# Winning by Jack Welch: What Actually Applies to a Small Business

> Source: [https://icharles.com/articles/winning-by-jack-welch-what-actually-applies-to-a-small-business](https://icharles.com/articles/winning-by-jack-welch-what-actually-applies-to-a-small-business) (canonical)
> Author: Chuck — iCharles, https://icharles.com
> Published: 2015-01-06 · Updated: 2026-07-07

My brother gave me two books over Christmas. One was *Killing Patton*. The other was this one, *Winning*, by Jack Welch, who ran GE from the early '80s until the day before 9/11, when he handed it to Jeff Immelt. This isn't a biography — Welch already wrote that one. This is the book he wrote because of all the questions he kept getting at conferences and speaking gigs, mostly from corporate 9-to-5 people trying to figure out how to move up, deal with a bad boss, or survive a merger.

I own a small business. A lot of this book doesn't apply to me — it's built for acquisitions, corporate politics, and salary negotiations inside 30,000-person companies. But four things landed anyway.

## Candor is the thing most businesses are missing

Welch says the number one deficiency in business today is a lack of candor. People aren't honest, they aren't direct, they beat around the bush. I took that one personally. I do beat around the bush sometimes, and I'm working on being more direct in negotiations and business dealings — saying what I actually mean instead of softening it into mush.

## The 20-70-10 rule

Out of any organization, Welch breaks people into the top 20%, the middle 70%, and the bottom 10%. His rule: cut the bottom 10% every year. Not because it's fun — because the top 20% don't want to keep working next to weak performers, and the bottom 10% already know their time is limited. They're just hanging on for the paycheck. It's blunt, but it's honest, and it's consistent with the candor point above.

## Write your mantra, and make it about the future

Welch says you need a personal mantra and a business one, and it has to be about where you're going, not what you've already done. A lot of people write a mission statement on a piece of paper and it means nothing because they don't actually live by it. His GE mantra was to be number one or number two in every industry GE competed in — or get out, even if that business was profitable. His logic: if you're not first or second, you're not thriving, you're just surviving. And the moment you hit number one, you can't relax, because that's exactly when whoever's in second place catches you.

That ties into a story he tells about GE building jet engines for Boeing. A competitor beat GE to a horsepower target on a faster timeline, forcing GE to drop its price and eat a loss on that engine. But when Boeing moved up to the 777 — its biggest plane — GE had already put in the work and could hit that next performance level faster than the competitor could. Never underestimate competition, but know your own advantage well enough to outlast a short-term loss.

## Work-life balance depends on where you are in life

Welch spends almost 30 pages on this, and here's the detail that stuck with me: people used to ask him how he played so much golf. He doesn't play anymore. He used to go every weekend — I played on my high school and college teams and caddied for eight years, so I get the pull — but he says he doesn't miss it. He's replaced it with teaching, talking, and mentoring, and he says that means more to him now. I'm single with no kids, so my version of balance looks nothing like a GE executive with a family, but the underlying point holds: figure out what you actually want your time to go toward, and stop defaulting to what you've always done with it.

## Who should read it

It's about 350 pages and reads fast — more of a browse than a slow study. If you're in corporate America, climbing a ladder with real rungs on it, read this. Welch has genuine war stories on crisis management, firing, hiring, and influence. If you're an entrepreneur running something small like I am, going up your own ladder is a lot simpler with fewer people in between, so a chunk of this won't map to your day. I'd give it three and a half stars as an entrepreneur, four stars if you're in corporate America.