Jack Welch Inspirational Quotations

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Any jerk can have short-term earnings. You squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and the company sinks five years later.

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%.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Short cycle business are being impacted by credit, and are being impacted by gasoline prices, food, distribution businesses, chemical business.

If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you're stuck.

The team with the best players wins.

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.

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

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

This shows you are never too old to get surprised.

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.

We have the brand, and we have the fulfillment capability. Now we had to get the Net, and that's the easiest part of the game.

No one is guaranteed a job in this.

Wright is a visionary with a great strategic mind, and he's a strong business leader with outstanding people skills, ... He's a terrific guy and will be a key force in guiding the company's future growth.

We have built a company with a business mix and operating system that will allow us to deliver record results in any foreseeable economic climate, ... We have just completed a very successful management transition and I've never been more confident about the company's future.

They were making a deal for a property that clearly was a property that we wanted to own, so we had to act, and act as quickly as we could, and make the offer more attractive.

What the Commission is seeking cuts the heart out of the strategic rationale of our deal.

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

Give me a highly successful unionized industry.

Culture drives great results.

Set stretch goals. Don't ever settle for mediocrity. The key to stretch is to reach for more than you think is possible. Don't sell yourself short by thinking that you'll fail.