400 Best Jack Welch Quotes On Leadership (Author of Winning)
1. “leadership, very simply, is about two things: 1. Truth and trust. 2. Ceaselessly seeking the former, relentlessly building the latter.”
2. “I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.” – Jack Welch
3. “It sounds awful, but a crisis rarely ends without blood on the floor. That’s not easy or pleasant. But sadly, it is often necessary so the company can move forward again.”
4. “Change before you have to.” Jack Welch
5. “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."
6. “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.” Jack Welch
7. “Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don’t love.”
8. “Given all of your answers, do you really believe Sam has what it takes to be a successful recruiter in this company?” (No)
9. “There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” ~ Jack Welch
10. “If a job doesn’t excite you on some level—just because of the stuff of it—don’t settle.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
11. “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.” - Jack Welch, former CEO of GE
12. “Companies don’t give job security. Only satisfied customers do.” ~ Jack Welch
13. “Trying to get people to face reality and see the world the way it really is an absolutely critical aspect of leadership, in my view.”
14. “Trust happens when leaders are transparent.”
15. “Some people have better ideas than others; some are smarter or more experienced, or more creative. But everyone should be heard and respected.”
16. “When employees underperform, a leader tells them so.”
17. “The secret of success is changing the way you think.”
18. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
19. “When you were made a leader you weren’t given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.”
20. “Don’t lose yourself on the way to the top.” ~ Jack Welch
21. “Every great leader has a generosity gene.”
22. “Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.” ~ Jack Welch
23. “It is better to act too quickly than it is to wait too long.” Jack Welch
24. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
25. “Never miss out on an opportunity like a good recession.”
26. “Innovation is not a big breakthrough invention every time. Innovation is a constant thing. But if you don’t have an innovative company [team], coming to work everyday to find a better way, you don’t have a company[team]. You’re getting ready to die on the vine. You’re always looking for the next innovation, the next niche, the next product improvement, the next service improvement. But always trying to get better.” ~ Jack Welch
27. “But differentiation is all about being extreme, rewarding the best and weeding out the ineffective. Rigorous differentiation delivers real stars—and stars build great businesses. Some contend that differentiation is nuts—bad for morale. They say that differential treatment erodes the very idea of teamwork. Not in my world. You build strong teams by treating individuals differently. Just look at the way baseball teams pay 20-game winning pitchers and 40-plus home run hitters. The relative contributions of those players are easy to measure—their stats jump out at you—yet they are still part of a team. Everybody’s got to feel they have a stake in the game. But that doesn’t mean everyone on the team has to be treated the same way.”
28. “The team with the best players wins.” Jack Welch
29. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” — Jack Welch
30. “People with big personalities can make very big targets of themselves.”
31. “When you were made a leader, you weren’t given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.” – Jack Welch
32. “I was afraid of the internet… because I couldn’t type.”
33. “Today, all arrows point toward the biotech, nanotech, and information technology industries, and the convergence among them.”
34. “Lack of candor blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It’s a killer.”
35. “Have you been clear about the areas needing improvement?” (Yes)
36. “A leader’s job is to look into the future and see the organization, not as it is, but as it should be.” – Jack Welch
37. “When you were made a leader you weren't given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
38. “No vision is worth the paper it's printed on unless it is communicated constantly and reinforced with rewards.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
39. “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.”
40. “The mission announces exactly where you are going, and the values describe the behaviors that will get you there.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
41. “Well, Ross, you’re being unfair to Sam. You’re his leader and you are keeping him in a job at which he is not succeeding and, according to you, he’s not likely to succeed at.
42. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
43. “Indeed, the biggest winners in the world are those who answer yes to the question, “Am I living the life I choose?”
44. “Don’t lose yourself on the way to the top.” – Jack Welch
45. “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.”
46. “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.” Jack Welch
47. “Common mission trap for companies: trying to be all things to all people at all times.”
48. “Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy.”
49. “When you were made a leader you weren't given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.”
50. “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.” Jack Welch
51. Despite his aggressive management style, Welch is known for his passion for innovation. His famous “Work-Out” program is credited with creating an environment of collaboration at GE.
52. “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. Legitimate self-confidence is a winner. The true test of self-confidence is the courage to be open – to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. Self-confident people aren’t afraid to have their views challenged. They relish the intellectual combat that enriches ideas.” ~ Jack Welch
53. “Leadership, very simply, is about two things: 1. Truth and trust. 2. Ceaselessly seeking the former, relentlessly building the latter.” – Jack Welch
54. Jack Welch had many odd jobs before joining General Electric, including janitor of a grocery store, night watchman, and nuclear power plant analyst.
55. “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.” – Jack Welch
56. “IT’S SAID that you can only live life forward and understand it backward.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
57. Winning lifts everyone it touches -it just makes the world a better place. Jack Welch
58. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
59. “Genuine leadership comes from the quality of your vision and your ability to spark others to extraordinary performance.” ~ Jack Welch
60. “He had the skill of identifying talent, and nurturing talent, and developing it, and those people have become business leaders elsewhere. The best single day example was the day Jeff Immelt was announced to succeed Jack Welch. The other three internal contenders were very strong, and instantly got other jobs.”
61. Change before you have to. -Jack Welch
62. “When you own your choices, you own their consequences.” Jack Welch
63. “Genuine leadership comes from the quality of your vision and your ability to spark others to extraordinary performance.”
64. “..(removing the bottom ten per cent of employees) works because we spent over a decade building a performance culture with candid feedback at every level. Candor and openness are the foundations of such a culture. I wouldn’t want to inject (this approach) cold turkey into an organisation without a performance culture already in place.”
65. “What is trust? I could give you a dictionary definition, but you know it when you feel it. Trust happens when leaders are transparent, candid, and keep their word. It’s that simple. Your people should always know where they stand in terms of their performance. They have to know how the business is doing. And sometimes the news is not good—such as imminent layoffs—and any normal person would rather avoid delivering it. But you have to fight the impulse to pad or diminish hard messages or you’ll pay with your team’s confidence and energy.”
66. “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.”
67. “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.”
68. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” -Jack Welch, Former CEO of GE
69. “Strategy is not a lengthy action plan. It is the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances.” ~ Jack Welch
70. “lo que es el marketing en esencia: el producto adecuado, en el lugar adecuado, al precio adecuado, con el mensaje adecuado, ofrecido por el equipo adecuado.”
71. “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” ~ Jack Welch
72. “Someone, somewhere has a better idea.” ~ Jack Welch
73. “It is better to act too quickly than it is to wait too long.”
74. “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.”
75. “A leader's job is to look into the future and see the organization, not as it is, but as it should be.” - Jack Welch
76. “Look, winning and losing can’t be quantified. They are states of mind, and losing happens only when you give up. Seen that way, then, the world can be filled with winners, and there is room for them all.” – Jack Welch
77. “When you are an individual contributor, you try to have all the answers. That’s your job—to be an expert, the best at what you do, maybe even the smartest person in the room. When you are a leader, your job is to have all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room. Every conversation you have about a decision, a proposal, or a piece of market information has to be filled with you saying, “What if?” and “Why not?” and “How come?”
78. “If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete.”
79. “Take time to get to know people. Understand where they are coming from, what is important to them. Make sure they are with you.” ~ Jack Welch
80. “Change before you have to.”
81. “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.” – Jack Welch
82. “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” Jack Welch
83. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” – Jack Welch
84. “When launching something new, you have to go for it—“playing not to lose” can never be an option.”
85. “Indeed, the biggest winners in the world are those who answer yes to the question, Am I living the life I choose?” – Jack Welch
86. “learning is truly a value, growth for every employee is a real objective, mistakes aren’t always fatal, and there are lots of people around whom you can reach out to for coaching and mentoring.”
87. “Leadership, very simply, is about two things: 1. Truth and trust. 2. Ceaselessly seeking the former, relentlessly building the latter.” Jack Welch
88. “as Google CEO Larry Page put it in his 2014 TED talk: “The main thing that has caused companies to fail, in my view, is that they missed the future”.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
89. “Don’t manage – lead.” Jack Welch
90. “A leader’s job is to look into the future and see the organization, not as it is, but as it should be.”
91. “Before you become a leader, success is all about growing yourself. After you become a leader, success is about growing others.”
92. “Marketing is not anyone’s job… It’s everyone’s job!” ~ Jack Welch (Thanks to my new twitter friend Leigh Cowan)
93. “Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.”
94. “Culture drives great results.”
95. “Before you are a leader, success is about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is about growing others.” — Jack Welch
96. “Strategy is not a lengthy action plan. It is the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances.”
97. “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.” Jack Welch
98. “Every job you take is a gamble that could increase your options or shut them down.”
99. “Change before you have to.” – Jack Welch
100. “Set stretch goals. Don’t ever settle for mediocrity. The key to stretch is to reach for more than you think is possible. Don’t sell yourself short by thinking that you’ll fail.”
101. “Every job you take is a gamble that could increase your options or shut them down.” Jack Welch
102. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion.” – Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric
103. “Don’t manage – lead change before you have to.”
104. “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.” ~ Jack Welch
105. “Working to fulfill someone else’s needs or dreams almost always catches up with you.”
106. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.' – Jack Welch
107. “Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.” ~ Jack Welch
108. “Reducing a complex problem to a simple chart excited the”
109. “People development should be a daily event, integrated into every aspect of your regular goings-on.”
110. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” ~ Jack Welch
111. “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.”
112. “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.”
113. “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.” — Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric
114. “You are not a leader to win a popularity contest-you are a leader to lead.”
115. “Jack was an exceptional man and an outstanding leader who had such enormous impact on the role of business in our country.”
116. “A leader’s role is not to control people or stay on top of things, but rather to guide, energize and excite.”
117. Jack Welch was named Manager of the Century by Fortune magazine in 1999, making him the most highly acclaimed business leader of the 20th century.
118. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. -Jack Welch
119. “Tell them to grab on to the career that engages their brain and heart and soul and gives them meaning. Tell them that eventually, the money will come, and if it doesn’t, in time, they will find themselves rich with something money can’t buy. And that, obviously, would be happiness.”
120. “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.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
121. “Nothing of any importance has ever been accomplished by a pessimist.” ~ Jack Welch
122. “Take every opportunity to inject self-confidence into those who have earned it. Use ample praise, the more specific the better.”
123. “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.” - Jack Welch
124. “Retired General Electric CEO Jack Welch said, “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”
125. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
126. “For a large organization to be effective, it must be simple. For a large organization to be simple, its people must have self-confidence and intellectual self-assurance. Insecure managers create complexity. Frightened, nervous managers use thick, convoluted planning books and busy slides filled with everything they’ve known since childhood. Real leaders don’t need clutter. People must have the self-confidence to be clear, precise, to be sure that every person in their organization—highest to lowest—understands what the business is trying to achieve. But it’s not easy. You can’t believe how hard it is for people to be simple, how much they fear being simple. They worry that if they’re simple, people will think they’re simpleminded. In reality, of course, it’s just the reverse. Clear, toughminded people are the most simple.”
127. “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” ~ Jack Welch
128. “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” – Jack Welch
129. “Just because you are the boss doesn’t mean you are the source of all knowledge.”
130. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
131. “We've all been guilty at one point or another in our careers of boasting of perfect hindsight.
132. “Every job you take is a gamble that could increase your options or shut them down.” – Jack Welch
133. “Don’t lose yourself on the way to the top.” Jack Welch
134. “Have you been out on visits and otherwise observed him in action?” (Yes)
135. “Learning is truly a value, growth for every employee is a real objective, mistakes aren’t always fatal, and there are lots of people around whom you can reach out to for coaching and mentoring.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
136. “There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”
137. “Strategy means making clear-cut choices about how to compete.”
138. “the only career worth pursuing is the one that turns your crank.”
139. “Personally, I always admired him as a mentor, as a friend, and even as a fatherly figure. He really set the standard as a CEO, not just in his performance running the company and as a legendary leader, but in his deep integrity, big heart and strategic vision.”
140. “No vision is worth the paper it's printed on unless it is communicated constantly and reinforced with rewards.”
141. “Today, all arrows point toward the biotech, nanotech, and information technology industries, and the convergence among them.” Jack Welch
142. “as Google CEO Larry Page put it in his 2014 TED talk: “The main thing that has caused companies to fail, in my view, is that they missed the future.”
143. “Willingness to change is a strength even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.”
144. “A leader’s job is to look into the future and see the organization, not as it is, but as it should be.” Jack Welch
145. “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.”
146. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision. And relentlessly drive it to completion.” – Jack Welch
147. “There are no finite answers to many questions. What really counted was your thought process.” Jack Welch
148. “If we get the right people in the right job we’ve won the game.”
149. “When you become a leader success is all about growing others.”
150. “Only satisfied customers can give people job security. Not companies.”
151. “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.”
152. “Y, claro, todo esto nos lleva a la pregunta de qué es exactamente la alineación. La respuesta es misión, comportamientos y consecuencias.”
153. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” - Jack Welch
154. “A leader's job is to look into the future and see the organization, not as it is, but as it should be.”
155. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. —Jack Welch, American business executive, chemical engineer, and writer
156. “The value decade is upon us. If you can’t sell a top-quality product at the world’s lowest price, you’re going to be out of the game . . . the best way to hold your customers is to constantly figure out how to give them more for less.—Jack Welch, Chairman, General Electric”
157. “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.” Jack Welch
158. “the only career worth pursuing is the one that turns your crank.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
159. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” —Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric
160. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. —Jack Welch
161. “There are some leaders who destroy anyone who challenges their authority, (who say) you have to keep me on the job, there is no one else here who can do it. Jack was just the opposite, he developed incredibly strong talent around him. That’s why GE for a long time was the best company around. For a very long time it was very hard to pry anyone away from GE.”
162. “Over the course of your career, your Detroit will surely call you at one point or another. If you can go, that’s great. If you can’t, make peace with the reasons why.”
163. “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.” – Jack Welch
164. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” -Jack Welch
165. “Leadership, very simply, is about two things: 1. Truth and trust. 2. Ceaselessly seeking the former, relentlessly building the latter.”
166. “Look, anyone can manage for the short term—just keep squeezing the lemon. And anyone can manage for the long—just keep dreaming. You were made a leader because someone believed you could squeeze and dream at the same time.”
167. “If you’re a leader and you’re the smartest guy in the world – in the room, you’ve got real problems.” ~ Jack Welch
168. “A leader’s job is to look into the future and see the organization, not as it is, but as it should be” ~ Jack Welch
169. “Every ending is just an opportunity to start again, wiser, more experienced, and more emboldened for the next act.”
170. “An organizations ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” Jack Welch
171. “Face reality as it is, not as it was, or as you wish it to be.”
172. “When employees underperform, a leader tells them so.” ~ Jack Welch
173. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
174. “Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don’t love.“ Jack Welch
175. “Look, winning and losing can’t be quantified. They are states of mind, and losing happens only when you give up. Seen that way, then, the world can be filled with winners, and there is room for them all.” Jack Welch
176. “His constant focus on performance and recognizing that you have to deliver. It’s something that very much carried over into Honeywell. Everyone can talk about it, few can do it, and he did it.”
177. “Nothing of any importance has ever been accomplished by a pessimist.”
178. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” —Jack Welch
179. “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.”
180. “Control your own Destiny or somebody else will”
181. “In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement it like hell.” Jack Welch
182. “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.” – Jack Welch
183. “That’s more easily said than done;”
184. “Never miss out on an opportunity like a good recession.” ~ Jack Welch
185. “Take time to get to know people. Understand where they are coming from, what is important to them. Make sure they are with you.”
186. “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.”
187. “In the end, your integrity is all you’ve got.”
188. “Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
189. “Some people have better ideas than others; some are smarter or more experienced or more creative. But everyone should be heard and respected.” ~ Jack Welch
190. “(GE) was a hunting ground. I recruited, maybe five or six executives with a GE background who became CEOs for major companies. (GE) was looked at as the preferred academy company for other businesses because of his leadership, his teaching approach to talent. You could screw up, but you needed performance over time. He was a risk taker, and he expected other executives to take risks.”
191. “Number one, cash is king… number two, communicate… number three, buy or bury the competition.” ~ Jack Welch
192. “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”
193. “In my experience, an effective mission statement basically answers one question: How do we intend to win in this business?”
194. “Does coaching work? Yes. Good coaches provide a truly important service. They tell you the truth when no one else will.” ~ Jack Welch
195. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” Jack Welch
196. “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
197. “How come that you came across at your position now?”
198. “Control your own destiny or someone else will.” ~ Jack Welch
199. “when the rate of change inside an institution becomes slower than the rate of change outside, the end is in sight. The only question is when.”
200. “You cannot go global on the phone or online,”
201. “The mission announces exactly where you are going, and the values describe the behaviors that will get you there.” – Jack Welch
202. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” – Jack Welch, former GE chairman and CEO
203. “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.”
204. “The third way is less common and certainly less of a layup—a culture of integrity, meaning a culture of honesty, transparency, fairness, and strict adherence to rules and regulations. In such cultures, there can be no head fakes or winks. People who break the rules do not leave the company for “personal reasons” or to “spend more time with their families.” They are hanged—publicly—and the reasons are made painfully clear to everyone.”
205. “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.” – Jack Welch
206. “Be candid with everyone.” ~ Jack Welch
207. “Every job you take is a gamble that could increase your options or shut them down.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
208. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
209. “Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.”
210. “IT’S SAID that you can only live life forward and understand it backward.” – Jack Welch
211. “The most important job you have is growing your people, giving them a chance to reach their dreams.”
212. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
213. “Stepping back from almost any situation with an underperformer, it’s always easy to see the solution. They need to move on—sooner rather than later. Up close, however, organizations tend to draw out departures, as people fret about the employee’s emotional reaction to being let go. Oftentimes, managers feel guilty about putting a friend out of work, or remorseful they didn’t give candid enough feedback along the way, or both.”
214. “Hierarchy is an organization with its face toward the CEO and its ass toward the customer.” ~ Jack Welch
215. “Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.”
216. “Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will.”
217. “I always follow 4E's, Energy, Energize, Edge, and Execute.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
218. “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.”
219. “The most important job you have is growing your people, giving them a chance to reach their dreams.” ~ Jack Welch
220. “RULE 2. Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.”
221. “When you were made a leader you weren’t given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.” Jack Welch
222. “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” ―Jack Welch
223. “The team with the best players wins.” – Jack Welch
224. “From my days in the Pit, I learned that the game is all about fielding the best athletes. Whoever fielded the best team there won. Reuben Gutoff reinforced that it was no different in business. Winning teams come from differentiation, rewarding the best and removing the weakest, always fighting to raise the bar. I was lucky to get out of the pile and learn this my very first year at GE—the hard way, by nearly quitting the company.”
225. Winning lifts everyone it touches -it just makes the world a better place. Jack Welch, Winning
226. “There was no corporate leader like “neutron” Jack. He was my friend and supporter. We made wonderful deals together. He will never be forgotten. My warmest sympathies to his wonderful wife & family!”
227. “Face reality as it is, not as it was, or as you wish it to be.” Jack Welch
228. “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.”
229. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
230. “No vision is worth the paper it’s printed on unless it is communicated constantly and reinforced with rewards.” Jack Welch
231. “Look, winning and losing can’t be quantified. They are states of mind, and losing happens only when you give up. Seen that way, then, the world can be filled with winners, and there is room for them all.”
232. “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
233. “Before you become a leader, success is all about growing yourself. After you become a leader, success is about growing others.” — Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric
234. “Meanwhile how do you find GE engines at your Boeing airplane?”
235. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
236. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”
237. “If you are a leader and you are a manager, shame on you if people don’t know where they stand. You have a moral obligation leading people’s lives, talking about their future, and… telling them where they stand.”
238. “IT’S SAID that you can only live life forward and understand it backward.”
239. “I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.” Jack Welch
240. “Without a doubt, there are lots of ways to measure the pulse of a business. But if you have employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow right, you can be sure your company is healthy and, on the way, to winning. ”
241. “Excellence and competitiveness aren’t incompatible with honesty and integrity.” ~ Jack Welch
242. “Face reality as it is, not as it was, or as you wish it were. Be candid with everyone. Don’t manage, lead. Change before you have to. If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete. Control your own destiny, or someone else will.”
243. “Jack was larger than life and the heart of GE for half a century. He reshaped the face of our company and the business world. Jack was a strong and constant influence throughout my career despite never having worked directly for him.”
244. “Celebrating creates an atmosphere of recognition and positive energy. Imagine a team winning the World Series without champagne spraying everywhere. And yet companies win all the time and let it go without so much as a high five. Work is too much a part of life not to recognize moments of achievement. Make a big deal out of them. If you don’t, no one will.” ~ Jack Welch
245. “Indeed, the biggest winners in the world are those who answer yes to the question, Am I living the life I choose?” Jack Welch
246. “La gente trabaja todo el día, todos los días, intentando mejorar sus organizaciones y sus vidas. Intentando ayudar a sus familias, a sus empleados y a sus colegas, a sus clientes y a las comunidades en las que operan.”
247. “What could possibly be more important than who gets hired, developed, promoted, or moved out the door? 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.”
248. “No vision is worth the paper it’s printed on unless it is communicated constantly and reinforced with rewards.”
249. “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” – Jack Welch
250. “Control your own destiny or someone else will.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
251. “If there is anything I would like to be remembered for it is that
252. “The only antidote is simplicity. The simplicity of leading through truth and trust. Ceaselessly seeking the former, relentlessly building the latter. In every decision, in every action. Truth is a determined pursuit, a personal and unquenchable fire, burning to know what is really happening inside the company and out.”
253. ‘We’ll look into it,’ they kept assuring me. I was a know-nothing, meddling pain in the neck, and they were just trying to mollify me.
254. “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.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
255. “Differentiation favors people who are energetic and extroverted and undervalue people who are shy and introverted, even if they are talented.” Jack Welch
256. “When it comes to strategy, ponder less and do more.”
257. “If you are a leader and you are a manager, shame on you if people don’t know where they stand. You have a moral obligation leading people’s lives, talking about their future and ... telling them where they stand."
258. “The 3Ss of Winning in business are speed, simplicity, and self-confidence.” ~ Jack Welch
259. “Leadership is the relentless pursuit of truth and ceaseless creation of trust.” Jack Welch, Ex-CEO, General Electric
260. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
261. “Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.”
262. “Don’t lose yourself on the way to the top.”
263. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. — Jack Welch
264. “People development should be a daily event, integrated into every aspect of your regular goings-on.“ Jack Welch
265. “A leader's job is to look into the future and see the organization, not as it is, but as it should be.” - Jack Welch
266. “The team with the best players wins.”
267. “At the end of the day, effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible. They give people a clear sense of the direction to profitability and the inspiration to feel they are part of something big and important.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
268. “An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” – Jack Welch
269. “When you own your choices, you own their consequences.”
270. “GE’s system of differentiation, which separates employees into three performance categories and manages them up or out accordingly.”
271. “When the book about business leaders in this century is written, Jack Welch will be near the very top. What he did as the leader of GE was remarkable.” “It’s very difficult to predict how things would have worked out if Jack stayed on deck, but certainly what happened to General Electric after he left is not a very positive story”
272. “It is better to act too quickly than it is to wait too long.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
273. An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage. —Jack Welch
274. “An organization’s ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” – Jack Welch
275. “When you were made a leader you weren’t given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.” ~ Jack Welch
276. "Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.”― Jack Welch
277. “Number one, cash is king, number two communicate, number three, buy or bury the competition.” Jack Welch
278. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. — Jack Welch, American business executive
279. “Strategy is just a winning value proposition, that is, a product or service that customers simply want more than the other options out there.” – Jack Welch
280. “Change before you have to.” ~ Jack Welch
281. “Are prepared to invest more time in him, time that would be at the expense of another member of your team?” (No)
282. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
283. “Differentiation favors people who are energetic and extroverted and undervalues people who are shy and introverted, even if they are talented.”
284. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about others. - Jack Welch
285. “I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.” ~ Jack Welch
286. “The boss would be present at the beginning of each session, laying out the rationale for the Work-Out. He or she would also commit to two things: to give an on-the-spot yes or no to 75 percent of the recommendations that came out of the session, and to resolve the remaining 25 percent within thirty days. The boss would then disappear until the end of the session, so as not to stifle open discussion, returning only at the end to make good on his or her promise.*”
287. “You talk about seeing around corners as an element of success. That’s what differentiates the good leader. Not many people have it. Not many people can predict that corner. That would be a characteristic of great leaders.”
288. Jack Welch is an avid golfer and has played in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. He was a member of the Augusta National Golf Club and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2015.
289. “When launching something new, you have to go for it – ‘playing not to lose’ can never be an option.” Jack Welch
290. “In my experience, an effective mission statement basically answers one question: How do we intend to win in this business?” – Jack Welch
291. “When I last saw him, what I remember most vividly was when he asked me, ‘So how exactly are you running the company?’ Jack was still in it – committed to GE’s success. And to have Jack Welch ask me how I am running GE is pretty humbling.”
292. Change before you have to. - Jack Welch
293. “Any time there is change, there is opportunity. So it is paramount that an organization get energized rather than paralyzed.”
294. “So Eddy, you are lucky as you work for a good company where you are now”
295. “When you were made a leader you weren't given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.” - Jack Welch, Former CEO of General Electric
296. “When you are a leader, your job is to have all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room. Every conversation you have about a decision, a proposal, or a piece of market information has to be filled with you saying, “What if?” and “Why not?” and “How come?”
297. “The world belongs to passionate driven people.” ~ Jack Welch
298. “Your people give their days (and sometimes their nights) to you. They give their hands, brains, and hearts. Sure, the company pays them. It fills their wallets. But as a leader, you need to fill their souls. You can do that by getting in their skin, by giving the work meaning, by clearing obstacles, and by demonstrating the generosity gene. And you can do it, perhaps most powerfully, by creating an environment that’s exciting and enjoyable.”
299. “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” – Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric
300. “The hero is the one with ideas.”
301. “I think every leader has an obligation – the absolute obligation – to treat everyone fairly. But they also have the obligation to treat everyone differently. Because people aren’t all the same, and the last thing you ever want to do, in my opinion, is let the best in your organization be treated like the worst in your organization. It does nothing for your future.” ~ Jack Welch
302. “In the end, your integrity is all you’ve got.” ~ Jack Welch
303. “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.” – Jack Welch
304. “The biggest opportunity for big companies has come by far in the digitization of internal processes.”
305. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” — Jack Welch, former CEO, General Electric
306. “Indeed, the biggest winners in the world are those who answer yes to the question, ‘Am I living the life I choose?'”
307. “At the end of the day, effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible. They give people a clear sense of the direction to profitability and the inspiration to feel they are part of something big and important.” Jack Welch
308. “El papel de un líder no es controlar a la gente ni estar pendiente de todo, sino más bien guiar, dinamizar y generar emoción”. —Jack Welch”
309. “Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.”
310. “Trust happens when leaders are transparent.” – Jack Welch
311. “Control your own destiny, or someone else will.”
312. “Have you delivered the training you promised?” (Yes)
313. “Any company trying to compete…must figure out a way to engage the mind of every employee.” ~ Jack Welch
314. “Cash is king. Get every drop of cash you can get and hold onto it.” ~ Jack Welch
315. “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.”
316. “Before you are a leader, success is about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” Jack Welch
317. “If I had to run a company on three measures, those measures would be customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and cash flow.”
318. “The mission announces exactly where you are going, and the values describe the behaviors that will get you there.”
319. “If you are not confused, you don´t know what is going on.”
320. “When you are a leader, your job is to have all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room. Every conversation you have about a decision, a proposal, or a piece of market information has to be filled with you saying, What if? and Why not? and How come?”
321. “Change before you have to”
322. “Los líderes existen, en gran medida, para dar sentido —propósito— a sus equipos; para, de manera incansable, apasionadamente, explicar: «Vamos hacia allí. Por tal y tal motivo. Así es como vamos a llegar. Así es como encajas tú. Y esto es lo que vas a ganar con todo esto».”
323. “Protecting underperformers always backfires.” ~ Jack Welch
324. “Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.” Jack Welch
325. “I always follow 4E's wrapped in a 'P”
326. “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
327. “The secret of success is changing the way you think.” ~ Jack Welch
328. “Achieving work-life balance is a process. Getting it right is iterative. You get better at it with experience and observation, and eventually, after some time passes, you notice it’s not getting harder anymore. It’s just what you do.”
329. “Leadership, very simply, is about two things: 1) Truth and trust. 2) Ceaselessly seeking the former, relentlessly building the latter.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
330. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” ~ Jack Welch
331. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” – Jack Welch
332. “Be candid with everyone.”
333. “When there’s change, there’s opportunity.”
334. “The world belongs to passionate driven people.”
335. “His aggressive, in-your-face style and edict to be number one or two in every major sector was embraced by both management consultants and business school faculty. Jack’s aggressive style was matched by his growth-by-acquisition strategy which allowed GE to produce consistent double-digit growth in earnings per share. And, while his performance was tremendous, his exit was followed by arguably poor performance of future GE CEOs. The failure of subsequent CEOs underscores how important Welch’s leadership was to GE.”
336. “Just because you are the boss doesn't mean you are the source of all knowledge. ”
337. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
338. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
339. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”
340. “Cash is king. Get every drop of cash you can get and hold onto it.”
341. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” —Jack Welch, American business executive, chemical engineer, and writer
342. “Common mission trap for companies: trying to be all things to all people at all times.” Jack Welch
343. “Reducing a complex problem to a simple chart excited the hell out of me.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
344. “Don't lose youself on the way to the top.”
345. “Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy . . . Your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.” ~ Jack Welch
346. “At the end of the day, effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible. They give people a clear sense of the direction to profitability and the inspiration to feel they are part of something big and important.”
347. “Control your own destiny or someone else will.” – Jack Welch
348. “Someone somewhere has a better idea.”
349. “Its a marathon, its not a sprint. Ten years. Fifteen years. You’ve got to get up everyday, with a new idea, a new spin, and you’ve got to bring it to work, every day.”
350. During his time as CEO of General Electric, Welch became known as “Neutron Jack” because of his ruthless cost cutting measures, which included the slashing of GE’s workforce.
351. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” –Jack Welch
352. “Before you are a leader, success is about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is about growing others” – Jack Welch.
353. “The final relationship that cannot be ignored is with disrupters:
354. “Forget the arduous, intellectualized number crunching and data grinding that gurus say you have to go through to get strategy right. Forget the scenario planning, yearlong studies, and hundred-plus-page reports. They’re time-consuming and expensive, and you just don’t need them. In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.”
355. “Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.” ~ Jack Welch
356. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
357. “With indefatigable spirit and sound judgment, he led GE through good times and difficult times. And all the while, he stood tall and always did the right thing for his company and his country.”
358. “In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement it like a hell.”
359. “Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean.”
360. “I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.”– Jack Welch, chairman and CEO General Electric
361. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” - Jack Welch
362. “Take every opportunity to inject self-confidence into those who have earned it. Use ample praise, the more specific the better.” Jack Welch
363. “Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don’t love.” – Jack Welch
364. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
365. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” — Jack Welch
366. “Without doubt, there are lots of ways to measure the pulse of a business. But if you have employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow right, you can be sure your company is healthy and on the way to winning.”
367. “When the rate of change inside an institution becomes slower than the rate of change outside, the end is in sight. The only question is when.” Jack Welch
368. “The one thing that hasn’t changed is the team that fields the best players wins.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
369. “Have you been clear with your expectations?” (Yes)
370. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
371. “Every employee, not just the senior people, should know how a company is doing.” ~ Jack Welch
372. “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.”
373. “The mission announces exactly where you are going, and the values describe the behaviors that will get you there.” Jack Welch
374. “A leader’s role is not to control people or stay on top of things, but rather to guide, energize and excite.” ~ Jack Welch
375. “When the rate of change inside an institution becomes slower than the rate of change outside, the end is in sight. The only question is when.” – Jack Welch
376. “People development should be a daily event, integrated into every aspect of your regular goings-on.” – Jack Welch
377. “There are no finite answers to many questions. What really counted was your thought process.”
378. Control your own destiny or someone else will. -Jack Welch
379. “In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.”
380. “HR should be every company’s killer app. What could possibly be more important than who gets hired?”
381. “Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
382. “If a job doesn’t excite you on some level—just because of the stuff of it—don’t settle.”
383. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others." - Jack Welch
384. “Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will”
385. “The team with the best players wins.” ~ Jack Welch
386. “Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.” – Jack Welch
387. “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.”
388. “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.” Jack Welch
389. “Take every opportunity to inject self-confidence into those who have earned it. Use ample praise, the more specific the better.” – Jack Welch
390. “A leader's role is not to control people or stay on top of things, but rather to guide, energize and excite. ”
391. “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.” ~ Jack Welch
392. “Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don’t love.” - Jack Welch Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
393. “When you are a leader, your job is to have all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room. Every conversation you have about a decision, a proposal, or a piece of market information has to be filled with you saying, What if? and Why not? and How come?” Jack Welch
394. “Underneath, you would surely see that the best care passionately about their people—about their growth and success. And you would see that they themselves are comfortable in their own skins. They’re real, filled with candor and integrity, optimism and humanity.”
395. “RULE 3. Leaders get into everyone’s skin, exuding positive energy and optimism. You know that old saying “The fish rots from the head.” It’s mainly used to refer to how politics and corruption filter down into an organization, but it could just as easily be used to describe the effect of a bad attitude at the top of any team, large or small. Eventually, everyone’s infected. The leader’s mood is, for lack of a better word, catching. You’ve seen the dynamic a hundred times. An upbeat manager who goes through the day with a positive outlook somehow ends up running a team or organization filled with…well, upbeat people with positive outlooks. A pessimistic sourpuss somehow ends up with an unhappy tribe all his own. Unhappy tribes have a tough time winning. Of course, sometimes there are good reasons to be down. The economy is bad, competition is brutal—whatever. Work can be hard. But your job as leader is to fight the gravitational pull of negativism. That doesn’t mean you sugarcoat the challenges your team faces. It does mean you display an energizing, can-do attitude about overcoming them. It means you get out of your office and into everyone’s skin, really caring about what they’re doing and how they’re faring as you take the hill together.”
396. “Take the value “We treat customers the way we would want to be treated.” That’s pretty tangible, but Bank One had literally identified the ten or twelve behaviors that made that value come to life. Here are some of them: Never let profit center conflicts get in the way of doing what is right for the customer. Give customers a good, fair deal. Great customer relationships take time. Do not try to maximize short-term profits at the expense of building those enduring relationships. Always look for ways to make it easier to do business with us. Communicate daily with your customers. If they are talking to you, they can’t be talking to a competitor. Don’t forget to say thank you. Another value Bank One had was: “We strive to be the low-cost provider through efficient and great operations.” Some of the prescribed behaviors included: Leaner is better. Eliminate bureaucracy. Cut waste relentlessly. Operations should be fast and simple. Value each other’s time. Invest in infrastructure. We should know our business best. We don’t need consultants to tell us what to do.”
397. “He was instrumental in the advancement of my career. There’s a story about me he included in his book. He called me up into his office. I was a lower mid-level finance employee, and he let me have it in the meeting for something the finance organization had done. He was everything everyone said about him in terms of how angry he could get. I walked out of there, calling my wife saying ‘I think I’ve been fired.’ Two months later, I had worked on the RCA deal. (Then) he had me interviewing three to four levels higher than where I was. That was the kind of career accelerant he was.”
398. “Control your own destiny or someone else will.” Jack Welch
399. “Face reality as it is, not as it was, or as you wish it to be.” – Jack Welch
400. Take action and believe in yourself. Dreams do come true.
401. “Companies don’t give job security. Only satisfied customers do.”
402. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” – Jack Welch, CEO General Electric 1981-2001
403. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” Jack Welch
