Review of “Jacked Up”

During one of our weekly conference calls our SVP asked “How much time do your on site presentations usually take?”.

One of our team’s response was twice as long as the rest.

The team lead explained that in their meetings they like to share our company’s history, our vision for the industry, the history of the product, and then finally, the demonstration.

Man, if only they had read “Jacked Up”.

Bill Lane’s claim to fame was that of Jack Welch’s lead speech writer. In his book, he shares his experience in joining GE, learning the ropes on how to work with Jack Welch, and spends a great deal of the book explaining how GE transformed the way business meetings are conducted.

Before there was Powerpoint, there was the slide projector. As a manager at GE, you were obligated to give presentations to your subordinates, members of upper management, and other business units. A culture emerged of measuring managers by the size of their slide carousels. For the really important presentations, one slide projector would not do, three were needed. And why say something in one slide, when 3 would make you look more important?

Then Jack showed up.

In this book you will learn how Jack mandated that the crap be cut from presentations. The fluff, the self promotion, the minutia, all were outlawed. The only words allowed in a presentation were those that had a direct impact on the major topic at hand.

Bill shares the story of an engineer giving a presentation to other business units, who had 60 minutes of slides with pictures of pipes at his plant. Instead of discussing how the chemicals in those pipes impacted operations, he focused on the plumbing. The presenting engineer was eventually pelted repeated with spitballs and forced off stage.

While the presentations were mean and lean, the presenter was expected to be a savant on their topic, and Lord help those who came up short. Those who presented to upper management who did not have the expected level of mastery found their careers “stalled” or, in some cases, retreating. Those who exceeded expectations were put on the fast track to greater things.

This book is an excellent, quick read for anyone who needs to effectively communicate with C-level executives. I enjoyed the peek inside the World of Welch. I added the link to amazon on the graphic above.

If you have an opinion on this book, or have a suggestion for a similar book, we welcome your comments.

Good Luck