Jack Welch Quotes

Jack Welch, the past Chairman and CEO of GE, has been very rightly hailed as one of the top business leaders of all times. He not only headed GE during tough days and then through a heady rise, but in the process, came up with some pioneering business strategies that few have been able to match till now. Much of Jack Welch’s leadership advise continues to resonate throughout the business world even today and by learning from this advise, you can improve your business and achieve maximum performance.

• “Before at GE, we generally used to tell people what to do. And they did exactly what they were told to do, and not one other thing. Now we are constantly amazed by how much people will do when they are not told to do by management.” – This frank assessment of what the GE management was doing wrong helped Jack Welch take steps to give more freedom to the employees so that they could use their creativity and their abilities to benefit the company. If you feel that your business is not growing at the rate it should be, perhaps you have not sufficiently empowered your employees. Give them the confidence and the tools to use their abilities to the fullest and as Welch says, you will be surprised by how much they can achieve.
• “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” – Leadership is not just about successfully managing a marketing campaign or making more sales or even coming up with winning ideas for your company, it is about being able to motivate others, from top to bottom to try harder and to do more. Evaluate how managers in your business are viewing their jobs – train them to look at ways in which they can achieve more for the company and for themselves.
• “Above all, good leaders are open. They go up, down, and around their organization to reach people. They don’t stick to the established channels. They’re informal. They’re straight with people. They make a religion out of being accessible. They never get bored telling their story.” – A business leader needs to know nothing more. By keeping in touch with people working at all levels, you get to share your philosophy and vision with them and enable them to work with you to achieve that vision.
• “We have found that by reaching for what appears to be the impossible, we often actually do the impossible; and even when we don’t quite make it, we inevitably wind up doing much better than we would have done.” – Another great example of why one should never stop aiming higher and higher. Just because you aimed high and did not manage to reach the goal is not sufficient reason to quit and aim for something lower. Keep your ambitions high, strive hard to achieve your goals and you will find that even if you did not quite reach your goals, your business benefited from all the efforts that you and your employees put in.