---
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title: "The Secret to GE's Success: A Former insider Reveals the Leadership lessons of the World's Most Competitive Company"
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# The Secret to GE's Success: A Former insider Reveals the Leadership lessons of the World's Most Competitive Company

**Brand:** william rothschild
**Price:** ฿2960
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- **What is this?** The Secret to GE's Success: A Former insider Reveals the Leadership lessons of the World's Most Competitive Company by william rothschild
- **How much does it cost?** ฿2960 with free shipping
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## Description

From Publishers Weekly
        	
        	
        		
        		
	        		
						
			        		Looking beyond GE&apos;s legendary CEO Jack Welch, Rothschild takes a wider perspective on the company&apos;s history in this unwieldy management guide. Structuring the book around the various phases in the company&apos;s evolution, he looks all the way back to the founding by Thomas Edison in 1879 and analyzes the business lessons that have gradually emerged. At the same time, Rothschild, a former GE insider who formed his own consulting company in 1984, focuses on five key success areas: leadership, adaptability, talent, influence and networks, reinforcing key &quot;takeaways&quot; at the end of each chapter. Unfortunately, the book&apos;s chronological structure and overwhelming detail makes it read more like an annotated history than a management guide with business-changing insights. (Jan.) Copyright &#xA9; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
						    	
					    	
						
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        		From the Back Cover
        	
        	
        		
        		
	        		
						
			        		Apply the Successful Management Strategies of the World&apos;s Most Competitive Company to Your Organization For over 125 years, GE has been a managerial, technological, and financial leader, continually outperforming the competition and boasting one of the most valued stocks in the world. Now, in The Secret to GE&apos;s Success, Bill Rothschild, former GE Senior Strategist, draws out the key management lessons from GE&apos;s entire history to show leaders everywhere how they can achieve GE-like success in their own organizations. This compelling strategic leadership book looks at the four stages of GE&apos;s development_the eras of Thomas Edison, Ralph Cordiner, Jack Welch, and Jeff Immelt_and explains how the successes and failures of each period contributed to making GE a world-class company. Rothschild analyzes in detail the five factors that have been the hallmarks of all GE leadership teams throughout its history:  Having the right leaders for the right time Developing flexible strategies and the ability to adapt Continually investing in high-potential people Being proactive, not reactive to social, political, or economic events Maintaining discipline and consistency Filled with fascinating &#x201C;behind-the-scenes&#x201D; accounts of GE&apos;s best strategic decisions, The Secrets to GE&apos;s Success features a wealth of practical, hands-on concepts that leaders can successfully apply to any company. The Secret to GE&apos;s Success is the first book to identify and explain every aspect of the GE Code: the hallmark of all GE leadership teams. Bill Rothschild, former GE Senior Strategist and 30-year insider, describes GE&apos;s success over its entire history, focusing on the crucial role of leadership in the company&apos;s evolution, and drawing on the timeless lessons of GE practice throughout its storied past. This essential leadership guide offers an in-depth look at the four stages of GE&apos;s development, ranging from the company&apos;s founding by Thomas Edison, through the eras of Ralph Cordiner and Jack Welch, to the present period under Jeff Immelt. At each stage, the author highlights the strong leadership characteristics and highly effective strategies that produced consistent growth and profitability. Designed to boost management skills and career potential, The Secret to GE&apos;s Success explores the five key reasons for the company&apos;s astonishing, long-term achievements, showing managers how and when to: Create a succession system that identifies the right leader for the right time Recognize when even seemingly successful strategies need to be adapted and changed Develop a &#x201C;farm system&#x201D; to create a deep, skilled, and loyal managerial and professional bench Take a stand against social, political, and economic policies that can prevent the company from controlling its own destiny Establish, adapt, and use systems in finance, strategic planning, and human resource management that lend stability to the organization, and help it make progress toward overall goals  A complete toolkit for duplicating GE&apos;s remarkable achievements, The Secret to GE&apos;s Success now equips leaders at any company, anywhere in the world, with a far-ranging prescriptive plan for strategizing the GE way_ and dramatically improving organizational performance. About the Author William E. Rothschild was Senior Corporate Strategist at GE, responsible for business development, competitive strategies, and GE&apos;s first market-based Corporate Strategic Plan. For the past 22 years, he has run his own consulting firm, Rothschild Strategies Unlimited, LLC, serving clients such as BellSouth, Avon, Perkin-Elmer, Pitney Bowes, General Public Utilities, Clark-Hurth, Advance Machine, Equitable, Gerber Technologies, CSX, JC Penney, and many others worldwide. Mr. Rothschild is the author of four previous books, including How to Gain (and Maintain) the Competitive Advantage (McGraw-Hill) as well as many articles.
						    	
					    	
						
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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A superb book
            
*by T***R on December 3, 2011*

I am a self-confessed business book junkie and how this book slipped past me is a mystery. This is the best business book I have ever read! Fellow reviewers described it as a page turner and I have to agree. A frequent comment about business books is that they are really pumped up magazine articles. Rest assured, there is nothing pumped up about this book. It is loaded with information. Best of all is the quality of mind behind the words. Nice work Mr.Rothschild! Five stars!
  

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ LATIN: The Critically Important Acronym
            
*by R***S on May 8, 2009*

No doubt for reasons of convenience, most (if not all) of the most important information about GE is summarized within a series of acronyms. For example, with regard to GE's "4 E's (+P) of Leadership," Jack Welch explained that the four Es represent positive Energy, the ability to Energize others,  having an Edge (i.e. the courage to make tough yes-or-no decisions)  and Execution (the ability to get the job done). What about P? "Passion!"The subtitle to William E. Rothschild'sbrilliant book refers to another acronym, LATIN, that reveals "the secret to GE's success": Leadership as well as Adaptability, Talent, Influence, and Networks. As Rothschild explains, his material covers GE's successes and failures since 1892 when it was established in New York, the result of a merger of of the Thomson-Houston Company and the Edison General Electric Comany. Charkes Coffin was GE's first president and Edison, who left the company two years later, initially served as a director. Rothschild describes the five success factors in each stage and provides "an objective assessment of what was done in each realm - both positive and negative."The material is carefully organized within  four sections, each of which covers a specific period throughout GE's history:Part I "Living Better Electrically": 1879-1939 (Chapters 1-4)Part II "Diversification and Decentralization": 1940-1970 (Chapters 5-9)Part III "Portfolio Leadership": 1971-2001 (Chapters 10-13)Part IV: "Back to the Future": 2001-Present (Chapters 14-16)When reading Rothschild's book, it soon becomes obvious that those who led GE determined its priorities and objectives in each of the stages of its development. For example, Edison's focus was on identifying real problems, finding solutions and commercial applications for them, insisting that everything be patented and copyrighted; Coffin and Edwin Rice (1892-1921) ensured the success of the merger with a commitment to participative and consultative leadership, and willingly shared authority with associates;  Gerard Swope and then Owen Young (1922-1939) took that commitment "to a higher level by creating ways for managers and employees to contribute to the company's strategies and policies; Charles Wilson and Philip Reed (1940-1950) were transitional leaders and Wilson "understood the old GE perfectly" but lacked the experience and the temperament to lead "the significantly charged company" after World War Two and voluntarily stepped won; Ralph Cordiner and Reed (1950-1963) spearheaded GE's decentralized growth with "a new and relatively unproven way," management by objectives (MBO); Fred Borch (1963-1972) continued decentralized management and, when realizing that he hadattempted to do too much ("GE can do anything it wants to."), "instituted a radical change in GE, enabling it for the first time to exit or prune products or even entire businesses"; lacking a co-leader following the premature death of his mentor, "Flip" Philippe, Reginald Jones(1972-1981) created a new "chairman's office," assumed the titles of chairman and CEO, and surrounded himself with those who had diverse personalities andf leadership styles; Jack Welch (1981-2001) accepted Jones's suggestion that he "blow up GE" (i.e. eliminate everyone and everything that did not add substantial value to the company) and did so - in Rothschild's words -- as a "contentious, demanding, celebrity CEO, a surgeon leader," [who was his]own inteligence network"; and finally, Jeff Immelt (2001-Present) who is more diplomatic "but still tough" and considers people selection and their development especially high priorities as he leads GE through what continues to be a troubled global economy. By the way, those who have a special interest in GE's current CEO are urged to check out David Magee's recently published book, Jeff Immelt asnf the New GE Way.Rothschild devotes equal attention to each of the other four success factors (i.e. Adaptability, Talent, Influence, and Networks) during each of the four eras.  Readers will also appreciate his skillful use of various devices that cluster key points. Briefly annotated checklists, for example, such as these: Common characteristics of all GE training programs (Pages 32 and 112), special benefits offered to electric utilities companies to ensure their growth and profitability (Page 92), GE's four-step process to recognize business opportunities (Pages 176-177), the steps Welch took to implement Six Sigma at GE (Page 214), how various CEOs successfully completed major change initiatives (Page 265), and finally, "some GE surprises and what the company did in response" (Pages 269-270). Other reader-friendly devices include boxed "Exhibits" that also cluster key points such as those that summarize the five ingreients for success for each of the four eras: "Living Better Electrically" (Edison through Swope and Young),  Diversification and Decentralization (Wilson...Borch),  Portfolio Leadership (Borch...Welch), and "Back to the Future" Strategy (Immelt). Rothschild also provides a "Highlights" section to introduce each of the four Parts and a "Takeaways" section at the conclusion of most chapters.When concluding his book, William Rothschild acknowledges, "The GE Way doesn't always work consistently at GE; it can't possibly work for any other comany that attempts to embrace it indiscriminantly." Rather, he urges those in other companies to "adapt, rather than adopt, the GE approach" that he so brilliantly examines in this book.
  

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Built to Last Analysis of GE's Unique History
            
*by D***L on May 14, 2007*

I first thought about GE and its management practices in 1973 when a prospective client asked me for help in implementing a detailed strategic planning process and handed me a one-page version of the process (you can see a disguised version of that process on page 161 of this book).  The initials in the corner were W. E. Rothschild, author of The Secret to GE's Success.  Naturally, when I saw this book, I couldn't wait to see what this strategic planner extraordinaire had to say.Most people see GE in terms of the Welch era.  Why?  Because that's when GE got the most press coverage.  Also, the Immelt era's heritage isn't clear yet.  It hasn't been long enough.  Prior to that, few remember that Reg Jones was once considered a legendary CEO.  Further back, only GE alumni can mention many names after Thomas Edison.I found this book to be a helpful history of GE's continuing success, tying together many themes that I had missed.  In addition, it was interesting to see how many GE "innovations" were really simplifications of earlier work . . . or continuations of long-held concentrations of focus.Unlike many books that seek to pursue too many themes, Mr. Rothschild conveniently selected only five to illuminate and explore:1.  Choosing leaders well and pursuing an inclusive leadership style.2.  Finding effective ways to adapt to new conditions, success, and setbacks.3.  Identifying, nurturing, and encouraging excellent people.4.  Being prudently proactive in engaging stakeholders.5.  Creating connections to others that allow everyone to accomplish more.Although Mr. Rothschild is appropriately proud of the company's success, he doesn't shrink from pointing out missteps, areas where processes need to be adjusted, and unnecessary delays in taking needed actions.  He also wisely suggests that other companies not copy these practices, but rather adapt the practices to their own circumstances.  In some conceptual exhibits, he provides helpful clues for how such adaptation might be done (see especially pages 59, 181, 208, 209, and 255).Ultimately, of course, the limitation of a management book based on one company is that you don't see the lessons as clearly as you would if you had more comparisons.  That's the strength of Built to Last, for example.  As a result, I think most people will get more out of this book if they read Built to Last first.The only point that I hear many management observers make about GE that Mr. Rothschild doesn't make is how slow GE usually is to adopt helpful, new practices that originated in other companies.  You only see hints of that problem in the long delays involved in correcting some of the missteps.  The press coverage of the company stresses the opposite point:  Everything was invented by GE.  But that's not really the case.Good work, Mr. Rothschild.
  

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*Last updated: 2026-01-29*