Customer Reviews
7 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
 Sickening, Horrible, better term may loosing... , Apr 27, 2023
I was carefully going line by line to find out where is the hidden message for winning. After going through the book I was trying hard to recollect where is the clue for winning in this book. Most of the stuff in this book are not new, you will find them everywhere in other business books.
it looks like author try hard to hire only winners. In his hiring process, he hired 50% winners initally, then later in his career , he sharpened the process to hire 80% winners. As per his strategy, those 20% who are not winners, whom he hired by mistake are "let Go" (Authors term for firing...)
I have read many such books, I never had a sickening feeling like this book. There is nothing motivational or new info in this book.
I would request the author to withdraw this book from market and rewrite with civiliased strategies for winning..
7 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
Boring Nonsense., Apr 27, 2023
WINNING is not destined to become the bible of business for generations to come. It ambiguously and laboriously gives confusing the answers to the most easy, trivial questions people face on the job. Welch's aim is to lecture people at every level of the organization. His audience is clueless line workers, college students, MBAs, project managers and senior executives. He lays out obvious business "principles" and devotes most of WINNING to the pointless aspects work. Welch's grim, excuse-ridden mind set is boring. His goal is to hinder anyone and everyone who has a passion for success.
10 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
 Insightful At Times, but Mostly Superficial, Apr 26, 2023
Jack Welch clearly is a legendary business leader; however, a great writer he is not. The book offers a few insights - eg. the power of corporate vision and value, budgeting and rewarding performance in the real (dynamic) world - but his book is not nearly as specific and helpful as Larry Bossidy's (Welch's former #2) "Confronting Reality," and "Execution." Sadly, the book also does not reference how Welch greatly simplified planning and accountability by getting rid of the planners, and instead focusing on fast reaction - a lesson that some firms, government and public education still need to learn.
In addition, Welch does not address the vast changes simplifying much of management in the last few years. The job has become primarily one of reducing costs - especially by shifting work away from Americans. This is accomplished by:
1)Maximizing outsourcing (eg. to Canada - primarily to avoid U.S. healthcare costs; to China and India - primarily to greatly reduce production labor, call-center, and design and programming costs,
2)Maximizing use of illegal immigrants within the U.S. - eg. in the meatpacking, construction, and other food-processing and food-serving areas,
3)Maximizing use of legal temporary immigrants within the U.S. - eg. Indian citizens with H-1B and L1 visas in areas such as electronics design and manufacturing, and computer programming.
4)Maximizing use of aggressive accounting - eg. capitalizing expenses, pre-booking revenues, creating new entities to "hide" excess debt etc., and taking "special write-offs" wherever possible.
5)Minimizing exposure to risk of major commodity price increases - eg. large-scale futures buying of aviation fuel.
Further American worker head-count reductions are accomplished by implementing new IT systems, and consolidating divisions, functions (eg. personnel, IT, procurement), products, components, and suppliers. Cost reductions for those remaining American employees can be achieved by reducing salaries (eg. competitive contracting out "non-core" functions - defined as broadly as possible), health-care benefits (through increasing worker contributions) and pensions (eg. via switching from "defined benefit" to "defined contribution" plans. And then all the preceding measures are forced through the supply chain by requesting price reductions and/or the "China price."
Finally, leveraging tax reductions, abatements, pension plan takeovers, exemptions from lawsuit liability and various regulations (eg. EPA, OSHA) and various other "freebies" from government has also become another major modern "management skill" (eg. via threatening or actually moving production and/or headquarters; making large campaign donations) that Welch fails to reference in "Winning."
In summary, "Winning" is somewhat interesting, but mostly superficial and irrelevant. And "winning" is no longer a skill to be proud of, worth multi-million dollar payouts to CEOs, nor good for America.
5 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
 Great Read, Good Advice, Apr 24, 2023
As someone just starting out, this book was both insightful and useful. Though the advice seems to be largely a rehash of speaking engagements, it is well thought out and organized. It is compact and easily readable- a wonderful follow up to Mr. Welch's first effort.
9 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
 Maybe I'm just too cynical, but..., Apr 22, 2023
My first impression was that this was just another feel good, motivational book. But once I got into the book I quickly found out that I was right.
I hate to give any book a bad review, but I have read so many of these motivational books and they are all the same. this one was no different. They leave you motivated for a little while but leave you with very litte practical knowledge. However, I can't completely recommend against this book as it may be of great benefit to many people. I'm probably just a little too jaded for Winning.
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Based on 44 reviews.