Inside Out
Notes on seeking wisdom and crafting software

Book notes: Jack Welch - Straight from the Gut

ℹ️ Jack Welch's book 'Straight from the Gut' discusses various aspects of leadership, including building self-confidence and self-esteem in others. It emphasizes that business problems often have no black-and-white answers and encourages leaders to provide support and positive role models for their team members.

Book: Jack Welch - Straight from the Gut↗
author: Jack Welch
Rating: 3/5

Read it early this year. Notes seem to be not complete :(

- "You Punk! If you don't know how to lose, you will never know how to win. If you don't know this,   you shouldn't be playing" (page 4)

  • Building self confidence in others is a huge part of leadership. It comes from providing
      opportunities and challenges for people to do things they never imagined they could do - rewarding
      them after each success in every way possible. (page 5)

  • Building self esteem is very pivotal too. Small praises help a lot (page 6)

  • The same is true for most business problems. The process helps you get closer to the darker shade of gray. There are rarely black-and-white answers. More often than not, business is smell, feel, and touch as much as or more than numbers. If we wait for the perfect answer, the world will pass us by. (page 18)

  • Bosses usually have answers in mind when they hand out questions. They’re just looking for
      confirmation. To set myself apart from the crowd, I thought I had to think bigger than the
      questions posed. I wanted to provide not only an answer, but an unexpected fresh perspective.
      (page 24)

  • When people make mistakes, the last thing they need is discipline. It’s time for encouragement and confidence building. The job at this point is to restore self-confidence. I think “piling on” when
      someone is down is one of the worst things any of us can do… Piling on makes leaders lose their
      confidence, panic, and spiral downward into a hole of self-doubt. (page 29)

  • If we’re managing good people who are clearly eating themselves up over an error, our job is to
      help through it.. That doesn’t mean you have to take it easy on your star performers… Obviously
      a negative role model act doesn’t play nice on everyone. You can do it with your best - as long as
      they know they’re your best. Using role models always helped me make a point to the larger group
      (page 31)

  • The best way to support dreams and stretch is to set apart small ideas with big potential, then
      give people positive role models and the resources to turn small projects into big businesses..
      (re failure in a similar swing for a product that never took off) we made a big point of rewarding
      people in the team. We wanted everyone in the company to know that taking a big swing and missing was ok. (page 31)

  • I “kicked”, but also I “hugged” (page 43)