Jack Welch
Jack Welch
John Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr.is a retired 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth19 November 1935
CityPeabody, MA
CountryUnited States of America
A company has only so much money and managerial time. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest. They cut their losses everywhere else.
If you can't energize others, you can't be a leader.
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.
Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy.
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.
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.
Change has no constituency and a perceived revolution has even less.
In manufacturing, we try to stamp out variance. With people, variance is everything.
People who are coaches will be the norm. Other people won't get promoted.
In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I've ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.
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.
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.
In order to lead a country or a company, you've got to get everybody on the same page and you've got to be able to have a vision of where you're going. America can't have a vision of health care for everybody, green economy, regulations - can't have a bunch of piece-meal activities. It's got to have a vision.
Out-innovating them is the way to beat China. And to do everything that we do in this country to support innovative policy, that drives innovation and new products and more jobs and creates jobs. You can't - you can't put a wall up around here. We tried that in the '30s. It didn't work.