Jack

Straight from the Gut

By: Jack Welch, John A. Byrne

Narrated by: Mike Barnicle

Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

As CEO of General Electric for the past 20 years, Jack Welch has built its market cap by more than $450 billion and established himself as the most admired business leader in the world. His championing of initiatives like Six Sigma quality, globalization, and e-business have helped define the modern corporation. At the same time, he is a gutsy boss who has forged a unique philosophy and an operating system that relies on a "boundary-less" sharing of ideas, an intense focus on people, and an informal, give-and-take style that makes bureaucracy the enemy.

In anecdotal detail and with self-effacing humor, Jack Welch gives us the people who shaped his life (most notably his Irish mother) and the big hits and the big misses that characterized his career. Starting at GE in 1960 as an engineer earning $10,500, Jack learned the need for "getting out of the pile" when his first raise was the same as everyone else's. He stayed out of the corporate bureaucracy while running a $2 billion collection of GE businesses - in a sweater and blue jeans - out of a Hilton in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

After avoiding GE's Fairfield, Connecticut headquarters for years, Jack was eventually summoned by then-Chairman Reg Jones, who was planning his succession. There ensued one of the most painful parts of his career - Jack's dark-horse struggle, filled with political tension, to make it to the CEO's chair. A hug from Reg confirmed Jack was the new boss - and started the GE transformation. The riveting story of his last year - the elaborate process of selecting a successor and the attempt to buy Honeywell - is also told in compelling detail.

This is classic Jack Welch: down to earth, powerful, and filled with common sense.

©2001 by Jack Welch (P)2001 by Time Warner AudioBooks

Critic reviews

"As a self-portrait of one of America's most successful modern business leaders, Jack is remarkable for its candor." (Ther Economist)

If your in business it is a Must Read

Probably the best management book you can read. It demonstrates that a company is nothing more then a box which contains people. People are the company and without "good" people you have nothing. The quality of people is everything and Jack takes this theory to the maximum.

Needs an update; but great

This is a great autobiography. It probably needs an update as this was written in 2000 to 2001. However, charts his course from early large to the end of his career at GE. If you are interested in business this will interest you.

great book on an accomplished man

Jack straight from the gut is a great autobiography A man who accomplished amazing things.

Amazing and interesting!

Excellent read. So many experiences told by one of the foremost business executives in history. Every chapter teaches somethig valuable.

Great Insight

A good business book that both is interesting walking through the management life of Jack Welsh, but also giving some great tips and tricks for everyday management. It is not about agreeing with all the approaches but getting more selections for your work tool box… I highly recommend.

Necessary for Managers

Jack story is one of epic proportions. He is a man who is obviously humble and food grew up in a time where managers had more flexibility. I really appreciated the lessons that I learned from the book!

the story of one of America's great CEO's

the biography of Jack Welsh and recent history of GE. a very interesting insight into the life of a CEO in one of America's largest companies. very good read for any manager.

Powerful compelling!

I loved it! I enjoy hearing the thoughts of leaders while going from small & insignificant to great and powerful!. Show the warts & blemishes ( mistakes), as well as the great ideas & great successes.

A little substance. But just a little.

There are some truly important and different ideas in this book about managing your career and managing a company. All tied together, however, those moments account for only about an hour of this book. The rest comes across as a self-congratulatory ode to Jack Welch and GE. It gets more than a little old in a hurry.

The Hatchet Man.......

Would you try another book from Jack Welch and John A. Byrne and/or Mike Barnicle?

Definitely not, I don't give a fig for Jack Welch's personal life. I expected to hear about how he made GE work better, not how he threw his family over because he grew apart from them, his sleeping habits with a woman much younger than himself, his mother and father, row home living , and how he was just a regular guy.
HOW DID HE MAKE GE work better. IMO it wasn't there. Sounded to much like a "come clean and get all this off my chest" story instead of the get it done mechanics of making a bureaucratic intense organization -- that does stupid, cost inefficient things all the way up the food chain --work at the root.

What aspect of Mike Barnicle’s performance would you have changed?

Mr. Barnicle did a good job of reading,.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

The parts that really talked to the very dramatic reorganization and restructuring of GE. Can't deny that part the guy got right and GE employees were the big winners; they had good jobs and were part of something great for awhile. But, I have to add -- I know an appliance repair man that wouldn't give a dollar for GE products; of course that's now -- not when "Hatch" was at the wheel.