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From Barnes & Noble - bn.com review

The Barnes & Noble Review
General Electric CEO Jack Welch, one of the world's most influential and consistently successful businesspeople, has been hailed as a leader who both developed new concepts and revised existing procedures to meet evolving needs. Anyone who is eager to understand the full nature of Welch's achievement will be grateful to Jeffrey Krames, who has compiled a well-organized, easy-to-use, and comprehensive A-Z guide to Welch's business vocabulary and ideas.

Encyclopedic in scope, The Jack Welch Lexicon of Leadership provides more than mere definitions: It details the evolution of such signature programs as Six Sigma, articulates the lessons GE learned while implementing these programs, and serves as an anthology of business practices that have impacted almost every facet of corporate America. As a veteran editor of books about GE and its charismatic CEO, Krames is scrupulous about explaining all of Welch's core doctrines in depth and with thoughtful supporting examples.

While reading Krames's piece on Six Sigma, I was surprised to learn that Motorola first developed the famous quality concept program so deeply associated with Welch's tenure at GE. In fact, Welch had to be persuaded of the worthiness of the program by his friend Larry Bossidy, a former GE vice chairman and now Allied Signal's CEO. However, once Welch became convinced of Six Sigma's value, he implemented it with such effectiveness that he was often looked upon as the spokesperson for Six Sigma. Any manager who is struggling to introduce new ideas into the workplace will benefit from the understanding of Welch's methods that Krames provides.

While readers could go through the book from cover to cover, it's much easier to use it as a reference tool (or as a companion to Welch's Jack: Straight from the Gut since there is some repetition of ideas and themes. However, The Jack Welch Lexicon of Leadership is definitely worthwhile for curious readers looking to master the essentials of Welch's business practices and leadership philosophy. (Kathleen M. Purcell)

Library Journal

Having studied Jack Welch for nearly two decades and authored four books on him, business journalist Krames argues that Welch should win the prize (if such a prize were offered) for the corporate leader of the century. As the title indicates, this is a compendium of the key elements of Welch's thinking on business, presented in an A-to-Z format. Given General Electric's ability to enter new markets and sustain growth, there is a lot to be learned from Welch. The book, however, does contain a number of flaws. With respect to Welch's philosophy of Six Sigma, key concepts such as root cause analysis, control charts, and Pareto analysis are mistakenly presented as if they are new and developed though Six Sigma. Overall, though, the book provides the most concise and complete rendering of Jack Welch's business initiatives. Recommended for general audiences and business collections. Steven Silkunas, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, Philadelphia Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

What People Are Saying

I can't imagine a CEO who wouldn't benefit from reading this book which highlights the key ideas and actions of one of this century's most remarkable business leaders, Jack Welch.
— (Philip Kotler, S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University)

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