Famous Quotes & Sayings

Jack Welch Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Jack Welch.

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Famous Quotes By Jack Welch

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

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

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No one is guaranteed a job in this. — Jack Welch

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If you're not in Germany, you're not in Europe. And if you're not in Asia, you're nowhere. — Jack Welch

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Give me a highly successful unionized industry. — Jack Welch

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

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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

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

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The 1980s will seem like a walk in the park when compared to new global challenges, where annual productivity increases of 6% may not be enough. A combination of software, brains, and running harder will be needed to bring that percentage up to 8% or 9%. — Jack Welch

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

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

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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?' — Jack Welch

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The art of managing and leading comes down to a simple thing. Determining and facing reality about people, situations, products, and then acting decisively and quickly on that reality. Think how many times we have procrastinated, hoped it would get better. Most of the mistakes you've made have been through not being willing to face into it, straight in the mirror that reality you find, then taking action on it. That's all managing is, defining and acting. Not hoping, not waiting fro the next plan. Not rethinking it. Getting on with it. Doing it. Defining and doing it. — Jack Welch

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

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

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Control your own Destiny or somebody else will — Jack Welch

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My bosses cautioned me about my candor. Now my GE career is over, and I'm telling you that it was my candor that helped make it work. — Jack Welch

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

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All of management is about self-confidence — Jack Welch

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If a job doesn't excite you on some level - just because of the stuff of it - don't settle. — Jack Welch

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I guarantee you it will not be anyone from the outside. — Jack Welch

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Take lack of candor ... I'm not talking about boldface lying, but a tendency to withhold information. That behavior is far more common, and it frustrates teams and bosses to no end. — Jack Welch

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

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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. — Jack Welch

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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

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

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

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

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

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Out-innovating them is the way to beat China. And to do everything that we do in this country to support innovative policy, that drives innovation and new products and more jobs and creates jobs. You can't - you can't put a wall up around here. We tried that in the '30s. It didn't work. — Jack Welch

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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

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

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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

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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. — Jack Welch

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

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

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In order to lead a country or a company, you've got to get everybody on the same page and you've got to be able to have a vision of where you're going. America can't have a vision of health care for everybody, green economy, regulations - can't have a bunch of piece-meal activities. It's got to have a vision. — Jack Welch

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

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

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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

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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

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Drucker said: 'If you weren't already in this business, would you enter it today? And if not, what are you going to do about it?' ... Simple, right? But incredibly powerful. — Jack Welch

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

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

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

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

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I am often asked if leaders are born or made. The answer, of course, is both. Some characteristics, like IQ and energy, seem to come with the package. On the other hand, you learn some leadership skills, like self-confidence, at your mother's knee, and at school, in academics and sports. And you learn others at work-trying something, getting it wrong and learning from it, or getting it right and gaining the self-confidence to do it again, only better. — Jack Welch

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

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Control your destiny or somebody will. — Jack Welch

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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

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Change has no constituency and a perceived revolution has even less. — Jack Welch

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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

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The hero is the one with ideas. — Jack Welch

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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

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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

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The secret of success is changing the way you think. — Jack Welch

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

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As leaders, we owe it to every employee to let them know where they stand in the organization. — Jack Welch

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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

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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

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Too many people believe that one big, public success will solve their self-confidence problems forever. That only happens in the movies. In real life, the opposite strategy is what works. Call it the small victo-ries approach. In time you will discover that all failing really does teach you something you needed to know- so you can regroup and stretch again, with ever more ... nerve. — Jack Welch

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

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Good leaders have a generosity gene. — Jack Welch

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The last thing you want to do is be a bore. When you wake up in the morning, give yourself a good mirror test. If you look like you're going to be a sulking, pouting bore, slap yourself in the face before you go out to the office. — Jack Welch

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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

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

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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

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Ninety-nine point nine percent of all employees are in the pile because they don't think. — Jack Welch

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Every great leader has a generosity gene. — Jack Welch

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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

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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

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

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If GE's strategy of investment in China is wrong, it represents a loss of a billion dollars, perhaps a couple of billion dollars. If it is right, it is the future of this company for the next century. — Jack Welch

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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

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Business success is less a function of grandiose predictions than it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to real changes as they occur. — Jack Welch

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When all is said and done, teaching is what I try to do for a living. — Jack Welch

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

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

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

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

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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. — Jack Welch

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

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

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The operative assumption today is that someone, somewhere, has a better idea; and the operative compulsion is to find out who has that better idea, learn it, and put it into action-fast. — Jack Welch

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I'm not perfect, but if there are any points given for caring about people with every fiber of your being and giving life all you've got every day, then I suppose I have a shot. — Jack Welch

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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

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

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

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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

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

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In the future, those who are not coaches will not be promoted. — Jack Welch

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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

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

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For a large corporation to be effective, it must be simple. For an organization to be simple, its people must have self-confidence and intellectual self-assurance. Insecure managers create complexity, real leaders do not clutter. — Jack Welch

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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

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

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

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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

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Change before you have to. — Jack Welch

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Some think that it is cruel or brutal to remove the bottom 10 percent of our people. It isn't. It's just the opposite. What I think is brutal and "false kindness" is keeping people around who aren't going to grow and prosper. There's no cruelty like waiting and telling people late into their careers that they don't belong - just when the options are limited and they're putting their children through college or paying off big mortgages. — Jack Welch