Control Your Destiny or Someon

Acknowledged as the outstanding business leader of the late twentieth century, Jack Welch made General Electric one of the world's most competitive companies. This dynamic CEO defined the standard for organizational change, creating more than $400 billion in shareholder value by transforming a bureaucratic behemoth into a nimble, scrappy winner in the global marketplace.

Here, Tichy and Sherman extract the enduring leadership lessons from the revolution Welch wrought at GE. Of these, the most essential is the limitless power of learning. Leadership has its mysteries, but it is a skill that anyone can acquire and enhance. Above all, great leaders select great people and lure them into an endless process of learning and adaptation.

Jack Welch's Six Rules

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

Noel M. Tichy is a professor at the University of Michigan Business School, director of the school's Global Leadership Partnership, and former head of GE's Crotonville Leadership Development Center. He is the author of the best seller Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will (with Stratford Sherman).

Stratford Sherman, senior partner of Good Work Partners LLC, works at the point of intersection between large organizations and individual human beings, as a consultant and executive coach. A globally recognized authority on leadership and organizational change, he wrote frequently about GE while on the Board of Editors of Fortune magazine.