Book Review: Winning by Jack and Suzy Welch

Winning by Jack Welch and Suzy Welch was a book I wouldn't have selected myself. I got this book to my bookshelf while ago and decided to take it with me to a business trip. Book is about Jack Welch thoughts and for that reason book review is also mainly about Jack Welch.

Book itself is written in okay way and it's quite easy to read. Jack Welch is not that controversial person, but his position in business world has been so unique that I think his experience and thoughts are really suitable only for handful of people in the world. Years heading GE there where always 300 000 - 400 000 people working for him. That's quite unusual.

It's pretty hard to criticize a man who raised company value 4000% in 20 years. Still it's hard to say how much of the success is really coming from him. As an example, he mentioned in the book that he has experience in over 1000 acquisitions. If you count that those are from 20 years, when he was the CEO, it would mean 4 acquisitions in a month. With that kind of frequency his contribution to those must have been quite small.

I did enjoy some parts of the book. I love the way he tries to raise the importance of HR and hiring. He gives good tips about hiring and detecting the talent.

For me the best thing about this book was, that there is and will be people who are all about money and power. This book helps understanding them. I don't really want to work with them or become one of them, but once in a while I might need to. It's always good to understand different people, no matter how differently you value things.

If you don't read a lot, I recommend to skip this book. I only finished it due to being in airplane without having anything better to do. It's not an important book so pick something else to read.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen