Jack Welch Quotations | Page 3

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.