Former General Electric CEO Immelt looks back on what he terms his "controversial" 35 years at the company in this page-turning if petulant debut. Spurred to action because of a "histrionic" 2018 article in Fortune that called him "inept," Immelt energetically recounts triumphs, failures, and the end of his time at GE in 2017: "I'd been about as brilliant as I was lucky, by which I mean: too often I was neither," he quips. Immelt started as CEO the day before 9/11, taking over for Jack Welch (who had no shortage of "idol worshippers," the author notes). His defensiveness about this transition shines through, and he points out that he took over "without speaking a single negative word" about Welch, with whom he had a tumultuous relationship. Immelt's account reveals the inner workings at GE, including efforts to clean up the Hudson River, corporate board issues, and the decline of GE Capital. Though it's presented as a leadership book (sections are headed with such koans as "Leaders Show Up" and "Leaders Manage Complexity"), instead of guidance Immelt opts for succinct, personal writing that often comes across as self-exoneration. Readers in search of a behind-the-scenes look at GE will be entertained, but those looking for business wisdom can give it a pass. (Feb.)

The former CEO of GE writes candidly about the successes and failures of his tenure. The son of a GE worker, Immelt assumed the top position in 2001 after rising through the ranks as the company was being reshaped by former CEO Jack Welch. He opens his memoir by recounting a discomfiting couple of hours at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where one student asked point-blank, "How could you let this happen?" The "this" in question was a long decline as Immelt tried to shift the culture and direction of a company "where perception didn't equal reality." As the author writes ruefully, ideas were scarce and inertia reigned. His leadership lessons are both hortatory ("Leaders show up") and critical. He writes, for instance, that Welch had surrounded himself with yes men and gotten bogged down in faddish management tools such as Six Sigma even as the company was overrun by finance types at the expense of engineers. By the time he took over, the largest share of GE's business came from its insurance sector rather than from anything it made. "Transforming a big legacy company requires persistence," writes the author. It also requires the right aides and key staff, and in this, Immelt was ill-served by ambitious managers--one in particular he thinks he should have fired despite that person's being protected by the board of directors. He also opines that his successor as CEO, whose tenure was brief, was the wrong person for the job: "It seemed to me," he writes, "that [John] Flannery couldn't make decisions." In the end, Immelt writes in an unforgivingly self-critical spirit, he took on too many projects. "I did not develop a deep enough bench of rising leaders" to help with these initiatives, he writes, adding, "I wish I had said 'I don't know' more frequently." A valuable book full of lessons for business students and would-be leaders. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.