Jack Welch Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

If I had to run a company on three measures, those measures would be customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and cash flow.

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

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

Simple messages travel faster, simpler designs reach the market faster and the elimination of clutter allows faster decision making.

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

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.

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

People aren't the same. Business is, in my opinion, all about the team that fields the best players. It's not about an idea. An idea goes away. Somebody catches up with it. It's not about a widget.

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

All of management is about self-confidence

Genuine leadership comes from the quality of your vision and your ability to spark others to extraordinary performance.

Don't make the process harder than it is.

Trust happens when leaders are transparent.

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.

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

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

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

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

When there's change, there's opportunity.

When employees underperform, a leader tells them so.

Managers often hold on to resisters because of a specific skill set or because they've been around for a long time. Don't.

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.

Leadership is helping other people grow and succeed. it is not just about you. It's all about them.... everyone deserves a chance.... you can never let yourself be a victim.

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

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.

If you want risk taking, set an example yourself and reward and praise those that do.

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

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

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

That's all managing is: just coming up with the right questions and getting the right answers.

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

If you're a leader and you're the smartest guy in the world - in the room, you've got real problems.

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

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

No one can guarantee you a job other than satisfied customers. That's the only thing that works. Nothing creates work other than products and services you provide that create satisfied customers.

In difficult times your best must be hugged, loved, kissed, rewarded, paid - everything. And your worst must be the people that leave, because your best are going to take you to the next game.

The hero is the one with ideas.

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.

I believe social responsibility begins with a strong, competitive company. Only a healthy enterprise can improve and enrich the lives of people and their communities.

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

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

The binders, the charts, the grids may seem formidable, but the meetings themselves are built around informality, trust, emotion and humor.

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

As a leader, you have no right to have any employee wonder how they fit in and where they are going.