Jack Welch's new book - "Winning"

It had been a hectic last few days - both on personal and professional front. Phew. However, I managed to take some out to start reading Jack Welch's new book - "Winning". Only 100 more pages to go.

Though most of the stuff in the book are old-wine-in-old-cask, it has some good points. I think while reading the book it is better to keep in mind that the book is more of an validation of existing concepts rather than a collection of new concepts in management. So far, I found 3 sections interesting - budgeting, strategy and performance management.

1. Budgeting: It is the most interesting part of the book. I am impressed by the approach suggested by Jack. It is not easy to institutionalize such an radical approach to budgeting. Typically it will take years to implement the new approach. But if a CEO is convinced that it is right thing to do then certainly it can be done, however painful may be the process of convincing others. It will be good to find out if any firm (other than GE) is using such an approach to budgeting.

2. Strategy: The message is clear - "Keep it simple". But, I feel, the whole section about strategy is colored by his experience in GE. The examples and suggestions are more tilted towards firms that look similar to GE [organizations in a well established industry]. The overall message of keeping the strategy simple and focus more on execution is consistent with thinking of other real world leaders such as Lou Gerstner. Now I think all my MBA-consultant friends are going to root for my blood :-)

3. Performance Management: I have been looking for an effective performance management approach for almost 4 years now. My problem is that I can point out all the problems in the approaches used by various firms but I don't have any solution. Jack's 20-70-10 approach to performance management has some merit. I guess it will work well for senior executives. But at operational level and junior management level, I still don't have an answer.

This book is a definite improvement over his earlier book - Straight from the Gut.