Jack Welch Quotes

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.

Be candid with everyone.

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

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

Change before you have to.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Keep learning; don't be arrogant by assuming that you know it all, that you have a monopoly on the truth; always assume that you can learn something from someone else.

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.

Control your own destiny or someone else will.

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.

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

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

The secret of success is changing the way you think.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

The world belongs to passionate driven people.

Protecting underperformers always backfires.

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

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

Never miss out on an opportunity like a good recession.

The team with the best players usually does win - this is why you need to invest the majority of your time and energy in developing your people.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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