Winning Isn't Everything

Abstract

Think about the purpose of the organization where you work. Is it to create great products for people? Is it to improve people's lives? Solve company problems? Discover useful knowledge? Is it to make money for employees and investors? Is it a mix of these purposes? For Jack Welch, is like any game, and the purpose is Winning, the title of his new book written with his wife, Suzy Welch, a former editor of the Harvard Business Review (1). Sure, all of us want to be winners rather than losers, and Welch makes winning management an art. Yet there's something missing here. For many of the managers I meet, winning is too narrow a view of purpose. However, I do think all managers can learn from Welch's experience if only to challenge it and clarify what they really believe is best management practice for them. This book has a lot more practical advice and illustrative stories than his previous book, Jack (2). In this article, I'll describe what I've found most useful Welch's new book and then what seems to me missing his approach. Like the best managers of professional teams, Welch is a great judge of talent and sees his major role as developing it. His definition of leadership: helping other people grow and succeed. Twenty-five years ago when I defined good leadership this way (3), reviewers considered it too soft and idealistic. But Welch shows that this is what creates winning teams, and he has a great record to prove it, not only winning by the numbers, but also developing 15 current CEOs the Fortune 500. Welch has a gift for seeing personality differences, especially terms of fitting the person to the job. For example, he picked a head for a commodity product business who was in iris element with people who sweated the nitty-gritty details like he did, talking about ways to squeeze efficiencies out of every process. He was a master of discipline. In contrast, the head of an innovative, risky business required a visionary, a person who hated the nuts and bolts of management.... But he sure did have the guts and vision to place the big bets. The best professional football coaches, like Welch, know which personalities fit best which roles. For example, the best offensive linemen typically are conservatives who uphold authority and protect the quarterback while the best defensive linebackers are rebels out to smash the quarterback. In the case of Welch and the coaches, the common denominator is a passion for winning. However, neither is much interested other aspects of personality such as deep-rooted values that may motivate creative employees like the desire to improve people's lives. Compare Welch to Bill Gates, another big winner who expresses other values his work and public service. Gates can't boast about his management practices; his focus has been on empowering his customers and he gets Steve Ballmer to do the managing. He doesn't write books or give public lectures on winning management; he does study books and research reports concerned with solving global health problems, and he has directed hundreds of millions of dollars from his foundation to this purpose. The Human Side Leads However, within the game he plays, for Welch, the human side is the leading edge. And it follows that for him the Human Resources VP is at least as important as finance or any other corporate function. Welch writes: Elevate HR to a position of power and primacy the organization, and make sure HR people have the special qualities to help managers build leaders and careers. The HR VP was Welch's partner knowing and evaluating all the top talent at GE. From my experience, this is a hard act to follow. Few HR professionals have these special qualities. Many of them are experts personnel policies and practices like compensation and benefits and following the rules of equal opportunity employment. Companies with the kinds of HR executives who can play this strategic role often have been recruited from line management. …