The title of Jack Welch Speaks by business journalist Janet Lowe makes it sound like the book is entirely comprised of quotes from the former General Electric CEO himself, but this is happily not the case. Lowe has written about half the text, providing useful balance, background and explanation for the interview material. Jack Welch Speaks is also nicely organised into chapters on Welch’s upbringing, the make-up of GE, its corporate scandals and other relevant topics.
A Fair and Balanced Study of Jack Welch
The book comes across as quite fair and balanced. It’s certainly not a hatchet job, although it is possible to sense some of the author’s misgivings about Welch.
For example, Janet Lowe lists some of the things she likes about Welch, but also notes that when she was interviewing him for the book, Welch would give the answers to her husband who was brought along to hit the record button on the tape recorder! Welch is obviously a man’s man.
Janet Lowe was also critical of the GE Values statement, saying it was written in garbled English. As in Welch’s book Winning, the corporate world comes across as a big chess board, with players, winners and losers. It’s a world of super-managers, trying to follow Welch’s somewhat incongruous wish that GE should be like a ‘corner store’, intolerant of bureaucracy and hierarchy.
‘We set out to shape a global enterprise that preserved the classic big-company advantages, while eliminating the classic big-company drawbacks. What we wanted to build was a hybrid, an enterprise with the reach and resources of a big company – the body of a big company – but with the thirst to learn, the compulsion to share, and the bias for action – the soul – of a small company.’ (Letter to shareholders, 1996.)
One wonders though if such a big business can be run in this manner. Welch cut employee numbers from 450,000 to 250,000 over his tenure, but even this amount of staff is surely going to still mean a dreaded bureaucracy rather than a corner store.
GE’s just too big to try having a small business psychology.
Interesting Jack Welch Quotes
Jack Welch Speaks naturally enough has lots of interesting (maybe notorious) quotes, like when Welch said:
‘One of the things about leadership is that you cannot be a moderate, balanced, thoughtful, careful articulator of policy. You’ve got to be on the lunatic fringe.’ (The Washington Post, 23 March, 1997, to Frank Swoboda.)
Speaking of the lunatic fringe, GE hired a consultant, Len Schlesinger, to coach employees on ‘software’, indoctrinating them into the GE Values system. He said, ‘This is one of the biggest planned efforts to alter people’s behaviour since the Cultural Revolution.’
One admiral thing about Welch is his emphasis on the importance of giving people dignity and a voice.
Jack Welch Speaks is a balanced and accessible short book that will give you a good over view of the GE culture Welch created, plus oodles of the fascinating quotes from this former superstar CEO.
Jack Welch Speaks: Wisdom from the World's Greatest Business Leader published by Wiley Books (2001). ISBN-10:0471413364
Chris Saliba - Chris Saliba is a freelance writer. Read more of his workplace articles at chrissalibafreelancewriter.blogspot.com
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