Jack Welch Quotations

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

Control your own destiny or someone else will.

You've got to eat while you dream. You've got to deliver on short-range commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and implement it. The success of doing both. Walking and chewing gum if you will. Getting it done in the short-range, and delivering a long-range plan, and executing on that.

Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.

In order to lead a country or a company, you've got to get everybody on the same page and you've got to be able to have a vision of where you're going. America can't have a vision of health care for everybody, green economy, regulations - can't have a bunch of piece-meal activities. It's got to have a vision.

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.

Number one, cash is king... number two, communicate... number three, buy or bury the competition.

If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don't have to manage them.

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

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.

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.

I was never the smartest guy in the room. From the first person I hired, I was never the smartest guy in the room. And that's a big deal. And if you're going to be a leader - if you're a leader and you're the smartest guy in the world - in the room, you've got real problems.

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

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

Any jerk can have short-term earnings. You squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and the company sinks five years later.

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%.

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.

The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important - and then get out of their way while they do it.

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.

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.

Strong managers who make tough decisions to cut jobs provide the only true job security in today's world. Weak managers are the problem. Weak managers destroy jobs.

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

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

The productivity now at universities is terrible. Tenure is a terrible idea. It keeps them around forever and they don't have to work hard.

What's important at the grocery store is just as important in engines or medical systems. If the customer isn't satisfied, if the stuff is getting stale, if the shelf isn't right, or if the offerings aren't right, it's the same thing. You manage it like a small organization. You don't get hung up on zeros.

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

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.

In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I've ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.

There's no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.

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

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.

You got to be rigorous in your appraisal system. The biggest cowards are managers who don't let people know where they stand.

If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete.

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.

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.

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

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.

You measure your people and you take action on those that don't measure up.

Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.

Don't manage - lead change before you have to.

If you don't have public hangings for bad culture in a company, if you don't take people out and let them say, they went home to spend more time with the family. It's crazy.

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.

The Internet is the Viagra of big business.

Short cycle business are being impacted by credit, and are being impacted by gasoline prices, food, distribution businesses, chemical business.

If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you're stuck.

The 3Ss of Winning in business are speed, simplicity, and self-confidence.

The idea of let's all share the pain equally, or let's freeze salaries altogether - it's ass-backwards. It's absolutely ass-backwards.

When there's change, there's opportunity.

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.

In every company, differentiation is never more important than it is in times of trouble, and that's the time when everyone tends to go to the well and equalize rather than differentiate.

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.

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

Most organizations fail in driving change.

Nobody is too important to lead the initiative you say is important.

Shareholder value is the result of you doing a great job, watching your share price go up, your shareholders win, and dividends increasing. What happens when you have increasing shareholder value? You're delivering better employees to their communities and they can give back. Communities are winning because employees are involved in mentoring and all these other things. Customers are winning because you're providing them new products.

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.

Globalization has taken a hit in that there is some sand in the gears because most of us have supply chains that are all over the world that we've had to lengthen.

If you get the best people on your team, you've got plenty of time to do the things you like to do and can add more value to.

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.

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.

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.

Its a marathon, its not a sprint. Ten years. Fifteen years. You've got to get up everyday, with a new idea, a new spin, and you've got to bring it to work, every day

Face reality as it is, not as it was, or as you wish it were. Be candid with everyone. Don't manage, lead. Change before you have to. If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete. Control your own destiny, or someone else will.

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

The main social responsibility for a company is to win.

Any time there is change, there is opportunity. So it is paramount that an organization get energized rather than paralyzed.

If you don't deliver, you don't earn the flexibility.

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.

Managers can waste a lot of time at the outset of a crisis denying that something went wrong. Skip that step.

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.

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

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.

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

Getting every employee's mind into the game is a huge part of what a CEO job is all about. Taking everyone's best ideas and transferring them to others is the secret. There's nothing more important.

There are advantages to being the chairman. One of my favorite perks was picking out an issue and doing what I called a "deep dive." It's spotting a challenge where you think you can make a difference one that looks like it would be fun and then throwing the weight of your position behind it. Some might justifiably call it "meddling." I've often done this just about everywhere in the company.

Change has no constituency and a perceived revolution has even less.

In manufacturing, we try to stamp out variance. With people, variance is everything.

People who are coaches will be the norm. Other people won't get promoted.

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

If there is anything I would like to be remembered for it is that I helped people understand that leadership is helping other people grow and succeed. To repeat myself, leadership is not just about you. It's about them

Control your destiny or somebody will.

Set stretch goals. Don't ever settle for mediocrity. The key to stretch is to reach for more than you think is possible. Don't sell yourself short by thinking that you'll fail.

There is no straight line to a dream.

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.

I am often asked if leaders are born or made. The answer, of course, is both. Some characteristics, like IQ and energy, seem to come with the package. On the other hand, you learn some leadership skills, like self-confidence, at your mother's knee, and at school, in academics and sports. And you learn others at work-trying something, getting it wrong and learning from it, or getting it right and gaining the self-confidence to do it again, only better.

Culture drives great results.

Give me a highly successful unionized industry.

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.

The hero is the one with ideas.

The art of managing and leading comes down to a simple thing. Determining and facing reality about people, situations, products, and then acting decisively and quickly on that reality. Think how many times we have procrastinated, hoped it would get better. Most of the mistakes you've made have been through not being willing to face into it, straight in the mirror that reality you find, then taking action on it. That's all managing is, defining and acting. Not hoping, not waiting fro the next plan. Not rethinking it. Getting on with it. Doing it. Defining and doing it.

If you managed a baseball team, would you listen more closely to the team accountant or the director of player personnel?

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

The operative assumption today is that someone, somewhere, has a better idea; and the operative compulsion is to find out who has that better idea, learn it, and put it into action-fast.

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.

That's all managing is: just coming up with the right questions and getting the right answers.

Just because you are the boss doesn't mean you are the source of all knowledge.

Be candid with everyone.

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

With leadership the question at the beginning of the day is, 'how far can we take this...how big can we grow it...and how fast can we get there?'

The best way to support dreams and stretch is to set apart small ideas with big potential, then give people positive role models and the resources to turn small projects into big businesses.