109 Top Jack Welch Quotes On Winning And Leadership

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

  

Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will

  

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

  

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.

  

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.

  

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%.

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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.

  

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.

Culture

  

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

  

Give me a highly successful unionized industry.

Me

  

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.

Culture

  

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.

  

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

  

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.

Culture , Family , Time

  

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

  

The Internet is the Viagra of big business.

  

There are only three measurements that tell you nearly everything you need to know about your organization's overall performance: employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow...It goes without saying that 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...

  

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

  

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

  

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

  

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.

  

There are only two sources of competitive advantage: the ability to learn more about our customers faster than the competition and the ability to turn that learning into action faster than the competition.

  

Too often we measure everything and understand nothing. The three most important things you need to measure in a business are customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and cash flow. If you’re growing customer satisfaction, your global market share is sure to grow, too. Employee satisfaction gets you productivity, quality, pride, and creativity. And cash flow is the pulse—the key vital sign of a company.

  

Great leaders love to see people grow. The day you are afraid of them being better than you is the day you fail as a leader.

  

The secret of success is changing the way you think.

Think

  

Business is a game, and as with all games, the team that puts the best people on the field and gets them playing together wins. It's that simple.

Together

  

The most important job you have is growing your people, giving them a chance to reach their dreams.

  

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

  

A leader's job is to look into the future and see the organization, not as it is, but as it should be

  

Arrogance is a killer, and wearing ambition on one's sleeve can have the same effect. There is a fine line between arrogance and self-confidence.

  

Companies don't give job security. Only satisfied customers do.

  

Protecting underperformers always backfires.

  

The hero is the one with ideas.

  

All of management is about self-confidence

  

Every employee, not just the senior people, should know how a company is doing.

  

Nothing of any importance has ever been accomplished by a pessimist.

  

Trust happens when leaders are transparent.

  

You are not a leader to win a popularity contest-you are a leader to lead.

  

The best thing workers can bring to their jobs is a lifelong thirst for learning.

  

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

  

Any company trying to compete...must figure out a way to engage the mind of every employee.

Trying

  

A leader's role is not to control people or stay on top of things, but rather to guide, energize and excite.

  

Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy . . . Your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.

  

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.

Life , Never , Think

  

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.

  

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

Life

  

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

  

Be candid with everyone.

  

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.

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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.

  

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.

Never

  

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

  

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

  

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.

  

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.

  

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

  

The team with the best players wins.

  

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.

  

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

  

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.

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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.

  

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

Life

  

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

  

Culture drives great results.

Culture

  

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.

Think

  

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

  

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

  

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

  

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.

  

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.

Think

  

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.

Think

  

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.

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

  

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

  

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.

  

When you become a leader success is all about growing others.

  

Change before you have to.

Life

  

Control your own Destiny or somebody else will

  

Common mission trap for companies: trying to be all things to all people at all times.

Trying

  

If you are not confused, you don´t know what is going on.

  

Take every opportunity to inject self-confidence into those who have earned it. Use ample praise, the more specific the better.

  

You can look at the situation and feel victimized. Or you can look at it and be excited about conquering the challenges and opportunities it presents.

  

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

  

Every job you take is a gamble that could increase your options or shut them down.

  

No vision is worth the paper it's printed on unless it is communicated constantly and reinforced with rewards.

  

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

  

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

  

Effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information. Little is worse than a manager who can’t cut bait.

  

The mission announces exactly where you are going, and the values describe the behaviors that will get you there.

  

When launching something new, you have to go for it—“playing not to lose” can never be an option.

Never

  

Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.

Yourself

  

IT’S SAID that you can only live life forward and understand it backward.

Life

  

We've all been guilty at one point or another in our careers of boasting of perfect hindsight. It's a terrible sin. If you don't make sure your questions and concerns are acted upon, it doesn't count.

  

Take time to get to know people. Understand where they are coming from, what is important to them. Make sure they are with you.

Time

  

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.

Life

  

Excellence and competitiveness aren't incompatible with honesty and integrity.

  

The world belongs to passionate driven people.

  

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

  

Someone, somewhere has a better idea.