If you judge books by their covers, Jack Welch's Winning certainly grabs your attention. Testimonials on the back come from none other than Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rudy Giuliani, and Tom Brokaw, and other praise comes from Fortune, Business Week, and Financial Times. As the legendary retired CEO of General Electric, Welch has won many friends and admirers in high places. In this latest book, he strives to show why. Winning describes the management wisdom that Welch built up through four and a half decades of work at GE, as he transformed the industrial giant from a sleepy "Old Economy" company with a market capitalization of $4 billion to a dynamic new one worth nearly half a trillion dollars.

Welch's first book, Jack: Straight from the Gut, was structured more as a conventional CEO memoir, with stories of early career adventures, deals won and lost, boardroom encounters, and Welch's process and philosophy that helped propel his success as a manager. In Winning, Welch focuses on his actual management techniques. He starts with an overview of cultural values such as candor, differentiation among employees, and inclusion of all voices in decision-making. In the second section he covers issues around one's own company or organization: the importance of hiring, firing, the people management in between, and a few other juicy topics like crisis management. From there, Welch moves into a discussion of competition, and the external factors that can influence a company's success: strategy, budgeting, and mergers and acquisitions. Welch takes a more personal turn later with a focus on individual career issues--how to find the right job, get promoted, and deal with a bad boss--and then a final section on what he calls "Tying Up Loose Ends." Those interested in the human side of great leaders will find this last section especially appealing. In it, Welch answers the most interesting questions that he's received in the last several years while traveling the globe addressing audiences of executives and business-school students. Perhaps the funniest question in this section comes at the very end, posed originally by a businessman in Frankfurt, who queried Welch on whether he thought he'd go to heaven (we won't give away the ending).

Straight from America's CEO

If the Dallas Cowboys are America's team and Rudy Giuliani is America's Mayor, then Jack Welch can rightfully be considered America's CEO. There are few CEOs with a higher profile and few companies with a more respected management culture.

In Winning, Jack imparts the tricks of the management trade that he learned during his years at the head of one of America's biggest companies. This book is his response to the thousands of questions he has received on the speaking circuit since retirement, most of which he distills to one: "what does it take to win?"

The book largely eschews management theory and is relentlessly practical. In his chapter on strategy, Welch writes "you just should not make strategy too complex." Later in the chapter he advises "If you want to win, when it comes to strategy, ponder less and do more."

Winning is also extremely self-referential, as personal stories from Welch's time at GE fill the pages. This tends to skew the benefits from reading slightly in favor of managers of large companies, but there are nuggets of wisdom available to leaders at companies of any size.

The final section on "Your Career" was a little disappointing, but the most valuable portions of the book are Welch's take on managing people. From the 20-70-10 practice at GE to motivating and hiring and firing, everyone who manages people will find tips to become more effective.

I once heard a CEO remark that he started carrying this book around in his briefcase because he was referencing it so often. It might be a little heavy for most people, but read it and you may want to carry it around too.

Read between the lines!

Who wants to be a winner?

Or rather, what makes a winner?

Reading this book superficially anf you will enjoy Jack's take on a variety of issues from M&As to Six sigma to candor. Yet you may come away somewhat disappointed especially if you want to know 'how to.'

But read between the lines and you'll find that it is a winner's mentality that will set you apart from the pack. That is, your approach to various issues confronting you job, your career, your life.

No doubt Jack's wealth of experience is something one can learn from, and the reader is well advised to open his/her mind to the infinite possibilities.

Understand Welch's management and professional success

I was expecting a book that merely covered some historical references to some of his business activities and perhaps contained some general platitudes. However, this book makes bold statements about broad policies you should take both as a manager and a leader. It's written with the straightforward, focused-topic style that I would expect from a management tome from the HBR - no surprise given his wife's past experiences.

I would highly recommend this to managers, particularly for his elements of pragmatism (around six sigma and bad bosses) and the fuzzy pieces (on people management, strategy, and mission/values).