| Subcategories |
 |
Business & Investing |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will CD
written by Noel M. Tichy
Studio : HarperAudio
by HarperAudio
Release Date : 2001-09-04
Publisher : HarperAudio
Released : 2001-09-01
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 5
EAN : 9780694525768
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 12 reviews)
List Price : $29.95
Our Price : $8.21
|
|
| |
|
Product Description |
The Best Analysis of Jack Welch's GE, Now Freshly RevisedA business classic -- now completely revised -- hailed as the unofficial GELeadership handbook. Completely revised, with two new chapters by the authors, an added chapter-length interview with Jack Welch, plus the complete set of Welch's GE annual letters to shareholders, this title remains the classic CASE STUDY of how Welch transformed GE from a corporate dinosaur into one of the nimblest, most successful corporations in the world, and provides a useful handbook for effecting change in your business and your life. Since Welch became its CEO in 1981, GE has become one of the most successful companies of the late 20th century, increasing its market value from $13 billion to over $400 billion. Welch has been hailed by "60 Minutes" as the best executive in the world. This success can be attributed in large part to Jack Welch, GE's dynamic CEO who transformed the company from a bureaucratic behemoth into a fierce competitor in the global marketplace. Among the many books that have been written about GE, Control Your Destiny stands out. Its authors are uniquely qualified to explain Welch's transformation of GE and to explain the leadership lessons it reveals. Noel Tichy ran GE's Crotonville school during the start of the Welch era, while Stratford Sherman covered GE for Fortune magazine. Together, they study GE with a remarkable blend of inside knowledge and clear-eyed objectivity. Their narrative -- studied at business schools nationwide -- is extraordinarily thorough, thoughtful, and rich in insight. |
| |
|
| |
|
Reads like a fiction with Jack Welch as the Hero |
Hero worship this book is without shame. Sure, the book calls Jack Welch an "As***le" but it is spoken as a compliment. This highly antagonistic, argumentative, determined, intelligent, and energetic hero is indeed a first class "As***le" without apologies. He is the consummate proof that one needs to be an excellent "As***le" to be considered as a great CEO\manager. If you are one of the nice guys who wants to be gentle, cheerful, and sympathetic to your 80+hr/week working employees, forget it, you can't be a successful manager at GE. You need to be like Jack, and take all the credit for the hard work your underlings, and if any of them complain, you kick their fatass during their review which you are required to cut at least 5% of your staff.
Be a tough, bottom-line demanding, reality driven, confrontation seeking, slave driving, and kick assing manager. Otherwise, you will get your butt kicked by other first class manager\as***les. This is the primary lesson of "Control your destiny or someone else will".
On the business side, I found Jack's view on competitiveness ("if you don't have competitive advantage, don't compete") and productivity (productivity is the engine that drives profitability, job security, competitiveness, and higher pay) quite refreshing. |
| |
|
The title is somewhat misleading. |
This is maybe a 4 Star book - IF, and ONLY if, this is the first book on Jack Welch and GE you have picked up. If you have already read "Jack" skip it. There is nothing here that hasn't already been said elsewhere. I was disappointed how little "new" information was presented in this book.
If you are looking for something on the topic of controlling your own destiny this title is somewhat misleading.
|
| |
|
Decent read, lessons to be learned. |
This book looks dauntingly thick when you pick it up, but some brief exploration will show that including the interviews only 311 pages are the Jack Welch story-- the rest of the book is Afterword, GE Timeline, GE Shareholder Reports, Bibliography and finally a section meant to be applied to your own business. I suppose that there are readers out there who wanted that level of completeness in their history of GE. I did not. I stopped reading after the afterword.
The book covers GE during the period of Jack Welch's reign. Specifically, it charts his efforts in five major initiatives: Services, Six Sigma, Digitization, Succession, and the Honeywell acquisition.
I found it interesting and readable, although I was left with the feeling (despite the author's best efforts) that these were very difficult achievements to duplicate if you did not happen to be Jack Welch. Although ostensibly a business biography, I still had much more of a feel of personality than facts when I was done. I would have been pleased to have a less broad-ranging treatment which delved a little bit more deeply into some specific numbers and consequences. Although this information might have been contained in the investor reports, I had no patience to page through it and find the information. |
| |
|
An educational, yet entertaining, read |
|
I came into this book assuming a book on the history of Jack Welch's early years with GE. It ended up being much more and I was pleasantly surprised at the overall educational value of the book. The book is broken down into three "acts" which recount the years of Jack Welch - when and how he was made the CEO with GE, the early years of layoffs, the early resistance to his ideas, reorganization of GE, the need for globalization, and eventual acceptance of his ideas as he empowered GE's employees. Welch's ideas of empowering the employee encompassed such things as "boundarylessness", strong values, leadership, simplicity, and productivity. As the book progresses, the reader is provided with the real world GE examples that qualified Jack's ideas and their results. Nor does the book hold back from describing Jack's missteps and describes the lessons learned. Overall the book was a good read. The examples read as stories that both entertain and educate. Welch's ideas, as presented in Control Your Destiny, are probably now considered common sense business practices. The ideas seem simple today, yet were revolutionary for that time as you'll read. The end of the book provides a manual that can be used to carry out a similar revolution with your business and employees. I didn't really work my way through it - it seemed more appropriate for larger organizations. |
| |
|
Terrific |
|
Tichy is a guru of all gurus and he has a winner with this book. Highly recommended. |
| |
|
|
|
