Winning - Jack Welch [3]
Yes, have fun.
Business is a game, and winning that game is a total blast!
THE ROAD AHEAD
Before we get started, a word on how this book is organized. It has four parts.
The first, called “Underneath It All,” is conceptual. It certainly contains more management philosophy than most businesspeople have time for on any given day, and certainly more than I ever thought about in one sitting when I was working the day shift. But there is a substructure of principles to my approach to business, and so I lay them out in this first part.
In brief, the four principles are about the importance of a strong mission and concrete values; the absolute necessity of candor in every aspect of management; the power of differentiation, meaning a system based on meritocracy; and the value of each individual receiving voice and dignity.
The next section of this book, “Your Company,” is about the innards of organizations. It’s about mechanics—people, processes, and culture. Its chapters look at leadership, hiring, people management, letting people go, managing change, and crisis management.
After “Your Company” comes “Your Competition,” the section of this book about the world outside your organization. It discusses how you create strategic advantages, devise meaningful budgets, grow organically, grow through mergers and acquisitions, and it attempts to demystify a topic that never ceases to intrigue and baffle people, the quality program Six Sigma.
The next section of this book is called “Your Career,” and it’s about managing the arc and the quality of your professional life. It starts with a chapter on finding the right job, not just a first job but the right job at any point in your career. It also includes a chapter on what it takes to get promoted, and another on a hard spot we all find ourselves in at one time or another—working for a bad boss. The last chapter of this section addresses the very human desire to have it all—all at the same time—which as you already know, you can’t really do. You can, however, know what your boss thinks about the matter, and you should—and that’s one aspect of this chapter.
The last section of this book is called “Tying Up Loose Ends,” and in it, I answer nine questions that did not fall into any of the above categories. They concern managing the “China threat,” diversity, the impact of new regulations like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and how business should respond to societal crises like AIDS. There is also a question in there about how my successor, Jeff Immelt, is doing (in a word, great), the status of my golf game, and whether I think I’ll go to heaven.
Now, that was a question that stopped me!
As for the rest of the questions in this book—they didn’t exactly stop me, but they did challenge me to think hard about what I believe and why.
This book has a lot of answers, but not all—because business is always changing and the world is always changing.
As a Dutch entrepreneur said to me last year, “Every day in life, there is a new question. That is what keeps us going.”
There are new questions—and new answers too. In fact, I have learned almost as much about business since I left GE as when I worked there. I learned from every single question asked of me.
And I hope my responses will help you learn too.
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
1
Mission and Values
* * *
SO MUCH HOT AIR ABOUT SOMETHING SO REAL
BEAR WITH ME, if you will, while I talk about mission and values.
I say that because these two terms have got to be among the most abstract, overused, misunderstood words in business. When I speak