Jack Welch Quotes
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I actually think that the economy has got some positives. It's got the market. It's got consumer confidence and it's got banks throwing - I mean central bankers throwing money at it around the world.
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You measure your people and you take action on those that don't measure up.
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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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I was afraid of the internet... because I couldn't type.
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Number one, cash is king... number two, communicate... number three, buy or bury the competition.
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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.
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The Internet is the Viagra of big business.
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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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We've only been wealthy in this country for 70 years. Who said we ought to have all this? Is it ordained?
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In GE every day, there's an informal, unspoken personnel review—in the lunchroom, the hallways, and in every business meeting. That intense people focus—testing everyone in a myriad of environments—defines managing at GE. In the end, that's what GE is. We build great people, who then build great products and services.
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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%.
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Change before you have to.
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If you don't have public hangings for bad culture in a company, if you don't take people out and let them say, they went home to spend more time with the family. It's crazy.
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Short cycle business are being impacted by credit, and are being impacted by gasoline prices, food, distribution businesses, chemical business.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
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The best Six Sigma projects begin not inside the business but outside it, focused on answering the question-how can we make the customer more competitive? What is critical to the customer’s success?... One thing we have discovered with certainty is that anything we do that makes the customer more successful inevitably results in a financial return for us.
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Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.
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Culture drives great results.
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What's important at the grocery store is just as important in engines or medical systems. If the customer isn't satisfied, if the stuff is getting stale, if the shelf isn't right, or if the offerings aren't right, it's the same thing. You manage it like a small organization. You don't get hung up on zeros.
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Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.