Compass Points Reviews Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will

Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will
Lessons in Mastering Change - The Principles Jack Welch is Using to Revolutionize General Electric

by Noel M. Tichy and Stratford Sherman
HarperBusiness Edition 1994 - 448 pages $12.80 (at Amazon.com)

Organizations, large or small, are in continual need of strategic transformation. Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will makes a major contribution to this artful management practice in the form of a rare, but welcome, convergence of objectivity, insight and first-hand detailed knowledge. This stems from Noel Tichy’s intimate involvement in General Electric at all levels through most of the first twelve years of Jack Welch’s revolution.

This book is really three books in one. It is first a vibrant portrait of a unique leader, Jack Welch, in action, defining and producing permanent change perceived as unneeded by most in his organization. Secondly, it details a transferable process utilized by GE to transform itself from being a successful, old-line company in 1980 having:

slow growth, primarily domestic, markets,
bureaucratic organizational structure,
scientific management style;

to the highly successful, revolutionized company of today having:

moderate to high growth, global markets in which GE is #1or #2,
flat organizational structure striving toward “boundarylessness,”
empowering management style stressing shared corporate values.

Thirdly, it contains a “Handbook for Revolutionaries,” containing a do-able process complete with templates. These templates can be used by other companies to consider whether they should embark on a major transformation and execute the changes, if indicated.

This book also masterfully presents Jack Welch’s “Big Ideas”—those high-level strategies at the core of the GE revolution. Included are:

Being #1 or #2 in a global industry,
Unleashing and harnessing employees’ emotional energy as the major source of competitive advantage,
Integrated Diversity to link diverse business units into a “Business Engine,”
Boundarylessness,
Simultaneous quantum and incremental change to achieve productivity gains,
“Work-out” to drive “Shared Values” down through the organization,

It is no surprise that these “Big Ideas” reflect the six rules Jack Welch lives by:

Control your destiny or someone else will.
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it were.
Be candid with everyone.
Don’t manage, lead.
Change before you have to.
If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.

Although this book presents the Technical, Political and Cultural dimensions necessary for most transformations, its unique and most valuable contribution is its analysis of how GE transformed its culture. Such cultural change will likely be the primary strategic issue in the future of most companies, large and small. In the words of the authors,

“GE’s toughness and its emphasis on shared values are not contradictory. Both spring from the same source: The insistence that the company control its own destiny. They are different manifestations of a single idea, that the competitive realities of the late twentieth century and beyond require a new relationship between employer and employee. In the years ahead, even a well-tuned business engine won’t be enough. The winning corporations will be those that can create human engines, powered by turned-on, committed employees. Companies with old-fashioned, control-based organizations will disappear in the dust.”

For more information or to order your copy of Control Your Destiny from Amazon.com, click on the title.

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