Winning Jack Welch (with Suzy Welch) Harper Collins, 2005 - Book Report/Review Example

Winning Jack Welch Thesis The book is about how to keep your business booming. The book contains organization and management approach to keep business successful. It’s not only about managing organization but about people as well. Leadership is not about having degrees rather it’s about doing the right thing at right time. All questions related to the business sector come down to one basic question. “What does it takes to win”. As companies win, economy flourishes and boom. When economy flourishes, people grow. They are able to give back to the society. It makes the society a better place. Wining companies and employees is important for healthy and booming economy. The book is about helping ambitious people win. It’s about ideas and their implementation (Welch, and Welch 1-9). Central pillars The first lesson I learned is candor. It also tells about how candor helps in rising people in the organization. If you don’t communicate well internally, you are your own worst enemy. Candor helps the business in being shaped in order and organized. It is against the human nature but still it is worth it. People usually keep their ideas to themselves to avoid argument and clash or to hold back bad news. Lack of candor blocks great ideas and speedy action. Lack of candor is damaging for the organization. Candor can lead to wining by three ways. Candor helps in generating many rich ideas. It helps in speeding the process. It helps in reducing meeting cost by replacing it with real conversation. To implement candor in organization it is necessary to encourage it by praising or rewarding it. Primarily it is important to for the boss to demonstrate it enthusiastically. Blunt and frank comments may upset and freak people out at first, but they are worth it. According to Jack Welch he was cautioned about his candor many times. But in reality it was candor which helped him in his career. So many people got in the game because of candor. So many ideas and so much energy were produced (Welch, and Welch 25-35). Six Sigma helps in raising productivity, improve operational effectiveness and reduces cost in an organization. It improves the design, makes the product available in market and builds customer loyalty. Six Sigma is a program to maintain or increase quality. It decreases cost and improves customer experience. In order to customers loyal and sticky, meeting or exceeding their expectations. Six Sigma is not about average; rather it is about controlling variation. It is about removing that variation from customer border. The goal is to remove anything that might cause waste, incompetence and irregularity. In general six sigma has two basic usages. It is used to remove variation in simple repetitive activities. Secondly it is to make sure that big and difficult tasks go right the first time. Level of training and learning for the implementation of first type of application is manageable. People should know what kind of specific information to gather and how to analyze it. This training also builds discipline and critical thinking. Every time an organization starts Six Sigma its financial situation improves and its management positions. The second application involves more difficult and advance training and analysis. Six Sigma is not for every department. It might make things more difficult. It is more effective for repetitive process and difficult new product designs. In some organizations management hire experts for Six Sigma. These experts freak out and scare other employees. For straight forward and simple projects there is no need for Six Sigma. The simplest definition of Six Sigma is that “variation is evil”. 60 percent is to understand the definition. Other 40 percent is to get the evil out (Welch, and Welch 245-251). The right budgeting process can change how an organization operates. Reinventing the procedure makes winning much easier. Usually, companies use negotiated settlement or a phony smile for budgeting approach.   Negotiated settlement is more commonly used. The people working in field have one simple objective and that is to increase their bonus and decrease their risk. In the meantime the senior management the agenda is opposite of the field. They are interested in major growth in sales and revenue. In the negotiated settlement, people in field comes to the senior management complaining about difficulty to growth and say they'll be trying their best to achieve more than 6 percent growth  The management disagrees and argues that they can grow 12 percent. They argue for awhile and finally settle on a goal of 9%.  They all feel that they did not get what they wanted. They are disappointed about the compromise. After the meeting when everyone leaves the field people are happy that they have to deliver only 9 percent. The management is happy that they let them off with 9 percent instead of 12 percent. They both make peace over their target Phony smile budgeting is filled with ideas and opportunities. In phony smile budgeting, the field people come to the senior management with grand plans, asking for the money to invest in their dreams. Management tells them that can give them only half of what they ask. Disheartened, the field team leader takes up the money from corporate and divides it to different departments. People get stuck in the Phony Smile budget game. They lose their dedication and loyalty to the company and forget about the initial enthusiasm during the process of the original proposals. They just take the money from organization and are unable to put it in any good use. According to Welch those types of budgets should answer two questions. How can we progress than last year's performance and what are our competitors doing, and how can we beat them? The organization should stretch goals instead of limiting the budgeted goals. Budget process can change the way organizations compete and fight. Budgeting should not be a evil (Welch, and Welch 189-204). Reflection on the book’s impact on the future manager The book gives insight on how a future manager should react. For leader and managers and leaders being your self are very important. The self confidence is important to overcome all the challenges. As the world is going so fast a leader should be filled with energy. He should be able to energize people. If you can’t motivate or excite them then you are not able to give them a hope or dream. Without hope there is no opportunity to succeed. A leader should be able to upgrade his team. He should inject self confidence in his team. Self confidence helps in taking risks and in achieving goals. Leader should communicate the vision not only to his colleagues but also to people working under him. There should be some kind on incentive like bonus to achieve the goal. The vision should be reinforced with bonus and rewards. He should be able to execute positive energy and confidence. Unhappy teams have less chances of winning. Leaders set up trust with frankness, transparency and credit. They never steal anyone’s idea calming it as theirs. He should be able to inform people where they stand in terms of their performance. He should have the courage to make unpopular and difficult decisions. He should have the courage to say the right thing. References Welch, Jack, and Suzy Welch. Winning. New York: HarperLargePrint, 2005. Print. Read More