Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Jack Welch. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Jack Welch
John Francis Welch Jr. (November 19, 1935 – March 1, 2020) was an American business executive, chemical engineer, and writer. He was Chairman and CEO of General Electric (GE) between 1981 and 2001.
When he retired from GE he received a severance payment of $417 million, the largest such payment in business history.
In 2006, Welch's net worth was estimated at $720 million.
No doubt emotional intelligence is more rare than book smarts, but my experience says it is actually more important in the making of a leader. You just can't ignore it.
An organisation's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
Strategy is just a winning value proposition, that is, a product or service that customers simply want more than the other options out there.
Managers can waste a lot of time at the outset of a crisis denying that something went wrong. Skip that step.
A good leader remains focused. Controlling your destination is better than being controlled by it.
You never know how diverse your career can be. I think it's wonderful. My life has always been the next page, not the last page.
You can't behave in a calm, rational manner. You've got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.
Hierarchy is an organization with its face toward the CEO and its ass toward the customer.
When it's time to let someone go, do it right. No surprises. No humiliation.
The biggest cowards are managers who don't let people know where they stand.
Common mission trap for companies: trying to be all things to all people at all times.
Trying to get people to face reality and see the world the way it really is is an absolutely critical aspect of leadership, in my view.
HR should be every company's killer app. What could possibly be more important than who gets hired?
Failing to differentiate among employees -- and holding on to bottom-tier performers -- is actually the cruelest form of management there is.
The biggest opportunity for big companies has come by far in the digitization of internal processes.
Leading a big company means never allowing a company to take itself too seriously.
I actually think that the economy has got some positives. It's got the market. It's got consumer confidence and it's got banks throwing -- I mean central bankers throwing money at it around the world.
I don't think environmentalists have the slightest reason to be concerned about globalization because every time you move a plant to a new place you upgrade the neighborhood. You put in global standards. You put in modern plants. And all the plants around it get improved.
You talk about seeing around corners as an element of success. That's what differentiates the good leader. Not many people have it. Not many people can predict that corner. That would be a characteristic of great leaders.
Real communication is an attitude, an environment. It is the most interactive of all processes. It requires countless hours of eyeball to eyeball, back and forth. It involves more listening than talking.
Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.
If your CFO is more important than your CHRO (Chief Human Resource Officer) you're nuts!
Our behavior is driven by a fundamental core belief: the desire, and the ability, of an organization to continuously learn from any source, anywhere; and to rapidly convert this learning into action is its ultimate competitive advantage.
The record results for the third quarter once again demonstrate the ability of GE's diverse mix of leading global businesses to deliver top-line growth, increased margins and strong cash generation.
Leadership is helping other people grow and succeed. it is not just about you. It's all about them.... everyone deserves a chance.... you can never let yourself be a victim.
Excellence and competitiveness aren't incompatible with honesty and integrity.
Globalization is now no longer an objective but an imperative, as markets open and geographic barriers become increasingly blurred and even irrelevant.
The most important job you have is growing your people, giving them a chance to reach their dreams.
I'm not perfect, but if there are any points given for caring about people with every fiber of your being and giving life all you've got every day, then I suppose I have a shot.
The binders, the charts, the grids may seem formidable, but the meetings themselves are built around informality, trust, emotion and humor.
The most important quality of leadership is intellectual honesty. The reality principle -- the ability to see the world as it really is, not as you wish it were.
When I stop learning something new and start talking about the past versus the future, I will go.
Getting candor right -- with your reports, your peers, and your boss -- is a skill that can make or break your career.
As a leader, your job is to energize people around the mission and vision you've articulated.
A company has only so much money and managerial time. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest. They cut their losses everywhere else.
Business success is less a function of grandiose predictions than it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to real changes as they occur.
No one can guarantee you a job other than satisfied customers. That's the only thing that works. Nothing creates work other than products and services you provide that create satisfied customers.
If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.
On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.
You can't grow long-term if you can't eat short-term. Anybody can manage short. Anybody can manage long. Balancing those two things is what management is.
My job is to find great ideas, exaggerate them, and spread them like hell around the business with the speed of light...And to put resources in to support them. Keep finding ideas. That's the job of just about all of our CEOs.
The last thing you want to do is be a bore. When you wake up in the morning, give yourself a good mirror test. If you look like you're going to be a sulking, pouting bore, slap yourself in the face before you go out to the office.
Focus on a few key objectives ... I only have three things to do. I have to choose the right people, allocate the right number of dollars, and transmit ideas from one division to another with the speed of light. So I'm really in the business of being the gatekeeper and the transmitter of ideas.
So every time you think about your work-life balance issue, remember what your boss is thinking about -- and that's winning. Your needs may get heard -- and even successfully resolved -- but not if the boss's needs aren't met as well.
I believe that in any initiative, you can't have a flavor of the month. When you believe something is profound in a company, you can not be a logical leader. You have to go to the lunatic fringe. There is no way that logic is what you need to change people.
Approach every meeting with a purposeful, high-energy, ready-to-make-a-contribution attitude, and watch how fast leadership's perception of you follows your behavior.
Strategy is not a lengthy action plan. It is the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances.
Out-innovating them is the way to beat China. And to do everything that we do in this country to support innovative policy, that drives innovation and new products and more jobs and creates jobs. You can't -- you can't put a wall up around here. We tried that in the '30s. It didn't work.
We have built a company with a business mix and operating system that will allow us to deliver record results in any foreseeable economic climate, ... We have just completed a very successful management transition and I've never been more confident about the company's future.
Again, your challenge is not just to improve. It is to break the service paradigm in your industry or market so that customers aren't just satisfied, they're so shocked that they tell strangers on the street how good you are.
In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I've ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.
What the Commission is seeking cuts the heart out of the strategic rationale of our deal.
That's all managing is: just coming up with the right questions and getting the right answers.
You got to be rigorous in your appraisal system. The biggest cowards are managers who don't let people know where they stand.
GE's businesses turned in a terrific first quarter. Our products and services are being well received in unusually robust global markets.
You hang around with good people, you play a lot of golf, and you have a pretty good life. That's what success is all about. It's getting people you like, who want to take the hill with you, who want to win, who have the passion. This is not rocket science.
People always overestimate how complex business is. This isn't rocket science. We've chosen one of the world's simplest professions.
If you've got a company that has a mentality inside that is filled with searching for a better idea every day, not just as a slogan but as a real concept, you will have innovation around you all the time.
Short cycle business are being impacted by credit, and are being impacted by gasoline prices, food, distribution businesses, chemical business.
Every leader makes mistakes, every leader stumbles and falls. The question with a senior level leader is, does she learn from her mistakes, regroup, and then get going again with renewed speed, conviction and confidence?
I wanted to change the rules of engagement, asking for more- from fewer. I was insisting that we had to have only the best people...If you wanted excellence, at a minimum, the ambience had to reflect excellence.
No company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it.
If you're not in Germany, you're not in Europe. And if you're not in Asia, you're nowhere.
What business could be mature when you have economies with more than 2 billion people in India, China and Southeast Asia?
Ideally, the star will be replaced within eight hours. This sends the message that no single individual is bigger than the company.
Just because you are the boss doesn't mean you are the source of all knowledge.
My bosses cautioned me about my candor. Now my GE career is over, and I'm telling you that it was my candor that helped make it work.
Every employee, not just the senior people, should know how a company is doing.
Managers often hold on to resisters because of a specific skill set or because they've been around for a long time. Don't.
Some people have better ideas than others; some are smarter or more experienced or more creative. But everyone should be heard and respected.
A leader's job is to look into the future and see the organization, not as it is, but as it should be.
CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It's just cultural. People just don't want to do it.
Public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO speeches. CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It's just cultural. People just don't want to do it.
In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.
If you want risk taking, set an example yourself and reward and praise those that do.
If work is just going in every day and getting a check, it's an ugly life. When you can make work a meaningful purpose, you've hit the jackpot for people.
Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.
Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.
The team with the best players wins.
Longer Version:
The team with the best players usually does win -- this is why you need to invest the majority of your time and energy in developing your people.
We bring together the best ideas -- turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.
