Jack Welch (1935–2020,) fully John Francis Welch, Jr., was a former Chairman and CEO of General Electric, the American conglomerate. He was one of the world’s most celebrated business executives.
Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Welch got a bachelor’s from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, all in chemical engineering. He joined General Electric (GE) in 1960, worked in the plastics business, and moved up the ranks to become General Electric’s youngest Chairman and CEO in 1981, succeeding Reginald H. Jones.
Welch’s management and leadership skills were well-known. He earned the label “Neutron Jack” for his slash-and-burn management style, where he purged underperforming businesses and employees. Under his leadership, GE expanded to become one of the world’s largest, most profitable, and well-admired companies. That aura has since been punctured as a consequence of sagging profits and sluggish stock performance in the two decades following his retirement.
During his 21-year tenure as CEO, Welch built GE into a super-conglomerate. Over the years, that business model became overly complicated, and many of Welch’s mistakes with GE’s deals and operations become evident years later. The most obvious example was GE Capital, the finance division that dealt GE a near-fatal blow during the 2008 financial crisis.
Welch retired in 2001 and was succeeded as Chairman and CEO of General Electric by Jeffrey Immelt. Since retirement, Welch served as a widely read business writer, speaker, and management consultant. He wrote three best-selling business books, Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001,) Winning (2005,) and The Real-Life MBA (2015,) the latter two co-authored with his wife, the business journalist Suzy Welch.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jack Welch
Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.
—Jack Welch
Topics: Business, Vision
I don’t feel under-taxed in any way at all.
—Jack Welch
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.
—Jack Welch
I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.
—Jack Welch
Change has no constituency—and a perceived revolution has even less.
—Jack Welch
We know where most of the creativeity, the innovation, the stuff that drives productivity lies—in the minds of those closest to the work. It’s been there in front of our noses all along while we’ve been running around chasing robots and reading books on how to become Japanese—or at least manage like them.
—Jack Welch
Topics: Creativity
The people who get into trouble in our company are those who carry around the anchor of the past.
—Jack Welch
Topics: The Past, Past
Culture drives great results.
—Jack Welch
If change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside the end is in sight.
—Jack Welch
Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.
—Jack Welch
Our planning system was dynamite when we first put it in. The thinking was fresh; the form mattered little. It was idea oriented. We then hired a head of planning, and he hired two vice presidents, and then he hired a planner; and the books got thicker, and the printing more sophisticated, and the covers got harder, and the drawings got better.
—Jack Welch
Topics: Business
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.
—Jack Welch
We bring together the best ideas—turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.
—Jack Welch
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
It’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint. Ten years. Fifteen years. You’ve got to get up everyday, with a new idea, a new spin, and you’ve got to bring it to work, every day
—Jack Welch
You are never too old to get surprised.
—Jack Welch
Not good — great.
—Jack Welch
Give me a highly successful unionized industry.
—Jack Welch
If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
—Jack Welch
If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you’re stuck.
—Jack Welch
Don’t manage—lead change before you have to.
—Jack Welch
I guarantee you it will not be anyone from the outside.
—Jack Welch
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.
—Jack Welch
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.
—Jack Welch
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.
—Jack Welch
Be candid with everyone.
—Jack Welch
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,
—Jack Welch
Before you become a leader, success is all about growing yourself. After you become a leader, success is about growing others.
—Jack Welch
Change before you have to.
—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
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
You can’t behave in a calm, rational manner. You’ve got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.
—Jack Welch
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.
—Jack Welch
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.
—Jack Welch
The most important job you have is growing your people, giving them a chance to reach their dreams.
—Jack Welch
Topics: Giving, Dream, People, Dreams, Win
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.
—Jack Welch
Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy.
—Jack Welch
The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.
—Jack Welch
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
—Jack Welch
Topics: Reality
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
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