Top 258 Quotes & Sayings by Jack Welch - Page 2

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Trust happens when leaders are transparent.

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

The secret of success is changing the way you think.

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.

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

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

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

Someone, somewhere has a better idea.

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

Take time to get to know people. Understand where they are coming from, what is important to them. Make sure they are with you.

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

The world belongs to passionate driven people.

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

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.

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

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

When there's change, there's opportunity.

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.

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.

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.

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

Don't make the process harder than it is.

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

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.

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

Trust is enormously powerful in a corporation. People won't do their best unless they believe they'll be treated fairly. The only way I know how to create that kind of trust is by laying out your values and then walking the talk. You've got to do what you say you'll do, consistently, over time.

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

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

The most important quality of leadership is intellectual honesty. The reality principle - the ability to see the world as it really is, not as you wish it were.

Never miss out on an opportunity like a good recession.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

When employees underperform, a leader tells them so.

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, tough-minded people are the most simple.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Stretch targets energize. We have found that by reaching for what appears to be the impossible, we often actually do the impossible; and even when we don't quite make it, we inevitably wind up doing much better than we would have done.