The management insights that Jack does reveal seem to me to be generally built on fairly well established (but poorly executed) management practices. Jack has just embraced them and used focussed passion coupled with an obsession on people to execute superbly and produce great results. For example, some of his major initiatives could be said to have been derived from existing management principles: 1) "No. 1 or 2" Jack admits is derived from Peter Drucker, 2)I believe six sigma is derived in part from Motorola, 3) "Boundaryless behaviour" can said to be based on Peter Drucker's observation that there are no profit centers inside an organization, and 4) Jack was clearly not an early pioneer on "E-business". Yet he recognized the opportunities and produced results from them. The book probably won't become a classic, but it is still recommended reading for today's and tomorrow's managers and especially those interest in the man himself.
STRENGTHS: The book is a fairly easy and interesting read full of anecdotes and insites. It does a great job of showing the management task as art and discipline that can be learned, improved, and mastered rather than as personal charisma or other common stereotypes of leadership.
WEAKNESSES: The minor weaknesses of the book relate to Jack's strong, competitive personality (and maybe ego) that show through in his writing. Despite that author's initial disclaimer to read "I" as meaning "we" I found Jack's lack of distinction between himself and GE to be minorly annoying. Parts of the book are filled with phrases like "I bought this $$$$$ company" when clearly "We" is appropriate [I know, I'm nit-picking]. Second (and this is almost excusable in an autobiography) Jack rarely gave the "other side" of the story when discussing major GE crises. For example, he never explains the EU's reasons for blocking the Honeywell merger, assuming that it is so obviously wrong it's not worthy of explaination.
For example: the chapter about rating and rewarding his employees was excellent. For example, giving Class A employees 3x the salary increases over Class B employees-- Great!! Giving NO increases to Class C employees, and getting rid of them sooner rather than later...what can I say, I LOVE IT!!
He's so right about the fact that it's more cruel to let Class C workers attain and maintain an certain income level (that they are not really worthy of), and waiting til they're older, with a large mortgage and kids in college before finallly telling them that they're not making the grade.
I've worked with some people in the high-paying tech arena that, because of either blatant incompetence, bad attitude, and/or pure laziness, never should have gotten to where they are today. As far as I'm concerned, some never should have gotten past working in the food service industry.
Eventually those people *do* get weeded out (I'm seeing it happen right now in this economy). Sooner is better than later, both for the employer and the employee. I also enjoy not having to work with those types.