Quotes About Jack Welch

#1. General Electric CEO Jack Welch said in Winning: No vision is worth the paper it's printed on unless it is communicated constantly and reinforced with rewards.

Eric Schmidt

#2. If I had to run a company on three measures, those measures would be customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and cash flow. Jack Welch, former CEO of GE

Anonymous

#3. I started my career at General Electric in a small office under a guy named Greg Liemandt, and his direct boss was Jack Welch. I would say those two have had the most profound impact on my career.

Peter Barris

#4. I learned a lot from Jack Welch about how to run a business.

Kushal Pal Singh

#5. Jack Welch is someone who I have always admired. In India, Narayana Murthy is someone who I have great respect for.

Kumar Mangalam Birla

#6. If you want risk taking, set an example yourself and reward and praise those that do.

Jack Welch

#7. "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?"

Jack Welch

#8. If we wait for the perfect answer, the world will pass us by

Jack Welch

#9. I think that ideally that is how a company works. It becomes a place of ideas, not a place of position.

Jack Welch

#10. As a leader, your job is to energize people around the mission and vision you've articulated.

Jack Welch

#11. What is a budget review? A personal review with numbers

Jack Welch

#12. Strategy is simply resource allocation. When you strip away all the noise, that's what it comes down to. Strategy means making clear cut choices about how to compete. You cannot be everything to everybody, no matter what the size of your business or how deep its pockets.

Jack Welch

#13. RULE 2. Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.

Jack Welch

#14. If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.

Jack Welch

#15. 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.

Jack Welch

#16. The biggest cowards are managers who don't let people know where they stand.

Jack Welch

#17. I guarantee you it will not be anyone from the outside.

Jack Welch

#18. First and most obvious, bring out the three old warhorses of competition - cost, quality, and service - and drive them to new levels, making every person in the organization see them for what they are, a matter of survival.

Jack Welch

#19. 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.

Jack Welch

#20. What the Commission is seeking cuts the heart out of the strategic rationale of our deal.

Jack Welch

#21. Lack of candor blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they've got. It's a killer.

Jack Welch

#22. The Internet is the Viagra of big business.

Jack Welch

#23. I've learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.

Jack Welch

#24. Above all, good leaders are open. They go up, down, and around their organization to reach people. They don't stick to the established channels. They're informal. They're straight with people. They make a religion out of being accessible. They never get bored telling their story.

Jack Welch

#25. Genuine leadership comes from the quality of your vision and your ability to spark others to extraordinary performance.

Jack Welch

#26. Strategy means making clear-cut choices about how to compete.

Jack Welch

#27. When the amount of change externally exceeds the amount of change internally, the end is in sight.

Jack Welch

#28. The main social responsibility for a company is to win.

Jack Welch

#29. No one is guaranteed a job in this.

Jack Welch

#30. 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.

Jack Welch

#31. When you were made a leader you weren't given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.

Jack Welch

#32. When there's change, there's opportunity.

Jack Welch

#33. In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.

Jack Welch

#34. The thing it taught me was that winning's a helluva lot more fun than losing. It also taught me that the team with the best players that worked together the best wins.

Jack Welch

#35. An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn't have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.

Jack Welch

#36. Shun the incremental and go for the leap.

Jack Welch

#37. If GE's strategy of investment in China is wrong, it represents a loss of a billion dollars, perhaps a couple of billion dollars. If it is right, it is the future of this company for the next century.

Jack Welch

#38. 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.

Jack Welch

#39. Globalization has changed us into a company that searches the world, not just to sell or to source, but to find intellectual capital - the world's best talents and greatest ideas.

Jack Welch

#40. I don't feel under-taxed in any way at all.

Jack Welch

#41. The 1980s will seem like a walk in the park when compared to new global challenges, where annual productivity increases of 6% may not be enough. A combination of software, brains, and running harder will be needed to bring that percentage up to 8% or 9%.

Jack Welch

#42. 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.

Jack Welch

#43. Control your destiny or somebody will.

Jack Welch

#44. Today, all arrows point toward the biotech, nanotech, and information technology industries, and the convergence among them.

Jack Welch

#45. If you're not in Germany, you're not in Europe. And if you're not in Asia, you're nowhere.

Jack Welch

#46. Does coaching work? Yes. Good coaches provide a truly important service. They tell you the truth when no one else will.

Jack Welch

#47. Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will

Jack Welch

#48. Take lack of candor ... I'm not talking about boldface lying, but a tendency to withhold information. That behavior is far more common, and it frustrates teams and bosses to no end.

Jack Welch

#49. What Sam Walton did was to go into one of the most mature industries of all and find a way to make it grow, grow, grow, double-digit, month after month, year after year. He did it by innovation, customer focus, and above all, speed.

Jack Welch

#50. Every great leader has a generosity gene.

Jack Welch

#51. The biggest opportunity for big companies has come by far in the digitization of internal processes.

Jack Welch

#52. 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.

Jack Welch

#53. People aren't the same. Business is, in my opinion, all about the team that fields the best players. It's not about an idea. An idea goes away. Somebody catches up with it. It's not about a widget.

Jack Welch

#54. The story about GE that hasn't been told is the value of an informal place. I think it's a big thought. I don't think people have ever figured out that being informal is a big deal.

Jack Welch

#55. People always overestimate how complex business is. This isn't rocket science. We've chosen one of the world's simplest professions.

Jack Welch

#56. Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.

Jack Welch

#57. As leaders, we owe it to every employee to let them know where they stand in the organization.

Jack Welch

#58. It is better to act too quickly than it is to wait too long.

Jack Welch

#59. I've learned in a hundred ways that I rarely regretted acting but often regretted NOT acting fast enough.

Jack Welch

#60. When employees underperform, a leader tells them so.

Jack Welch

#61. 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.

Jack Welch

#62. Drucker said: 'If you weren't already in this business, would you enter it today? And if not, what are you going to do about it?' ... Simple, right? But incredibly powerful.

Jack Welch

#63. When I first met Jack, I was terrified of him. I wasn't expecting a fun, laughing, enjoyable, exciting guy. I walked into his office like most people, with my knees knocking together. I was scared.

Suzy Welch

#64. When all is said and done, teaching is what I try to do for a living.

Jack Welch

#65. I never put myself out there as an employment agency,

Jack Welch

#66. Don't make the process harder than it is.

Jack Welch

#67. If a job doesn't excite you on some level - just because of the stuff of it - don't settle.

Jack Welch

#68. 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.

Jack Welch

#69. I am obsessed with the whole Victoriana thing, the whole Jack the Ripper London era, the grayness of it, the haunted feeling of it, all ancient and bloody.

Florence Welch

#70. We have the brand, and we have the fulfillment capability. Now we had to get the Net, and that's the easiest part of the game.

Jack Welch

#71. My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.

Jack Welch

#72. What business could be mature when you have economies with more than 2 billion people in India, China and Southeast Asia?

Jack Welch

#73. Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy.

Jack Welch

#74. The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well. I don't like to use the word efficiency. It's creativity. It's a belief that every person counts.

Jack Welch

#75. 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.

Jack Welch

#76. A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.

Jack Welch

#77. You can't behave in a calm, rational manner. You've got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.

Jack Welch

#78. The world belongs to passionate driven people.

Jack Welch

#79. Ideally, the star will be replaced within eight hours. This sends the message that no single individual is bigger than the company.

Jack Welch

#80. Don't lose youself on the way to the top.

Jack Welch

#81. An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

Jack Welch

#82. Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.

Jack Welch

#83. 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.

Jack Welch

#84. 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.

Jack Welch

#85. One of the ways we'll know that Work-Out has been successful is that my style of leadership will no longer be tolerated in this company.

Jack Welch

#86. Good leaders have a generosity gene.

Jack Welch

#87. Strategy is not a lengthy action plan. It is the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances.

Jack Welch

#88. We've only been wealthy in this country for 70 years. Who said we ought to have all this? Is it ordained?

Jack Welch

#89. Give me a highly successful unionized industry.

Jack Welch

#90. I was afraid of the internet ... because I couldn't type.

Jack Welch

#91. If we don't create private sector jobs and just - just creating public sector jobs, we're going nowhere. This is a bad game. You've got to have innovation. You've got to have tax policies that support innovation.

Jack Welch

#92. If you can't energize others, you can't be a leader.

Jack Welch

#93. Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.

Jack Welch

#94. It's the internet like the flu - it just spreads like crazy.

Jack Welch

#95. 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.

Jack Welch

#96. On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world,

Jack Welch

#97. In the end, your integrity is all you've got.

Jack Welch

#98. No one is doing something in your business - getting a sale, having a key customer, working on an R&D project - doing anything that's more important than something you say is going to change the company.

Jack Welch

#99. I might not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I'm pretty good at getting most of the other bulbs to light up.

Jack Welch

#100. One of the jobs of a manager is to instill confidence, pump confidence into your people. And when you've got somebody who's raring to go and you can smell it and feel it, give 'em that shot.

Jack Welch