Winning

In this follow up and correct-all to his blockbuster best seller Straight from the Gut, GE’s former chairman Jack Welch gives us an excellent and well organized series of essays on winning in business and life today. His wife Suzy Welch, former editor for the Harvard Business Review, has likely supplied the temperament, compartmentalization and writing style to Jack’s horsepower.

Welch tells us winning is great, not good (relating to Jim Collins’ best seller Good to Great). Winning is great because it allows people to thrive and grow.  Winning cleanly and by the rules provides more jobs and opportunities for everyone, everywhere. People feel more upbeat about the future and have resources to do things they want and to give back (quid pro quo).

What does it take to win? This question was asked everywhere he went after his first literary project Straight from the Gut. Suzy and Jack provide a well-organized treatise on what it takes to win. In theory, it seems easy. It is in execution where the devil lies.

Sections on Your Company, Your Competition and Your Career are book ended by chapters related to the underlying concepts and FAQ’s. In the “Underneath it All” section, Welch describes the incredible strength gained by developing four tenets of winning for businesses.

Mission and Values answers the question “How do we intend to win in this business?” It sets the rules behind the behaviors for getting there. Setting the mission becomes the role of top management, while values need input from everyone. Making them real helps prevent their rupture in the crisis of daily life in business.

Candor opens the door to smart ideas, fast actions, and good people contributing their all. It is usually easier and polite to not speak your mind. In fact, we are socialized to soften bad news and make nice about awkward subjects. Candor however opens honest communication and fosters a culture of ideas and feedback that supports change for the better.

Differentiation is one of the most commonly discussed principles from Straight from the Gut. Companies have two parts: software (or people) and hardware (which in a large company is the different businesses in your portfolio and in a small company is your product lines).

For Welch and GE, if they could not operate a business unit and be No.1 or No.2 in that market, they sold it. They evaluated people using a 20/70/10 framework. The top twenty percent were showered with bonuses, stock options, praise, love, training and a variety of rewards, both spiritual and monetary. The middle seventy were managed towards growth and improvement and kept engaged and motivated. The bottom ten percent were let go. It clarified the business and made it run better in every way.

Voice and Dignity refers to the opportunity to be heard and respected for work and effort. Welch created a culture that fostered these communications and values. Thousands of systematic work-out meetings (intensive team problem solving sessions) were held at all levels that became a forum for ideas, information and thoughts to flow freely regardless of nationality, gender, age, culture or level within the company. This allowed GE to get every brain in the game and was responsible for the most profound changes in GE history.

Please read this book! It has not displaced any from my top five books that everyone should read, but it is very worthwhile. Dentists, laboratory technicians, their staffs and anyone who wants to win at business the right way will enjoy Welch’s second effort. It is not a quick fix, short term or next day solution to anything. Perhaps that is one reason I liked it so much.  Doing the right things for the right reasons wins. Quality wins.