Welch's story is the classic American one - the stuff that dreams are made of. All the ingredients are present: the tough but fair upbringing; the loving but demanding mother; the interest in sports; the disappointments that are turned into triumphs. Right down to the unlocked doors in a neighbourhood where everyone felt safe.
Welch rose from being a lowly engineer with a degree from an undistinguished university to head up General Electric, one of the biggest conglomerates in the world, the stuff of anti-capitalists' nightmares.
Having finished his PhD, Welch was recruited by GE and began what was to become a lifelong feud with the forces of corporate bureaucracy and a loathing for a system that did not reward individual success and effort. He almost quit in his first year when he found that everybody got the same increase regardless of input.
However, he learned a valuable lesson in how important it was to stand out from the crowd, especially when the crowd is hundreds of thousands strong and climbing the ladder involves cutting through canopies of red tape and executive indifference.
Another of Welch's beliefs is encapsulated in the line "what made it work was a crazy band of people who believed they could do almost anything".
Guts, brains and determination with a good grounding in the team ethic (and different pay scales) of American sports allied to an ability to see the big picture is how Welch sums up his career.
The insider/outsider role is something that Welch relishes. He recounts tales of constructive conflict, ruffled feathers amongst those further up the tree and enjoys descriptions of his managerial style that equate it to Miller beer ads: loud, raucous and animated.
Indeed, it is reminiscent of lifelong politicians and bureaucrats who make a career out of raging against the machine that nurtured them, pace Newt Gingrich, George W Bush et al.
Welch tells an interesting anecdote where his mother entered the dressing-room after a particularly galling ice hockey loss to remonstrate with her son for his reaction to the game's outcome. She tells him that in order to become a winner he has to be able to deal with losing.
Welch, in common with the few whose careers are festooned with glittering highs, is unafraid to exhume the corpse of failure and perform a post-mortem.
After years of expanding the business while cutting the workforce and with his ego telling his mind that anything was possible, Welch bit off something that challenged even his legendary powers of digestion.
Kidder, Peabody was a Wall St icon but was also in serious trouble with its star performers involved in antics that do justice to the eponymous Oliver Stone movie. Here is Welch's "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" thesis writ large.
As he said himself: "There's only a razor's edge between self-confidence and hubris. This time, hubris won and taught me a lesson I'd never forget."
Welch earned the nickname 'Neutron Jack' because, like the bomb, he killed off the people and left the buildings standing. Over five years 118,000 people were laid off the GE payroll. He makes no apology for this period, stating that he should have done it sooner and faster.
The book moves at a rattling pace, and trials and tribulations such as Kidder and divorcing his wife are dealt with the efficiency and sense of purpose he seems to prize above everything else. "Look at me, Ma, I'm on top of the world" would be a fitting epithet for his life and times.
comidheach@irish-times.ie
