Jack Welch Quotes
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Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
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Globalization has changed us into a company that searches the world, not just to sell or to source, but to find intellectual capital - the world's best talents and greatest ideas.
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CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It's just cultural. People just don't want to do it.
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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.
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The biggest cowards are managers who don't let people know where they stand.
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If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you're stuck.
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Don't manage - lead change before you have to.
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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.
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In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I've ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.
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Be candid with everyone.
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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.
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Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You got to be rigorous in your appraisal system. The biggest cowards are managers who don't let people know where they stand.
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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.
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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.
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I don't feel under-taxed in any way at all.
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Any jerk can have short-term earnings. You squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and the company sinks five years later.
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There's no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.
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Public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO speeches. CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It's just cultural. People just don't want to do it.
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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.
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Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.