Jacked Up The Inside Story Of How Jack Welch Talked Ge Into Becoming The Worlds Greatest Company

Download or read book Jacked Up: The Inside Story of How Jack Welch Talked GE Into Becoming the World’s Greatest Company written by Bill Lane and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2008 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE GENIUS OF GE Bill Lane was Jack Welch's speechwriter for 20 years. In the first book by a GE insider, Lane shows that the real secret to Welch's immense success as a leader was Welch's ability as a master communicator. Welch launched a communications revolution that took GE from a ponderous supertanker of a company, to what Welch called a high speed “cigarette boat” capable of radical moves and rapid learning from the best institutions in the world. Jacked Up gives you a front row seat to Welch's twenty-year campaign to transform GE. Lane's first-hand, fly-on-the-wall account reveals some of Welch's most vivid and exciting moments, including: An analyst’s presentation in Florida, where Welch’s angry remarks ignited GE’s stock growth A packed GE classroom at Crotonville, N.Y., when Welch and Bob Nardelli decided to stop construction on a multimilliondollar investment based on a class presentation Welch’s frank—and hilarious—explanation for financial services superstar Gary Wendt’s departure from GE Meetings with his top advisors, where Welch dissed dull presenters and lavished kudos on articulate managers You'll learn Jack's simple, often brutally enforced guidelines for “making a great pitch”, and how Welch practiced them himself in his memorable appearances before employees, financial analysts and customers--and his zero-tolerance of BS. You'll witness laugh-out-loud-funny cameo appearances from boldface names like Southwest Airlines Herb Kelleher, Don Imus, Jack's ex-wife Jane Welch, Conan O'Brian, and “Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog”. And you'll understand exactly how every leader can master the art of communication, to teach and inspire, shock and provoke, all at the same time. This is Jack at his out-and-out best. This is the only book a leader or aspiring leader will ever need on effective communications.

Download or read book The Man Who Broke Capitalism written by David Gelles and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller New York Times reporter and “Corner Office” columnist David Gelles reveals legendary GE CEO Jack Welch to be the root of all that’s wrong with capitalism today and offers advice on how we might right those wrongs. In 1981, Jack Welch took over General Electric and quickly rose to fame as the first celebrity CEO. He golfed with presidents, mingled with movie stars, and was idolized for growing GE into the most valuable company in the world. But Welch’s achievements didn’t stem from some greater intelligence or business prowess. Rather, they were the result of a sustained effort to push GE’s stock price ever higher, often at the expense of workers, consumers, and innovation. In this captivating, revelatory book, David Gelles argues that Welch single-handedly ushered in a new, cutthroat era of American capitalism that continues to this day. Gelles chronicles Welch’s campaign to vaporize hundreds of thousands of jobs in a bid to boost profits, eviscerating the country’s manufacturing base, and destabilizing the middle class. Welch’s obsession with downsizing—he eliminated 10% of employees every year—fundamentally altered GE and inspired generations of imitators who have employed his strategies at other companies around the globe. In his day, Welch was corporate America’s leading proponent of mergers and acquisitions, using deals to gobble up competitors and giving rise to an economy that is more concentrated and less dynamic. And Welch pioneered the dark arts of “financialization,” transforming GE from an admired industrial manufacturer into what was effectively an unregulated bank. The finance business was hugely profitable in the short term and helped Welch keep GE’s stock price ticking up. But ultimately, financialization undermined GE and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies. Gelles shows how Welch’s celebrated emphasis on increasing shareholder value by any means necessary (layoffs, outsourcing, offshoring, acquisitions, and buybacks, to name but a few tactics) became the norm in American business generally. He demonstrates how that approach has led to the greatest socioeconomic inequality since the Great Depression and harmed many of the very companies that have embraced it. And he shows how a generation of Welch acolytes radically transformed companies like Boeing, Home Depot, Kraft Heinz, and more. Finally, Gelles chronicles the change that is now afoot in corporate America, highlighting companies and leaders who have abandoned Welchism and are proving that it is still possible to excel in the business world without destroying livelihoods, gutting communities, and spurning regulation.

Download or read book The End of Loyalty written by Rick Wartzman and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having a good, stable job used to be the bedrock of the American Dream. Not anymore. In this richly detailed and eye-opening book, Rick Wartzman chronicles the erosion of the relationship between American companies and their workers. Through the stories of four major employers -- General Motors, General Electric, Kodak, and Coca-Cola -- he shows how big businesses once took responsibility for providing their workers and retirees with an array of social benefits. At the height of the post-World War II economy, these companies also believed that worker pay needed to be kept high in order to preserve morale and keep the economy humming. Productivity boomed. But the corporate social contract didn't last. By tracing the ups and downs of these four corporate icons over seventy years, Wartzman illustrates just how much has been lost: job security and steadily rising pay, guaranteed pensions, robust health benefits, and much more. Charting the Golden Age of the '50s and '60s; the turbulent years of the '70s and '80s; and the growth of downsizing, outsourcing, and instability in the modern era, Wartzman's narrative is a biography of the American Dream gone sideways. Deeply researched and compelling, The End of Loyalty will make you rethink how Americans can begin to resurrect the middle class. Finalist for the Los Angeles Times book prize in current interestA best business book of the year in economics, Strategy+Business

Download or read book Flying Blind written by Peter Robison and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESS BEST SELLER • A suspenseful behind-the-scenes look at the dysfunction that contributed to one of the worst tragedies in modern aviation: the 2018 and 2019 crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX. An "authoritative, gripping and finely detailed narrative that charts the decline of one of the great American companies" (New York Times Book Review), from the award-winning reporter for Bloomberg. Boeing is a century-old titan of industry. It played a major role in the early days of commercial flight, World War II bombing missions, and moon landings. The planemaker remains a cornerstone of the U.S. economy, as well as a linchpin in the awesome routine of modern air travel. But in 2018 and 2019, two crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 killed 346 people. The crashes exposed a shocking pattern of malfeasance, leading to the biggest crisis in the company’s history—and one of the costliest corporate scandals ever. How did things go so horribly wrong at Boeing? Flying Blind is the definitive exposé of the disasters that transfixed the world. Drawing from exclusive interviews with current and former employees of Boeing and the FAA; industry executives and analysts; and family members of the victims, it reveals how a broken corporate culture paved the way for catastrophe. It shows how in the race to beat the competition and reward top executives, Boeing skimped on testing, pressured employees to meet unrealistic deadlines, and convinced regulators to put planes into service without properly equipping them or their pilots for flight. It examines how the company, once a treasured American innovator, became obsessed with the bottom line, putting shareholders over customers, employees, and communities. By Bloomberg investigative journalist Peter Robison, who covered Boeing as a beat reporter during the company’s fateful merger with McDonnell Douglas in the late ‘90s, this is the story of a business gone wildly off course. At once riveting and disturbing, it shows how an iconic company fell prey to a win-at-all-costs mentality, threatening an industry and endangering countless lives.

Download or read book A History of Leadership written by Morgen Witzel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The evolution of leadership into a widely accepted concept occurred without any shared understanding and acceptance of its meaning and relevance in contemporary society. Why do some people become leaders? What is the source and legitimacy of leadership power? This book journeys into the heart of the relationship between leaders and followers, the social space and the arena where both contest and collaboration take place and leadership itself is played out. In the book, Morgen Witzel moves beyond traditional traits and skills framing, offering a fresh, historical analysis that involves many different actors with different motives and needs. By analysing the evolution of power relationships, the book analyses the interactions around how power is used and control is bargained for to illuminate the centrepiece of leadership. A wide-ranging history of a slippery subject, this book provides students, scholars and reflective practitioners with an empirical, historical base on which to test their own ideas and experiences.

Download or read book The Rules of Influence written by William D. Crano and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Look out, Goliath—David has a training manual! . . . One of the best books on social psychology ever written." ---Daniel Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Stumbling on Happiness No one doubts the power of the majority. It makes the rules and enforces them, and most of us are willing to go along with it, most of the time. But what happens when you're not? What about when the issue is so important to you that you're willing to take on the naysayers? It doesn't matter if you're trying to sell a new product or service, persuade colleagues to try out a new business plan, start a revolution, or simply convince your family where to go for dinner. In all of these cases you're going up against the majority, and more often than not your efforts are going to come up short. Or at least that was the case before Dr. William Crano—an expert in the field of influence—applied the science of persuasion to those moments when you find yourself outnumbered and overmatched. By doing so, he has discovered proven strategies, such as working from the inside and changing the game from subjective preferences to objective decisions, and distilled these strategies and more into an extraordinary collection of rules that radically affect the likelihood of success. The Rules of Influence—the most powerful guide to being persuasive even under the most inhospitable conditions—gives you the tools to overcome overwhelming odds and take back control in every situation.

Download or read book Organizational Communication written by Dennis K. Mumby and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organizational Communication: A Critical Approach is the first textbook in the field that is written from a critical perspective while providing a comprehensive survey of theory and research in organizational communication. The text familiarizes students with the field of organizational communication—historically, conceptually, and practically—and challenges them to reconsider their common sense understandings of work and organizations, preparing them for participation in 21st century organizational settings. Linking theory with practice, Mumby skillfully explores the significant role played by organizations and corporations in constructing our identities. The book thus provides important ways for students to critically reflect on their own relationships to work, consumption, and organizations.