Finished “Winning” by Jack Welch 7/10
360 pages, published in 2005.
Welch has written several books since he stepped down from the CEO position at GE. Naturally, his books have focused on leadership, management and CEOing one of the biggest and most complex corporations in the world. In Winning, Welch talks about his formula for successful management on all it’s aspects: hiring, firing, prioritization, mergers and acquisitions, dealing with change, work life balance, budgeting, six sigma, and dealing with a bad boss. Much of his advice is pretty common sense and mundane but on several instances, he does have some good arguments regarding differentiation and rewards. According to Welch, every working environment has 10% stars, 70% grunt workers and 20% sub par performers. He advocates pampering the stars lavishly, and developing a very clear performance-reward relationship in order to motivate and incentives workers to move from one performance bracket to another. His “differentiation” method is a discrimination system based on performance where people move up or down strictly according to their performance. Overall, I must say that there’s no new gospel in this book. It’s simply a solid, common-sense management book from a very credible and authoritative character with a rich life long experience in corporate management. If nothing else, you will find here a reminder of what it takes to be a good manager in a time and age where good managers are hard to come by. Read and apply. 7/10.