In some fields, acclaimed works seem cliched and obvious from where we are today, because the innovations that brought their acclaim have been so universally adopted.
I'm not a historian of management theory so I don't know if the ideas are original, or even of how well Welch followed his own advice, but plenty of the things in his books are straight-talking common sense:
* You should know your business well enough you don't need management consultants to tell you what to do
* HR and hiring are important and should be represented in your senior team accordingly
* If you want candour (which you do) you need to reward and praise it, not punish it
* When there's a crisis, don't deny there's a problem
He's not the first person to come up with every idea in his books, but even 40 years later there are companies that need to learn these things.
If you're trying to turn around a mis-managed company, a few rounds of identifying and eliminating people in the manager ranks that aren't pulling their weight could have a huge positive impact. So I could see that "neutron" Jack's stack ranking could have been great, had it been limited. But when you're consumed with your own genius, you tend to think that the thing that seemed to work, and everyone praised you for yesterday will keep working tomorrow.
I'm not a historian of management theory so I don't know if the ideas are original, or even of how well Welch followed his own advice, but plenty of the things in his books are straight-talking common sense:
* You should know your business well enough you don't need management consultants to tell you what to do
* HR and hiring are important and should be represented in your senior team accordingly
* If you want candour (which you do) you need to reward and praise it, not punish it
* When there's a crisis, don't deny there's a problem
He's not the first person to come up with every idea in his books, but even 40 years later there are companies that need to learn these things.