Words matter. These are the best Jack Welch Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I was afraid of the internet… because I couldn’t type.
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.
If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you’re stuck.
Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.
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.
You measure your people and you take action on those that don’t measure up.
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.
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.
Short cycle business are being impacted by credit, and are being impacted by gasoline prices, food, distribution businesses, chemical business.
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.
Change before you have to.
You got to be rigorous in your appraisal system. The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.
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.
In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I’ve ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.
I don’t feel under-taxed in any way at all.
The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.
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.
Control your own destiny or someone else will.
Be candid with everyone.
Give me a highly successful unionized industry.
There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.
The Internet is the Viagra of big business.
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 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.
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%.
If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
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.
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.
Number one, cash is king… number two, communicate… number three, buy or bury the competition.
An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
