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Jack Welch Quotes

John Francis "Jack" Welch Jr. is an American business executive, author, and chemical engineer. He was chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001. During his tenure at GE, the company's value rose 4,000%. In 2006, Welch's net worth was estimated at $720 million. When he retired from GE he received a severance payment of $417 million, the largest such payment in history.



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✵ 19. November 1935
Jack Welch photo

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Winning
Jack Welch
Winning
Jack Welch
Jack Welch: 27 quotes45 likes

Famous Jack Welch Quotes

“When the rate of change outside exceeds the rate of change inside, the end is in sight.”

Jack Welch

Variant: If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.

“Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will”

Jack Welch

“When you were made a leader you weren't given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.”

Jack Welch

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

Jack Welch

“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

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 24.

“Change before you have to.”

Jack Welch

Jack Welch Quotes about people

“I enjoy challenging a person's ideas. No one loves a good and passionately fought argument more than I do. This isn't about being tough-minded and straightforward. That's the job. But so is sensing when to hug and when to kick. Of course, arrogant people who refuse to learn from their mistakes have to go. If we're managing good people who are clearly eating themselves up over an error, our job is to help them through it. That doesn't mean you have to take it easy on your top performers.”

Jack Welch

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 3.

“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

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 3.

“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.”

Jack Welch

“I wanted to change the rules of engagement, asking for more— from fewer. I was insisting that we had to have only the best people…If you wanted excellence, at a minimum, the ambience had to reflect excellence.”

Jack Welch

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 9.

“Business has to be fun. For too many people, it's "just a job."”

Jack Welch

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 24.

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

Jack Welch

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 24.

Jack Welch Quotes about business

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

Jack Welch

“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

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 24.

“At the heart of this culture is an understanding that an organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive business advantage.”

Jack Welch

Cited in: Robert Slater (1998), Jack Welch & The G.E. Way: Management Insights and Leadership. p. 12

“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.”

Jack Welch

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 11.

“If you like business, you have to like GE. If you like ideas, you have to love GE. This is a place where ideas can flow freely from and through more than 20 separate businesses and more than 300,000 employees. Boundaryless behavior allows ideas to come from anywhere. We formalize our freewheeling style in a series of operating meetings that blend into one another.”

Jack Welch

Section IV introduction.
Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)

“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.”

Jack Welch

As cited in: Peter S. Pande, Robert P. Neuman, and Roland R. Cavanagh. The six sigma way. McGraw-Hill,, 2000. p. 6

Jack Welch Quotes

“If you are not confused, you don´t know what is going on.”

Jack Welch

“Loyalty to a company, it's nonsense.”

Jack Welch

Originally said to the Wall Street Journal, quoted by Mark Ames in Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005), p. 98

“In manufacturing, we try to stamp out variance. With people, variance is everything.”

Jack Welch

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 11.

“Being a CEO is the nuts! A whole jumble of thoughts come to mind: Over the top. Wild. Fun. Outrageous. Crazy. Passion. Perpetual motion. The give-and-take. Meetings into the night. Incredible friendships. Fine wine. Celebrations. Great golf courses. Big decisions in the real game. Crises and pressure. Lots of swings. A few home runs. The thrill of winning. The pain of losing. It's as good as it gets! You get paid a lot, but the real payoff is in the fun.”

Jack Welch

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 24.

“Getting every employee's mind into the game is a huge part of what a CEO job is all about. Taking everyone's best ideas and transferring them to others is the secret. There's nothing more important.”

Jack Welch

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 24.

“There are advantages to being the chairman. One of my favorite perks was picking out an issue and doing what I called a "deep dive." It's spotting a challenge where you think you can make a difference— one that looks like it would be fun— and then throwing the weight of your position behind it. Some might justifiably call it "meddling." I've often done this— just about everywhere in the company.”

Jack Welch

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 14.

“Change has no constituency—and a perceived revolution has even less.”

Jack Welch

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 12.

“Six Sigma has forever changed GE. Everyone—from the Six Sigma zealots emerging from their Black Belt tours, to the engineers, the auditors, and the scientists, to the senior leadership that will take this Company into the new millennium—is a true believer in Six Sigma, the way this Company now works.”

Jack Welch

Cited in: Peter S. Pande, Robert P. Neuman, and Roland R. Cavanagh. The six sigma way. McGraw-Hill,, 2000. p. 4

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