Jack Welch famous quotes

Change before you have to.
-- Jack Welch

#Life #Motivational #Change

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

#Kings #Cash

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

#Self Confidence #Winning #Simplicity

Shareholder value is the result of you doing a great job, watching your share price go up, your shareholders win, and dividends increasing. What happens when you have increasing shareholder value? You're delivering better employees to their communities and they can give back. Communities are winning because employees are involved in mentoring and all these other things. Customers are winning because you're providing them new products.
-- Jack Welch

#Jobs #Winning #Giving

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

#Strategy #Results #Employee

When there's change, there's opportunity.
-- Jack Welch

#Opportunity

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

#People #Action

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.
-- Jack Welch

#Team #Player #Ideas

Don't lose youself on the way to the top.
-- Jack Welch

#Way

The idea of let's all share the pain equally, or let's freeze salaries altogether - it's ass-backwards. It's absolutely ass-backwards.
-- Jack Welch

#Pain #Ideas #Salary

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

#Jobs #Giving #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.
-- Jack Welch

#Games #People #Next

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

#Learning #Arrogant #Assuming

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

#Thinking #Organization #People

Failing to differentiate among employees — and holding on to bottom-tier performers — is actually the cruelest form of management there is.
-- Jack Welch

#Management #Holding On #Failing

Trying to get people to face reality and see the world the way it really is is an absolutely critical aspect of leadership, in my view.
-- Jack Welch

#Reality #Views #People

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

#Mean #Cutting #Choices

Get the best player because whether it's soccer or whether it's anything else the team with the best players wins. So focus your energy on getting the best and getting rid of the weakest.
-- Jack Welch

#Soccer #Team #Winning

Every employee, not just the senior people, should know how a company is doing.
-- Jack Welch

#Senior #Team #People

If you get the best people on your team, you've got plenty of time to do the things you like to do and can add more value to.
-- Jack Welch

#Team #People #Add

Insecure managers create complexity. Frightened, nervous managers use thick convoluted planning books and busy slides filled with everything they’ve known since childhood……. They worry that if they’re simple, people will think they’re simple minded. In reality, of course, it’s just the reverse. Clear, tough minded people are the most simple.
-- Jack Welch

#Book #Insecure #Thinking

You never know how diverse your career can be. I think it's wonderful. My life has always been the next page, not the last page.
-- Jack Welch

#Thinking #Careers #Pages

Control your destiny or somebody will.
-- Jack Welch

#Destiny #Self Control #Your Destiny

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

#Dream #Jobs #People

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

#Two #Competition #Action

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

#Meaningful #People #Purpose

Globalization has taken a hit in that there is some sand in the gears because most of us have supply chains that are all over the world that we've had to lengthen.
-- Jack Welch

#Taken #Gears #World

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

#Creativity #Pride #Keys

No one is doing something in your business - getting a sale, having a key customer, working on an R&D project - doing anything that's more important than something you say is going to change the company.
-- Jack Welch

#Keys #Important #Projects

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

#Running #Would Be #Three

Nobody is too important to lead the initiative you say is important.
-- Jack Welch

#Important #Initiative

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

#Success #Encouragement #Business

Most organizations fail in driving change.
-- Jack Welch

#Organization #Driving #Failing

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

#Leadership #Leader #Growing

I believe that in any initiative, you can't have a flavor of the month. When you believe something is profound in a company, you can not be a logical leader. You have to go to the lunatic fringe. There is no way that logic is what you need to change people.
-- Jack Welch

#Believe #People #Profound

So every time you think about your work-life balance issue, remember what your boss is thinking about - and that's winning. Your needs may get heard - and even successfully resolved - but not if the boss's needs aren't met as well.
-- Jack Welch

#Winning #Thinking #Issues

The biggest opportunity for big companies has come by far in the digitization of internal processes.
-- Jack Welch

#Opportunity #Process #Bigs

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

#Confidence #Ambition #Self

In every company, differentiation is never more important than it is in times of trouble, and that's the time when everyone tends to go to the well and equalize rather than differentiate.
-- Jack Welch

#Important #Differentiation #Trouble

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

#Change #Leadership #Ends

If we don't create private sector jobs and just - just creating public sector jobs, we're going nowhere. This is a bad game. You've got to have innovation. You've got to have tax policies that support innovation.
-- Jack Welch

#Jobs #Games #Creating

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Reality

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

#Kings #Two #Numbers

The world belongs to passionate driven people.
-- Jack Welch

#People #Passionate #World

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

#Organization #Competition #Survival

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

#Ideas #Action #Evolution

Don't make the process harder than it is.
-- Jack Welch

#Simplicity #Process #Harder

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

#Vision #Quality #Sparks

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

#People #Leader #Roles

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

#Mind #Trying #Way

The Internet is the Viagra of big business.
-- Jack Welch

#Technology #Viagra #Internet

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.
-- Jack Welch

#Two #Long #Management

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

#Important #Killers #Should

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

#Teacher #Mistake #Failure

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

#Running #Appreciation #Believe

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

#Inspirational #Leadership #Insperational

An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
-- Jack Welch

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

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

#Simple #Design #Decision

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

#Life #Change #Strength

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

#Leadership #Long #Management

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

#Leadership #Confidence #Self

Focus on a few key objectives ... I only have three things to do. I have to choose the right people, allocate the right number of dollars, and transmit ideas from one division to another with the speed of light. So I'm really in the business of being the gatekeeper and the transmitter of ideas.
-- Jack Welch

#Ideas #Numbers #Keys

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

#Opportunity #Wings #People

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.
-- Jack Welch

#Leadership #Real #Guy

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

#Dream #Commitment #Long

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

#Ideas #Intellectual #Together

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

#Believe #Thinking #Essence

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

#Computer #Internet #Type

Excellence and competitiveness aren't incompatible with honesty and integrity.
-- Jack Welch

#Positive #Honesty #Integrity

The team with the best players wins.
-- Jack Welch

#Team #Winning #Player

Nothing of any importance has ever been accomplished by a pessimist.
-- Jack Welch

#Morning #Pessimist #Accomplished

Control your own destiny or someone else will.
-- Jack Welch

#Motivational #Life Changing #Destiny

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

#People #Important #Take Time

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

#Team #Self Confidence #Opportunity

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.
-- Jack Welch

#Weed #Jobs #Water

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

#Coaching #Important #Doe

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

#Winning #Leader #Popularity

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

#Motivational #Lying #Creativity

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.
-- Jack Welch

#Thinking #People #Stories

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

#Strong #Jobs #Cutting

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

#Responsibility #Leader #Crowns

An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn't have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.
-- Jack Welch

#Inspirational #People #Trivia

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

#Leadership #Jobs #Organization

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

#Jobs #People #Leader

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

#Risk #Example #Want

All of management is about self-confidence
-- Jack Welch

#Self Confidence #Self #Management

The best way to support dreams and stretch is to set apart small ideas with big potential, then give people positive role models and the resources to turn small projects into big businesses.
-- Jack Welch

#Leadership #Dream #Ideas

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

#Jobs #Games #Ideas

Hierarchy is an organization with its face toward the CEO and its ***** toward the customer.
-- Jack Welch

#Organization #Hierarchy #Faces

The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders - people who not only have enormous amounts of energy, but who can energize those whom they lead.
-- Jack Welch

#Motivation #People #Leader

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

#Way #Feels

One of the ways we'll know that Work-Out has been successful is that my style of leadership will no longer be tolerated in this company.
-- Jack Welch

#Successful #Work Out #Style

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

#Mean #Cutting #Choices

When it's time to let someone go, do it right. No surprises. No humiliation.
-- Jack Welch

#Surprise #Humiliation

If you don't deliver, you don't earn the flexibility.
-- Jack Welch

#Balance #Flexibility

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.
-- Jack Welch

#Winning #Healthy #Doubt

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.
-- Jack Welch

#Cutting #Loss #Winning

Above all, good leaders are open. They go up, down, and around their organization to reach people. They don't stick to the established channels. They're informal. They're straight with people. They make a religion out of being accessible. They never get bored telling their story.
-- Jack Welch

#Organization #People #Bored

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

#Teamwork #People #Norm

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

#Calm #Fringe #Rational