Rating: 
Summary: Very good book for GE lovers
Review: GE is a great company and Jack Welch spent nearly 20 yrs of his life with GE in various roles. We learn a lot from this book: about Jack's management style, about effective communications, and about GE itself. What makes this company so good that it keeps up with its investors expections quarter after quarter? You get some good insights about this great company from this book. Must read for management buffs!
Rating: 
Summary: Jack Straight from the Gut
Review: Jack Straight fron the Gut by Jack welch is a must read for managers who want to keep their companies on the cutting edge and don't mind being ruthless in the process. Welch shares with readers the strategies he used to successfully lead General Electric to the dawn of the twenty-first century as a forward looking company on the grow, instead of a tired has been. The old Frank Sanatra song "I did it My Way" aptly describes how Welch feels he led. Leading from a locus of who he is rather than who others felt he should be, he became an authentic leader. Uncomfortable with bureaucracy, he reduced it. He set clear goals for his company: be one or two in the business conducted; if not, fix, sell or close it. Early in hos administration Welch eliminated nearly 20 percent of his workforce earning the title Neutron Jack. He didn't stop there.After divesting the company of unworthy business he proceeded tp flatten the structure, and institute a continuous improvement program dividing staff into A, B, and C palyers. Promote A, grow B and say goodbye to C, oh and by the way, at least 10% of your organization is C. They have got to go! Don't stop there, repeat the process each year. "A" players after reading this book you will want to make sure your boss has a copy. Employees, if after reading this book you think you could be a "C" employee, you will want to hope that your boss never sees this rag. Welch included examples of his management rating tool and explains how he scored the A, B, and C managers. Managing a wide ranging product line supported by a multinational workforce equal to a large city scattered around the globe could be a challenge, Welch's goal was to make the group boundaryless and entrepurnerial. This titan of business is a living textbook of what to do right to succeed. Did he do everything right? No. He shares some of his spectacular failures, including blowing the roof off a GE building early in his career, and reveals what he learned from them. This is not an erudite tome, the style is a bit more like being in Welch's living room listening to him ruminate over his life's work. Although heavy on the ego (Jack's), it is more than just an autobiography it is a leadership training manual.
Rating: 
Summary: Do NOT waste your time with this book
Review: Where to begin! This is a very poorly written book. It is written at about a 7th grade reading level. The primary saving grace being that this makes it read very quickly. For a figure as controversial and prominent as Jack Welch, a reader has the right to expect some insights and introspection about the challenges both corporate and private faced by Mr. Welch. Instead, we are treated to a superficial and largely hagiographic recounting of Mr. Welch's successes. If the adage that 'we learn from our mistakes' is true, then its hard to see from this book, what Mr. Welch learned in his rise to power. Most of the insight we gain into Mr. Welch in reading this book, comes from what is left out (the strains that caused his divorce, the details of the political machinations in the race for chairmanship, his thoughts on what he is owed in his severance package, his feelings about the disparity between corporate executive pay and worker pay). It is also informative to see what he does spend time discussing. For example, Mr. Welch seems to have a high school star athlete's braggadacio about how popular he was with women after his first divorce. He seems completely thrilled about how his wealth (as opposed to more matured values) attracts younger, attractive women. Once he gets engaged to his second wife, he blithely glosses over the 'fact' that an executive's wife, is a full time job that requires his wife-to-be to give up a very succesfull career. Mr. Welch offers no insight into what his feelings about the equity of the roles are, what this sort of 'good woman behind every succesful man' myth implies for the career paths of women. All in all, this is an extremely shallow hagiography that offers insights more from what it avoids touching on, than what it actually discusses. Not worth the toothpicks you need to keep your eyes open while reading this.
Rating:
Summary: I wonder . . .
Review: There are many books about Jack Welch and all of them show and teach the corporate strategies and tactics this legendary manager implemented while at GE. Most of those titles portrait Welch as the successful business person everybody would like to be. However, I would like to warn the reader that the professional success of famous CEOs cost them their families. It's hard to believe how Welch was able to manage thousands of relations with millions of people at GE, while on the other side he failed on a relation with only one person: his wife. By the way, how many wives has he had??? Is that success??? In which planet??? Now about the book . . . it's a good title but only read it if you have never before read a title about Jack Welch or GE; if you had, it's more about the same old stuff, and I would recommend your spending your money in a smarter way.
Rating:
Summary: You are the best Jack
Review: I feel priveliged to have had the opportunity to read Jack's book. This man is the most inspirational corporate leader of our times. Read his book!
Rating: 
Summary: Tad Boring
Review: Welch talks himself up too much and does not look at his weaknesses. Wouldn't buy this is give the rich guy more money -- he has more than enough.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting look at both Welch's successes and mistakes
Review: Enjoyed JACK: STRAIGHT FROM THE GUT by Jack Welch
with John A. Byrne, the story of Welch's career at
General Electric from 1960 until his retirement in the fall of 2001. I particularly liked the book's honesty . . . Welch describes
his successes, sometimes in a bit too much detail, but also
his mistakes . . . and he talks about how he learned from them. You really get the feel that this is a guy you'd like to work for; i.e., if you can live up to his high standards and deliver results . . . but if you can't, then watch out! You can also feel the passion that Welch brought to his
career at General Electric, as well as his loyalty to
both his friends and the organization. There were many memorable passages; among them:
Gutoff's recognition-that he considered me different and special
made a powerful impression. Ever since that time, differentiation has been a basic part of how I manage. That standard raise I got over four decades ago has probably driven my behavior to an extreme. But differentiation is all about being extreme, rewarding the best and weeding out the ineffective. Rigorous differentiation delivers real stars-and stars build great businesses. If I learned anything about making this easier, it's seeing to it that no one should ever be surprised when they are asked to leave. By the time I met with managers I was about to replace, I would have had at least two or three conversations to express my disappointment and to give them the chance to turn things around. I would follow up every business review with a handwritten note. "Let's wallow in this" was a phrase I often used. It meant getting people together, often spontaneously, to wrestle through a complex issue. The sole ticket for admission was know-how, not titles or positions. We wallowed in public relations problems, environmental issues, Boca agendas, and big M&A deals. The idea was to get fresh thinking without
paper and memos, then sit on the conclusions for a night, wallowing some more. From wallowing came some of our best decisions. It was all about breaking down the concept of hierarchy. Everyone knew they were equal partners at the table, where their ideas could be thrown out with informality and candor.
Rating:
Summary: A PERSONAL ACCOUNT, RATHER THAN MANAGEMENT LESSONS
Review: Welch is definitely one of the top managers in the U.S., at least as far as popularity goes. From this book, we are able to see that he is a man of vision and strong will, both of which he uses to lead GE in a period of great growth. I was a little disappointed by the lack of detail on many sections, such as Six Sigma and other GE management innovations, which I expected to find in this book. I found it to be much more of a history than an analysis text, which is okay for readability (hence the 4 stars), but does not help much in drawing interesting lessons. Given this man's significance to the stock market exuberance and the star CEO mania of the 1990s, I think it is an important book to help one understand the time. The concise style is also a plus.
Rating:
Summary: Bla bla bla bla.........
Review: Well...the first few chapters were excellent!!! What a brilliant guy but that book could have been condensed into half of what they printed!!! He continued to say the same things over and over again...until I finally had to put him back on the shelf...unfinished!
Rating: 
Summary: A strictly ok book
Review: The book is not that great. It does have some really good stuff in it - like the grading proces for employees and the question he was asked before he became the premier of the company - but the book failed to capture my attention. I couldnt even complete reading the book in three sittings.
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