Jack Welch (b.1935,) fully John Francis Welch, Jr., is a former Chairman and CEO of General Electric, the American conglomerate. He is one of the world’s most celebrated business executives.
Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Welch got a bachelor’s from 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 are well-known. He earned the label “Neutron Jack” for his slash-and-burn management style, where he continually 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 complex and many of Welch’s mistakes with GE’s deals and operations become evident years later. The most obvious example is 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 has served as a widely read business writer, speaker, and management consultant. He has written three best-selling business books, Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001,) Winning (2005,) and The Real-Life MBA (2015,) the latter two coauthored with his wife, the business journalist Suzy Welch.
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An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
—Jack Welch
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
You can’t behave in a calm, rational manner. You’ve got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.
—Jack Welch
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
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
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
Change has no constituency — and a perceived revolution has even less.
—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
I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.
—Jack Welch
Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
—Jack Welch
Topics: Money
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
Change before you have to.
—Jack Welch
The world of the 1990s and beyond will not belong to ‘managers’ or those who can make the numbers dance. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders — people who not only have enormous amounts of energy but who can energize those whom they lead.
—Jack Welch
Topics: Leaders, Leadership
Before you become a leader, success is all about growing yourself. After you become a leader, success is about growing others.
—Jack Welch
Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy.
—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
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
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.
—Jack Welch
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
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