Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will

NOEL M. TICHY AND STRATFORD SHERMAN

Reviewed by Todd

In 1994, I accepted a position with General Electric in their Manufacturing Management Program, one of several training programs used to groom college graduates. It was sometime in that first year that I received my first copy of Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will. The book had been published the year prior and was being warmly received within the company. Noel Tichy was instrumental in redeveloping the leadership training programs at GE, and the book, written with Strat Sherman, opened the doors to show the evolution of the conglomerate under CEO Jack Welch.

Control Your Destiny came out before the accolades, before Jack Welch was named “Manager of the Century” by Fortune magazine, before the company’s market capitalization reached $450 billion. Professors and pundits now can easily look back and call Welch’s twenty-year turnaround remarkable, but Tichy and Sherman were the first to recognize and write about it. Though GE fell short of the financial metrics needed for recognition in Jim Collins’s seminal work Good to Great, read Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will to see how Jack Welch took an organization from good to great.

The situation Jack Welch inherited when he became CEO in 1981 was one of the toughest for any leader: life at GE was good, but he believed it could be better. Not exactly a situation that encourages a change-oriented agenda, and the new leader had 420,000 employees to convince that a new course was needed. To spur change, in 1982 Welch made his now-famous declaration that every GE business would be number one or number two in their markets and vowed to “‘fix, close, or sell’” any business that did not meet those standards.” The incumbent managerial class yawned; “same story, different leader” was their reaction.

Over the next ten years, Welch made good on his declaration. He sold 125 businesses in the first four years alone, including many consumer-based brands central to the company’s long-standing identity. In that first decade, 300,000 people left GE through the sale of laggard divisions or company-encouraged means. “I think one of the jobs of a businessperson is to get away from the slugfests and into niches where you can prevail,” Welch said, and by 1993, every part of GE held one of the top two rungs in each of their markets. Welch referred to this time as “getting the hardware right,” building the business engine that has allowed GE to succeed as a conglomerate.

Welch knew there was a limit to gaining through reduction, and in the second half of his tenure, the focus shifted to “the software.” Welch pumped money into the revitalization of Crotonville, the company’s New York–based facility that would train 10,000 employees yearly and “indoctrinate managers in the new principles.” He quickly realized those direct efforts would only reach a fraction of the workforce and that something more than the typical videotaped messages and company newsletters were needed. The new values needed to be experienced at GE’s manufacturing plants and office buildings around the world.

“Peter Drucker . . . greatly influenced [Jack] Welch by writing, ‘If you weren’t already in the business, would you enter it today?’”

This insight served as the seed for Work-Out, town hall–style meetings where thirty to one hundred employees, over the course of a few days, would discuss “their common problems.” Bosses were not allowed to attend until the final hours when they were forced to make on-the-spot, yes-or-no decisions on the groups’ compiled action items. In a five-year period, more than 200,000 GE employees, or 85 percent of the company’s workforce, experienced a Work-Out session. This cultural breakthrough empowered employees to take the steps required to eliminate unnecessary work, and built trust across pay grades and business functions, an effort Harvard Business School professor Len Schlesinger called “one of the biggest planned efforts to alter people’s behavior since Mao’s Cultural Revolution.”

The current version of Control Your Destiny is quite daunting at 694 pages, but do not let the heft scare you away. The first half is a narrative about Welch and the company he started with, while the second half details the challenges and associated initiatives Welch took on, ranging from globalization to speed. In 2001, as Welch was leaving his post, a revised edition included over 160 new pages of his letters from twenty years of annual reports. A second revision was published in 2005 that again revised material and added a new opening note from Sherman and an afterword from Tichy. The last bit of heft comes in the form of a seventy-page “Handbook for Revolutionaries,” written by Tichy, that delivers a challenge to leaders to assess their organizations against the radical change GE went through.

I count myself lucky to have been employed by GE, and I will personally vouch for the impact, the absolute culture change, engendered by Jack Welch’s actions at General Electric. I never met Welch, but the knowledge and experience that I gained in my six years at the company will likely never be matched. While GE may build aircraft engines and issue credit cards, its true core product is creating world-class managers. All of GE’s CEOs have come from within the organization, and Boeing, Chrysler, and Intuit are just a few of the companies now run by former GE executives. Tichy and Sherman’s portrait of Jack Welch gives leaders everywhere a strong example of leadership at its best. TS

Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will, Collins Business Essentials Edition, Paperback 2005, ISBN 9780060753832

WHERE TO NEXT? Here for another take on changing knowing to doing Here for another great corporate turnaround Here to see which companies Jim Collins did recognize | EVEN MORE: The Cycle of Leadership by Noel M. Tichy; Winning by Jack and Suzy Welch; If Harry Potter Ran General Electric by Tom Morris

The 100 Best Business Books of All Time
001_COVER.xhtml
002_ABOUT_THE_AUTHORS.xhtml
003_TITLE_PAGE.xhtml
004_COPYRIGHT.xhtml
005_DEDICATION.xhtml
006_CONTENTS.xhtml
007_PREFACE.xhtml
008_INTRODUCTION.xhtml
009_YOU.xhtml
010_Chapter_1.xhtml
011_Chapter_2.xhtml
012_Jack_Covert_Selects.xhtml
013_Chapter_3.xhtml
014_Chapter_4.xhtml
015_Chapter_5.xhtml
016_Chapter_6.xhtml
017_EXPANDING_THE_CONVERSATION.xhtml
018_Chapter_7.xhtml
019_Chapter_8.xhtml
020_Chapter_9.xhtml
021_Chapter_10.xhtml
022_Chapter_11.xhtml
023_Business_Books_for_Kids.xhtml
024_Chapter_12.xhtml
025_LEADERSHIP.xhtml
026_Chapter_13.xhtml
027_Chapter_14.xhtml
028_Chapter_15.xhtml
029_Leadership_in_Movies.xhtml
030_Chapter_16.xhtml
031_Chapter_17.xhtml
032_Chapter_18.xhtml
033_Chapter_19.xhtml
034_Chapter_20.xhtml
035_THE_ECONOMIST.xhtml
036_Chapter_21.xhtml
037_Chapter_22.xhtml
038_Chapter_23.xhtml
039_STRATEGY.xhtml
040_Chapter_24.xhtml
041_Chapter_25.xhtml
042_The_Best_Route_to_an_Idea.xhtml
043_Chapter_26.xhtml
044_Learn_From_Experience.xhtml
045_Chapter_27.xhtml
046_Chapter_28.xhtml
047_Chapter_29.xhtml
048_Chapter_30.xhtml
049_Chapter_31.xhtml
050_Chapter_32.xhtml
051_SALES_AND_MARKETING.xhtml
052_Chapter_33.xhtml
053_Chapter_34.xhtml
054_Chapter_35.xhtml
054_Chapter_35b.xhtml
055_Chapter_36.xhtml
056_Chapter_37.xhtml
057_Chapter_38.xhtml
058_Chapter_39.xhtml
059_Selling_on_the_Silver_Screen.xhtml
060_Chapter_40.xhtml
061_Chapter_41.xhtml
062_Chapter_42.xhtml
063_1000_Words.xhtml
064_Chapter_43.xhtml
065_Chapter_44.xhtml
065_Chapter_44b.xhtml
066_Chapter_45.xhtml
067_RULES_AND_SCOREKEEPING.xhtml
068_Chapter_46.xhtml
069_Chapter_47.xhtml
069_Chapter_47b.xhtml
070_Chapter_48.xhtml
071_Chapter_49.xhtml
072_MANAGEMENT.xhtml
073_Chapter_50.xhtml
074_PETER_DRUCKER_SAID.xhtml
075_Chapter_51.xhtml
076_Demings_14_Points_of_Management.xhtml
077_Chapter_52.xhtml
078_Chapter_53.xhtml
079_Chapter_54.xhtml
080_Chapter_55.xhtml
081_Chapter_56.xhtml
082_Chapter_57.xhtml
083_Chapter_58.xhtml
084_Chapter_59.xhtml
084_Chapter_59b.xhtml
085_Chapter_60.xhtml
086_Chapter_61.xhtml
087_BIOGRAPHIES.xhtml
088_Chapter_62.xhtml
089_Chapter_63.xhtml
090_Classics.xhtml
091_Chapter_64.xhtml
092_Chapter_65.xhtml
093_Chapter_66.xhtml
094_Chapter_67.xhtml
095_Chapter_68.xhtml
096_Chapter_69.xhtml
097_ENTREPRENEURSHIP.xhtml
098_Chapter_70.xhtml
099_Chapter_71.xhtml
100_Chapter_72.xhtml
101_Chapter_73.xhtml
102_Chapter_74.xhtml
102_Chapter_74b.xhtml
103_Chapter_75.xhtml
104_Chapter_76.xhtml
105_Chapter_77.xhtml
106_NARRATIVES.xhtml
107_Chapter_78.xhtml
108_Chapter_79.xhtml
109_Found_in_Fiction.xhtml
110_Chapter_80.xhtml
111_Chapter_81.xhtml
112_Chapter_82.xhtml
113_Chapter_83.xhtml
114_Chapter_84.xhtml
114_Chapter_84b.xhtml
115_INNOVATION_AND_CREATIVITY.xhtml
116_Chapter_85.xhtml
117_Chapter_86.xhtml
118_Chapter_87.xhtml
118_Chapter_87b.xhtml
119_Chapter_88.xhtml
120_Chapter_89.xhtml
121_Chapter_90.xhtml
122_Fresh_Perspectives.xhtml
123_Chapter_91.xhtml
124_BIG_IDEAS.xhtml
125_Chapter_92.xhtml
126_Chapter_93.xhtml
126_Chapter_93b.xhtml
127_Chapter_94.xhtml
128_Chapter_95.xhtml
129_Chapter_96.xhtml
130_Chapter_97.xhtml
131_Chapter_98.xhtml
131_Chapter_98b.xhtml
132_Chapter_99.xhtml
133_Chapter_100.xhtml
134_THE_LAST_WORD.xhtml
135_How_to_Read_a_Business_Book_1.xhtml
136_How_to_Read_a_Business_Book_2.xhtml
137_ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.xhtml
138_INDEX.xhtml
139_Post-Copyright.xhtml
140_FOR_MORE_ON_THE_100_BEST_BOOKS.xhtml
141_READING_CHECKLIST.xhtml
GlobalBackad.xhtml