I am now in the process of reading two excellent books authored by Jack Welch, Ex-CEO of GE and his wife Suzy Welch. The first book is called "Winning". It documents Jack WElch's enormous experiential knowledge and wisdom. It is a treasure trove of practical and extraordinarily simple solutions for day to day managerial issues. Jack propounds a methodology that is hard to implement but a sure route to organizational growth.
The two basic threads that I found intertwined in Welch's book were "Differentiation" and "Candour".
Differentiation advocates treating employees differently. This means we reward and appreciate overachievers while we give clearly lower rewards to underperformers. This sounds cruel at worst and biased at the very best. Not really. The under achievers are usually those who do not like their job. They are better off sent out as they may discover their true avocation only then.
Welch says its better to send them out in a boom rather than during a depression when cost cutting would throw out exactly these people, but at a time when job's are scarce.
Sending them out earlier on with good severance benefits would be a WIN/WIN for both the firm as well as the underperformer. These people are usually 10% of the total. But they spoil the rest.
The great performers would be about 20%. The rest are above average. This 70% needs to be watched, trained and motivated. They form the backbone of the company and are the leadership pool for succesion planning.
Candour is simply the good old habit of calling a spade a spade. Candour should be encouraged and practiced across the board so that problems get identified and escalated faster.
The other book is Winning: The Answers. This book contains answers to various questions that
Jack and Suzy had to answer during their speaking tours all over the world. It builds on the Wisdom of "Winning" and takes it forward.
There is a lot of the Seven Habits methodology in Jack Welch's approach.
The two basic threads that I found intertwined in Welch's book were "Differentiation" and "Candour".
Differentiation advocates treating employees differently. This means we reward and appreciate overachievers while we give clearly lower rewards to underperformers. This sounds cruel at worst and biased at the very best. Not really. The under achievers are usually those who do not like their job. They are better off sent out as they may discover their true avocation only then.
Welch says its better to send them out in a boom rather than during a depression when cost cutting would throw out exactly these people, but at a time when job's are scarce.
Sending them out earlier on with good severance benefits would be a WIN/WIN for both the firm as well as the underperformer. These people are usually 10% of the total. But they spoil the rest.
The great performers would be about 20%. The rest are above average. This 70% needs to be watched, trained and motivated. They form the backbone of the company and are the leadership pool for succesion planning.
Candour is simply the good old habit of calling a spade a spade. Candour should be encouraged and practiced across the board so that problems get identified and escalated faster.
The other book is Winning: The Answers. This book contains answers to various questions that
Jack and Suzy had to answer during their speaking tours all over the world. It builds on the Wisdom of "Winning" and takes it forward.There is a lot of the Seven Habits methodology in Jack Welch's approach.
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