GE's Jack Welch: Great motivator or just a bully?

BACK OF THE BOOK

In Indian business journalism, where writing about CEOs often approaches hagiography, it is rare to find profiles that tell it as it is. Even those CEOs (who're usually promoters of their companies as well) who line their pockets or homes at the expense of their shareholders are rarely upbraided in print. Everyone may know about them but journalists will still coyly self-censor themselves while writing about them. If an ailing steel maker's promoters go wild with hedonistic acquisitions of corporate aircraft, swank cars and new villas with heated swimming pools even as their business is in a shambles, it makes for spicy chatter on the cocktail circuit but nothing in print. If the verbal abuse of his senior colleagues by a now demised takeover tycoon with a filthy tongue was legion don't ever expect to see it written about. If a New Economy star is known for his frequent sexual peccadilloes, you (and he!) can rest assured that it will never make it to the pink or white papers.

Mercifully, such restraint doesn't apply to business writers in the US. Christopher Byron's new book Testosterone Inc.: Tales Of CEOs Gone Wild focuses on four celebrity CEOs whose claim to infame are either corporate excesses, sexual misbehaviour, brash and bullying managing tactics or a combination of these. Byron's main focus is on the legendary Jack Welch, GE's celebrated former CEO who was once reckoned to be the best manager of all time-at least till his post-retirement downfall a couple of years ago. But joining Welch is Dennis L. Kozlowski, who is accused of enriching himself at the expense of a little known company called Tyco, Al Dunlap, whose dream run of turning companies around by aggressively firing employees eventually caught up with him, and Ron Perelman, whose rapid-fire acquisitions of companies like Revlon, Panasonic and Technicolor raised ethical questions.

TESTOSTERONE INC.: TALES OF CEOS GONE WILD By Christopher Byron John Wiley & Sons PP: 416 Price: Rs 1,336

Testosterone Inc., published earlier this year, is well on its way to becoming a best-seller and it's not surprising to see why. Byron, whose earlier book was Martha Inc. (yes, on Ms. Stewart) has relied mainly on sources that have conveniently provided all the salacious dope on his four subjects. Few have had kind words to say about them and neither does Byron himself. The common strand in his account of the four-in a not very well-meshed narrative-is that all of these once-powerful CEOs were driven by primal urges and extra helpings of the male hormone, testosterone. For instance, Byron reaches back to Welch's childhood where a domineering mother goaded him to be competitive and aggressive, concluding that Welch's bullying style of management may have derived from that. Somewhat more far-fetchedly, Byron also seems to draw a parallel between Welch's occasional fear of being abandoned by his mother as the trigger for his bad and blatantly lustful behaviour towards women.

Byron's book is like B-grade fiction-although the latter is quite often better written-and is bitchy enough for a quick read on a flight. His four characters are nothing short of caricatures of themselves. Picture Al Dunlap posing in combat gear for a photo session or, elsewhere, threatening his wife and infant child with real guns and sharp knives. Or Ron Perelman as a near-pathetic womaniser who could do with serious psychiatric treatment to cure his chronic straying. Or even Welch, whose management-by-the-scruff-of-the-neck style, replete with abuse and humiliation of his colleagues, probably had more to do with his stubby physique than with great cerebral prowess. And, of course, the ultimate high-roller, Kozlowski, whose recent trial brought to the fore his penchant for spending company money on items such as a $15,000 poodle-shaped umbrella stand and, at a party for his wife, an ice statue of David urinating vodka.

But Byron's obsession appears to be Welch, who gets the most attention, including accounts of his boozy early days at GE, his boorish behaviour with women (including wives of colleagues) and his affair with the "sassy and infinitely manipulative" former editor of the Harvard Business Review. So what? The problem is, unlike Perelman, Dunlap and Kozlowski, whose excesses and philandering may have cost their companies dear, nothing that Byron says about Welch blemishes his widely acclaimed achievements at GE during his 20-year tenure at the helm. Does that mean Welch is the odd man out in Testosterone Inc? Maybe.

BEYOND THE CORE By Chris Zook Harvard Business School Press PP: 256 Price: Rs 1,431.61

This is a book on the "primal urge" of growth, urging you to see that it is profitable, not reckless. And it is written by a hardcore believer in the power of focus, Chris Zook, who leads the global strategy practice of the business consultancy Bain & Company. Rather than 'diversify' into new fields of operation, he says, "push out the boundaries of the core"-as it struck him on a trip to Brazil-by entering "adjacency" arenas. Er, adjacency? Here's Jack Welch on it: "Challenging the organisation to continually redefine markets in a fashion that decreases their share opens its eyes to opportunities in adjacent markets."

Adjacency expansion succeeds, though, only under a handful of conditions: when force is derived from and also reinforces the universalist strength of the core, economies of leadership can be obtained, a common formula can be replicated, and the profit potential is high. It fails, all too often, when the unanticipated happens, some condition goes unmet, and overstressed managers "retreat to their prior beliefs, shield themselves from conflicting data... and surround themselves with people who think like they do" instead of doing the mature thing and making space for the 'unknown unknowns'.

Uncertainty cannot be ducked, but some spade-calling could make people more discerning. The core scientific way forward would be to recognise a hypothesis for a hypothesis, a mental construct open to outright rejection as 'false' on grounds of reasonable doubt. Such rejections would, of course, go up with two (or more) equally empowered but non-thinkalike (and dialogue-happy) decision-makers in the fray. Growth should be sustainable.

-Aresh Shirali

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LAW AND PRACTICE By Vakul Sharma Universal Law Publishing Co PP: 454 Price: Rs 350

Written by a practicing 'convergence' lawyer, Vakul Sharma, this book sells itself on the distinction of not being an "internet download as most books of this genre are". It is, rather, an "original work". Originality in law, of course, could cause purists some consternation. But this book, and it opens fashionably with a Da Vinci quotation, is aimed at techies and netheads who need to get a hang of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (yes, the legislation some bashed as 'cyber-TADA' for its harshness), but didn't know who to ask. The book offers not just a commentary, but also critical appraisal of the new legalese that has invaded cyberspace.