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Jack: Straight from the Gut (Unabridged)
 
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Jack: Straight from the Gut (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

by Jack Welch (Author), John A. Byrne (Author), Mike Barnicle (Narrator)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Audio Download
  • Listening Length: 14 hours
  • Program Type: Audiobook
  • Version: Unabridged
  • Publisher: Hachette Audio
  • Audible Release Date: 20 July 2001
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B002SQ3XRG
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
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Product Description

As CEO of General Electric for the past 20 years, Jack Welch has built its market cap by more than $450 billion and established himself as the most admired business leader in the world. His championing of initiatives like Six Sigma quality, globalization, and e-business have helped define the modern corporation. At the same time, he is a gutsy boss who has forged a unique philosophy and an operating system that relies on a "boundary-less" sharing of ideas, an intense focus on people, and an informal, give-and-take style that makes bureaucracy the enemy.


In anecdotal detail and with self-effacing humor, Jack Welch gives us the people who shaped his life (most notably his mother) and the big hits and the big misses that characterized his career. Starting at GE in 1960 as an engineer earning $10,500, Jack learned the need for "getting out of the pile" when his first raise was the same as everyone else's. He stayed out of the corporate bureaucracy while running a $2 billion collection of GE businesses - in a sweater and blue jeans - out of a Hilton in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.


After avoiding GE's Fairfield, Connecticut headquarters for years, Jack was eventually summoned by then-Chairman Reg Jones, who was planning his succession. There ensued one of the most painful parts of his career - Jack's dark-horse struggle, filled with political tension, to make it to the CEO's chair. A hug from Reg confirmed Jack was the new boss - and started the GE transformation. The riveting story of his last year - the elaborate process of selecting a successor and the attempt to buy Honeywell - is also told in compelling detail.


This is classic Jack Welch: down to earth, powerful, and filled with common sense.

©2001 by Jack Welch; (P)2001 by Time Warner AudioBooks

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
This guy created more shareholder wealth than anyone else ever... this is a great run down of what he did and why he did it. It isn't a management textbook, but if you read between the lines, you can infer what it was that made him great. My take is a complete intolerance of mediocrity and a focus so total it's scary. Read it - it's long, but quick and light and peppered with anecdotes.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
As a frequent flyer I often look for books that are informative and an easy read ... this fits the bill perfectly.

"Jack" offers a wonderful insight into the life of a CEO.

This book not only provides practical descriptions of how some of GE's great improvement programmes (six sigma, boundaryless behaviour, globalisation) were conceptualised and implemented but also outlines the amazing career of a young man from Irish immigrant parents to arguably one of the worlds' most succesful CEOs.

His frank and candid admissions of the mistakes he made throughout his long career (blowing up a factory, arrogance, hiring the wrong guy) not only represent a refreshing departure from the norm, but are also used to explain much of his later behaviour and success.

I would highly recommend this to anyone looking skywards to that CEO spot.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
It's now been almost 6 months since I read "Jack: What I've Learned Leading a Great Company and Great People", and I still almost daily find myself pondering on, and referring to, Neutron Jack's inspirational book. When I started reading the book I obviously expected a lot of american self-glorification and not least justification, but what I hadn't expected was the utter abundance of anecdotes and candid views on anything from the game of golf over family matters to what it's all about: big business! And here's the story from the Jedi-master of Big Business. This book takes you from his childhood days as a caddy for the "suits" at the local golf-club, through the accidental blowing up of a manufacturing unit, to high times with the big boys in business and politics.

And if you, like me, have a degree in business, order this book now. Never before have management tools and ideas been presented to you with such logics and candid hindsight realisation. Jack Welch's 20 years as CEO and Chairman of The General Electric Company, the biggest corporation in the world, proves that his ideas and leadership made the difference!

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
From the Gut
Haven't read many books since I left Uni, some 20 yrs ago, but I found this book so interesting and informative that I finished it in 2 wks and purchased 2 more by the same author.
Published 10 months ago by Sean B
My first business autobiography
This was the first business autobiography I read. Even though I owned a print back in my country, I had to revisit this book and got it for the second time. Read more
Published 12 months ago by UNI-student
Interesting book
A good book to read. Interesting to see how others run a large business. Easy read and something you can pick up and read again and again.Great value and great service.
Published on 9 Feb 2010 by MG0007
Straight from the gut
The item arrived quite promptly but the condition was not quite as I expected but nonetheless it is in acceptable condition.
Published on 30 Dec 2009 by Mr. And Mrs D. Clarke
People Are Important To Business
Jack Welch was Chairman and CEO of General Electric for twenty years and this is a book about his time from joining to leaving the company that became his life. Read more
Published on 29 April 2005 by Curns
Jack Has the Last Word
Review Summary: This autobiography of Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001, primarily focuses on the key initiatives (such as focusing on... Read more
Published on 17 July 2004 by Donald Mitchell
How much time do you want to spend reading?
Good book, interesting stories, lots of great information, but terribly long winded! If you are just looking for the nuts and bolts part of the philosophy, I suggest the much... Read more
Published on 25 Sep 2003 by S. Carbrey
Great book, bad philosophy
Fast paced and full of energy, JW lets you feel each of his internal promotions and business deals with him . Read more
Published on 24 Jan 2003 by C. Edwards
A view of corporate America from the inside
In the Cult of the CEO, Jack Welch is a High Priest. This book reveals how he rose within GE and subsequently transformed it. Read more
Published on 4 Jan 2003 by C. M. Perkins
Great read...
This book is about a legendary CEO who started as a simple student. It shows how he climbs the ladder and takes the company to the highest-high GE experienced. Read more
Published on 16 Dec 2002 by Ahmar Abbas
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