An interesting biography of one of the greatest CEOs of all time. He grew General Electric into the biggest company on earth. I really enjoyed listening to this book, narrated by Welch. His management style was aggressive, go-getting, and all about what was best for the business.
One thing that disturbed me was the way he treated “subpar” employees. The top 20% received all kinds of (financial) incentives and rewards. The majority (mid 70%) of workers received commendation and continued employment. The bottom 10% were let go. Fired. While this may be an efficient way to run a company, it certainly isn’t exactly a humane one.
All in all, I enjoyed learning—straight from the chief himself—how he ran the world’s largest company.

We are usually the heroes of our own stories, and Jack Welch is no different. This is a story of the rise of a man at the helm of a massive corporation, peppered with some useful perspectives on strategy and decision-making. In between the lines you can pick up hints of the tradeoffs sometimes necessary to be a captain of corporate America - 2nd wife, jetset lifestyle, intensity and passion about optimizing profit margin that keeps you up to the wee hours cutting deals, surviving quadruple bypass surgery.... he loves GE and it was obviously his life. "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

I have sold to GE, and really enjoyed reading about what Jack did here. I doubt that his super meeting focused method would work in software, but it seems to have worked in GE. There is some debate now as to whether Jack Welch was a great of terrible CEO. I disagree with his pitting his subordinates against each other, and his choice of CEO basically destroyed the company (there is no more GE.) So I guess overall, I'd have to give him a poor grade. Perhaps like Steve Balmer of Microsoft. However, I loved the book and there is a lot of good advice in here.

PS - I used to sell to GE so it was fun for me to read about some of these people I heard about or met.

Having worked for RCA during the GE buyout, it was interesting to see his point of view.

Even though there are a lot of useful insights, I felt the book was way too long. There is a lot of dwelling in business details, such as acquisitions and implemented strategies (e.g. Six Sigma and e-business). Thousands of names, dates and numbers for revenues, growth, etc are thrown in up to the point that I got lost. I did enjoy the chapters of the first sections where he explains where he came from and the way leading to becoming CEO. The final three chapters, a reflection of the years as chairman, golf and the succession process are more personal than factual. I liked that.

It's always nice to hear what those at the top think. What I learned from Jack is to be good at a business I should take up golf.

If you are wondering what does the CEO do, then you have picked the right book.

Great autobiography of Jack's rise through GE, very open and frank, as well as insightful about what it's taken for him to succeed.

Biggest learnings are around:
t- people. That's key. Honest dialog about performance and unrelenting search for the best
t- ambition. Always looking for the next opportunity and always selling himself as the best person for each new role
t- deep dives. Not always, but often, drilling down deep into key areas and doing whatever it takes to understand them and add value

Well worth the read for anyone aspiring to management of large organizations.

When I started working as an Assistant manager with GE he was the CEO of GE. This book is an exceptional and truthful comprehension into the biggest corporation of that time.

This is a great book to understand the leadership and generic view, which is usually missing in lot of corporate leaders. This book of course not teaches you analytics and scientific methodologies but a great book from overall business acumen.

I started reading this book because of the good reputation of Jack Welch in Corporate America. As I was reading it, I did not find a lot of intriguing and relevant things to current day Corporate America. I am personally not very comfortable with the way Jack did a few things. If were to sum up in one sentence, Jack’s style of running the business was raw and new in last 2 decades of 20th century, however, I don’t think it works anymore

Main Takeaways
1. Passion is the most important quality to have as a leader. You obviously need so many other things but passion can make up for weaknesses.
2. If you spend your life always focused on work then you will lose your family.
3. Integrity is a necessity.
4. The role of a CEO is to set the cultural direction and drill your message into everyone's head. Everyone needs to be on the same page, even in a 300,000 people company.
5. Once you are no 1 or no 2 in your industry, change the parameters to make you only possess 10% of the market. Always provide more runway. This can be done by changing perspectives.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. Jack Welch is an animal and I have a lot of respect for the passion he brought everyday with him at GE. His dedication to self improvement, disgust for bureaucracy and gutsy moves made him one of America's greatest CEOs. Only critique I would have from Jack's life that I do not plan to imitate is his disregard for his family. It was clear where his priorities were and I have less respect for a man who cannot maintain his marriage.

One of my MBA professors kept on suggesting this book to learn about management and sales. So I got this book just to see what was there to learn. It is book about Jack Welch, CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world. How he reached that level and what it takes to be a leader has been discussed in many of the chapters. It is definitely a good read, as you are learning for somebody's experience. But I think this book just touched the surface of what all went on behind the scenes. So I was not exactly satisfied with this book. You may read it, because it does have some very good points.