Having It All (But Were Afraid to Hear)
TYING UP LOOSE ENDS
20. HERE, THERE, AND EVERYWHERE
The Questions That Almost Got Away
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
Other Books by Jack Welch
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
* * *
“EVERY DAY, THERE IS A NEW QUESTION”
AFTER I FINISHED my autobiography—a fun but crazily intense grind that I wedged into the corners of my real job at the time—I swore I’d never write another book again.
But I guess I did.
My excuse, if there is one, is that I didn’t actually come up with the idea for this book.
It was given to me.
It was a retirement present, if you will, from the tens of thousands of terrific people I have met since I left GE—the energized, curious, gutsy, and ambitious men and women who have loved business enough to ask me every possible question you could imagine. In order to answer them, all I had to do was figure out what I knew, sort it out, codify it, and borrow their stories—and this book was off and running.
The questions I’m referring to first started during the promotional tour for my autobiography in late 2001 and through much of 2002, when I was overwhelmed by the emotional attachment people seemed to have to GE. From coast to coast, and in many countries around the world, people told me touching stories about their experiences working for the company, or what happened when their sister, dad, aunt, or grandfather did.
But with these stories, I was also surprised to hear how much more people wanted to know about getting business right.
Radio call-in guests pressed me to explain GE’s system of differentiation, which separates employees into three performance categories and manages them up or out accordingly. People attending book-signing events wanted to know if I really meant it when I said the head of human resources at every company should be at least as important as the CFO. (I did!) At a visit to the University of Chicago business school, an MBA from India asked me to explain more fully what a really good performance appraisal should sound like.
The questions didn’t stop after the book tour. They continued—in airports, restaurants, and elevators. Once a guy swam over to me in the surf off Miami Beach to ask me what I thought about a certain franchise opportunity he was considering. But mainly they’ve come at the 150 or so Q & A sessions I have participated in over the past three years, in cities around the world from New York to Shanghai, from Milan to Mexico City. In these sessions, which have ranged from thirty to five thousand audience members, I sit on a stage