Hardcover: 384 pages
Author: Jack Welch and Suzy Welch
Publisher: Harper Collins
Available: Oxford Bookstore, The Leela Galleria
Category: Business Book
Price: Re 680

An Arabian Proverb quips ‘Arrogance diminishes wisdom’, but here Jack Welch’s arrogance comes because of his confident wisdom. Contemporary yet candid, this is a practical marketing and management bible for all those who want to be winners. He talks about the “real stuff” happening at work. WINNING does not take you through a mind analyzing trip but natural debacles arising at the work place. With his long standing stint as a CEO, it puts him in a position of power to answer difficult and important questions convincingly, that people face in their many careers.

Jack Welch began his career with General Electric in 1960 by taking a job as a plastics manager and in time rose through the ranks, becoming chairman and CEO in 1981. With this forty-year career thread in the same company he knows what the baby has grown into, and also all the nannies personally. Though the book says it’s for every one from college graduates to CEOs, it’s really for people at a higher position who want to win. It’s also for those passionate about success, and that’s counting very few. He says, “As a leader you have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room.”

WINNING gives the readers various reasons why one should want to win, the simplest being it feels great to. He starts of by stating the importance of a mission statement and how companies like Enron and Arthur Andersen collapsed when they strayed from there original mission statement. “By contrast, a good mission statement and a good set of values are so real they smack you in the face with their concreteness. The mission announces exactly where you are going, and the values describe the behaviours that will get you there.”

You shouldn’t be surprised if you heard him say to his employees ‘get your festering ass out of here’. This candour makes the book so energetic and riveting it sets the tone for the realness it seeks to bring out. The tone of the book keeps in sync with his propagation. He says lack of candour blocks smart ideas and fast action. He also retorts that for any company to succeed trust and candour should be flowing through their veins. To illuminate a point more clearly he explains it with an analogy of the base ball game, his favourite. Jack Welch gives an unbiased view about people and situation, and talks well about those employees who choose to leave GE. The book feels like a living, breathing mentor except that you are reading it. He also confidently shares all his blunders and screw ups, his earliest and one of the gravest being blowing up a pilot plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and well that’s what also makes a good mentor.

Never judge a book by its covers doesn’t hold good here. Jack Welch on the front cover makes you pick the book almost instantly. The text is well spaced allowing easy readability. There is also a blurb on every page. The language avoids gender bias. He states the key point as important commandments and explains each in detail. When knowledge comes from a man who has made a thousand blunders and learned from each, these million dollar ideas should be treated as the-way-to-work.

WINNING assesses the business realties and cares to explain clichés like ‘gut feeling’, ‘importance of being candid’, etc. At the company level he says they should strive to add zing instead of merely making huge profits, and the way to do this is to share and stretch time tested learning. It even gives the readers information on the impending merger between JP Morgan and BankOne by 2006.

Well why should you read this book? Read it in his own words. “I see this book as a handbook for people in the trenches, turning their companies and the economy around, not just today, but for years to come. I think it will be useful for people just starting their careers or their own businesses to seasoned managers running multi-billion dollar enterprises. I’ve learned an enormous amount about what works and what doesn’t work throughout my career and I’m very excited about sharing it in Winning.”

And all the proceeds from this book go for charity, then again why not?!

Issue BG54 Sept05

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