Jack Welch Quotes

A good leader remains focused. Controlling your destination is better than being controlled by it

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

The team with the best players wins.

We know where most of the creativity, the innovation, the stuff that drives productivity lies - in the minds of those closest to the work.

Someone, somewhere has a better idea.

Hierarchy is an organization with its face toward the CEO and its ass toward the customer.

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

Ideally, the star will be replaced within eight hours. This sends the message that no single individual is bigger than the company.

Make winners out of every business in your company. Don't carry losers.

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.

Creative artists have great passion.

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

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

You have no right to be a leader if someone who works for you doesn't know where they stand.

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

The Internet is the Viagra of big business.

This shows you are never too old to get surprised.

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

Be candid with everyone.

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

Getting candor right - with your reports, your peers, and your boss - is a skill that can make or break your career.

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.

Strategy means making clear-cut choices about how to compete.

Control your own Destiny or somebody else will

Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.

We bring together the best ideas - turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.

If we get the right people in the right job we've won the game.

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

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.

Cash is king. Get every drop of cash you can get and hold onto it.

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

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

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

People always overestimate how complex business is. This isn't rocket science. We've chosen one of the world's simplest professions.

People development should be a daily event, integrated into every aspect of your regular goings-on.

Real change agents comprise less than 10% of all business people.

There is no straight line to a dream.

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

The hero is the one with ideas.

GE's businesses turned in a terrific first quarter. Our products and services are being well received in unusually robust global markets.

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

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

We have the brand, and we have the fulfillment capability. Now we had to get the Net, and that's the easiest part of the game.

Control your destiny or somebody will.

If your CFO is more important than your CHRO (Chief Human Resource Officer) you're nuts!

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

Don't take a job because your mother wants you to. Don't be a victim. You own your decision.

When it comes to strategy, ponder less and do more.

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

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

Never miss out on an opportunity like a good recession.

The main social responsibility for a company is to win.

I never put myself out there as an employment agency,

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

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.

Six Sigma is a quality program that, when all is said and done, improves your customers' experience, lowers your costs, and builds better leaders.

HR should be every company's killer app. What could possibly be more important than who gets hired?

For a large organization to be effective, it must be simple.

What is a budget review? A personal review with numbers

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.

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

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

In any bad situation you can not let yourself be a victim.

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

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

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

When the amount of change externally exceeds the amount of change internally, the end is in sight.

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

I think the move by Mr. Greenspan was welcomed by everyone here.

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

Shun the incremental and go for the leap.

What the Commission is seeking cuts the heart out of the strategic rationale of our deal.

You can't behave in a calm, rational manner. You've got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.

The secret of success is changing the way you think.

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

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

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

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

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

All of management is about self-confidence

Give me a highly successful unionized industry.

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.

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

Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don't love.

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

The world belongs to passionate driven people.

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

Some people have better ideas than others; some are smarter or more experienced or more creative. But everyone should be heard and respected.

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

In the end, your integrity is all you've got.

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

Today, all arrows point toward the biotech, nanotech, and information technology industries, and the convergence among them.

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?'

Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will

RULE 2. Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.

Leading a big company means never allowing a company to take itself too seriously.

If we wait for the perfect answer, the world will pass us by

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

As a leader, your job is to energize people around the mission and vision you've articulated.

When employees underperform, a leader tells them so.