TIP107: WINNING

BY JACK WELCH

7 October 2016

Most of the interviews and books that Preston and Stig read involve billionaires that created new products or services that changed or revolutionized the world.  In this episode, things are a little different.  Jack Welch might be one of the most famous CEOs in the world for his stellar leadership of General Electric.  During his time as the CEO (20 years), the company grew by 4,000%.  This track record was simply astounding compared the average rate of return experienced by most business leaders during the same period of time.

The reason Jack is a different case study than other successful people profiled on the podcast is because he was never a majority shareholder or controller of equity.  Instead he always acted in the subordinate roll as CEO to the board of directors.  Because of this vantage point, he provides a framework for helping junior or middle managers to achieve the same executive success he had for two decades.  If you would like to read a more detailed overview of Jack’s book, please checkout our free executive summary of Winning.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • How to rise to the top in the corporate world.
  • Why you should openly rank your employees and reward them accordingly.
  • How to provide feedback for your boss.
  • The one question you should ask to identify the best candidate for a job.
  • Why you should implement Lean Six Sigma.
  • Ask the investors: How much money do I need to start investing.

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TRANSCRIPT

Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.

Preston Pysh  1:04  

Hey, how’s everybody doing out there? This is Preston Pysh, and I’m your host for The Investor’s Podcast. And as usual, I’m accompanied by my co-host Stig Brodersen out in Seoul, South Korea. And today we’ve got a book for you. And this book is all about Jack Welch. 

Jack and his wife, Suzy Welch wrote this book. It’s called “Winning: the Ultimate Business How-to Book”. Before we chose this book, just so everyone knows, I’m pretty sure everybody out there knows who Jack Welch is. He is the former CEO of General Electric (GE). Very, very famous American CEO. His personal net worth is not a billion dollars, it’s around $720 million. So we really do try to read books that were from people that have a net worth of over a billion or has been recommended by that, but I think we can definitely make a exception to the rule with Jack Welch. So this book here was very good. 

The thing that I I’ll tell you if you’re listening to this show, and you’re looking for investment advice as far as like investing in stocks and bonds and that kind of stuff. You’re definitely not going to really get a lot of tips in that direction. But what you can use this book for is how to find good sound management in a business that you might be investing in. So that’s kind of the angle that we’re taking with this one. And for anybody that’s in middle management or lower management or anything like that, and you’re looking for, what is it that executives are wanting to see in me in order to rise to the next level within my company, this is also a fantastic book for that type of person that would be listening to the show. 

So Stig and I have this broken down into four different segments. This is how Jack has the book broken up. The title of the book is, “Winning”. Because Jack’s written a couple different books. This one had the best reviews on Amazon. This one was also recommended by Warren Buffett. On the title there, Warren Buffett highly endorses this version of one of the books that he’s written because he has a bunch of different ones out there. So that’s why we selected this one was really kind of the review process and it had a billionaire endorsement. Stig, did you have any top level highlights before we start digging into the book?

Stig Brodersen  3:11  

No, not all of them. I’m curious about this, Preston because, like you. I enjoyed the book. But I might have done that from a different angle. I think from a personal value perspective. I have had few books that I weigh out personally disagreed so much with the author as I did with this book. But at the same time, I’m for about Jack Welch and the accomplishments that he had. So it’s not like my place to say it’s not true what he’s saying. I just think like from a personal standpoint, I think the way he talks about corporations is just very, very different from how I see it. So I think that will be an interesting discussion between you and me as well, Preston.

Preston Pysh  3:49  

Did you like it? Because I liked the book. I don’t think it was the best book I’ve ever read. But it was decent. It was good.

Stig Brodersen  3:56  

I think I learned a few things but I think the way he looks at corporations and the place in society and how to behave inside a corporation, I think it’s also about to feel you can sustain your personal values. And the way that Jack Welch was looking at personal values and how to think like an employee and how to think like a manager. I think that’s very different from how I look at life, I guess. So I think that was really the big thing, but also the really challenging thing. Sometimes we might even read books, Preston, what we really feel like this is the gospel, like everything is just amazing about this. So I think the challenge of reading a book like this is amazing as well.

Preston Pysh  4:38  

Yeah. So when I was going through it, I was often thinking, and this is probably a bad thing to say, but he was more employee minded, if you will. He was always talking about it from like, “hey, if you’re at this lower level in the company, and you want to be an executive someday, this is how you got to act and this is how you got to perform in order to get there”. And I think you and I on the show focus a lot more on an owner’s perspective and not an employee perspective of kind of rising through the ranks. So it’s just an interesting dynamic. I mean, I completely agree with everything that he’s saying here is if you want to go from a lower level in your company and rise up, these are definitely things that are gonna help you get there. So let’s go ahead and dive in. And then we’ll talk about some different stuff as we go along. 

So the four sections are, “Underneath It All”, “Your Company”, “Your Competition”, and “Your Career”. And then he ties up a loose end at the very end. But really, the four categories are the ones that we mentioned here. 

So the first one is “Underneath It All”. This is broken down into four subsequent categories, “Mission and Values”, “Candor”, “Differentiation”, and “Voice in Dignity”. So Stig, I’m going to throw it over to you for the first comment, and we’ll go from there.

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