Thorsons
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This edition published by Thorsons 2015
FIRST EDITION
© Jack and Suzy Welch 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015 Cover photographs © Ben Baker
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Source ISBN: 9780008137892
Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 9780007594382 Version: 2015-03-17
Contents
1 Taking the Grind Out of the Game
2 Getting Whacked—and Getting Better
4 Globalization: It’s Complicated
5 Fear of Finance . . . No More
7 Crisis Management: Welcome to the Coliseum
10 Geniuses, Tramps, and Thieves
11 What Should I Do with My Life?
13 It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over
Hello and congratulations—congratulations on getting it.
No, not on getting this book, although we’re very happy you did.
Rather, congratulations on getting the fact that no one should do business alone.
Business is the ultimate team sport. Doesn’t make any difference what size your company is, five people, or 5,000, or 150,000, for that matter. Doesn’t matter if it’s in Gary, Indiana, churning out steel, or in Palo Alto cooking up code. Doesn’t matter if you’re three days into your first job in a windowless cube about 10,000 light-years from the action, or if you run the whole enchilada from a corner office on the forty-fifth floor of headquarters.
Business is not a “me” thing. It’s a “we” thing.
It’s an “I’ll take all the advice and ideas and help I can get” thing.
Which is where our congratulations come in. If you’re reading The Real-Life MBA, we figure you’re with us on this one. When it comes to business, you can never stop learning. Business is just too vast, too multifaceted, too unpredictable, too tech-driven, too human-driven, too global, too local, too everything to ever be able to say, “Been there, done that.” For goodness’ sake, we’re still learning, and between us, we’ve been in business for a combined 81 years, with the last ten being the most mind-expanding of all.
Yes, the last ten have been the most full of learning for us, and here’s why. After our last book, Winning, was published in 2005, we hit the road, launching a decade of speaking, writing, teaching, and consulting that has brought us inside scores of companies, each one facing fascinating marketplace and management challenges. We’ve worked with an entrepreneur in China building a firm to link foreign companies and local manufacturers, a winery in Chile transitioning away from family-owned leadership, and a young aerospace venture in Phoenix in the midst of figuring out when and how to go public. These experiences, and many more, have been windows into the nitty-gritty trials and opportunities of business in today’s world. At the same time, our speaking engagements to upwards of a million people, mainly in Q&A sessions, continually allow us to hear what businessmen and women are really thinking—and worrying—about. Add to that the work that one of us (Jack) has been doing in private equity and advising CEOs since 2002, evaluating, guiding, and growing dozens of companies, in industries ranging from health care to water treatment to online dating. Finally, it was in this period that we successfully launched our own online MBA, the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University, now 900 students strong. Their richly varied experiences as working professionals around the world have broadened, deepened,