John Francis Welch Jr. was an American business executive, chemical engineer, and writer. He was Chairman and CEO of General Electric (GE) between 1981 and 2001. When he retired from GE he received a severance payment of $417 million, the largest such payment in business history. In 2006, Welch’s net worth was estimated at $720 million. These Jack Welch quotes will motivate you.
Best Jack Welch Quotes
- “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” ~ Jack Welch
- “In the end, your integrity is all you’ve got.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Great leaders love to see people grow. The day you are afraid of them being better than you is the day you fail as a leader.” ~ Jack Welch
- “There are only two sources of competitive advantage: the ability to learn more about our customers faster than the competition and the ability to turn that learning into action faster than the competition.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Change before you have to.” ~ Jack Welch
- “The world belongs to passionate driven people.” ~ Jack Welch
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“Protecting underperformers always backfires.” ~ Jack Welch
- “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.” ~ Jack Welch
- “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” ~ Jack Welch
- “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Keep learning; don’t be arrogant by assuming that you know it all, that you have a monopoly on the truth; always assume that you can learn something from someone else.” ~ Jack Welch
- “If there is anything I would like to be remembered for it is that
I helped people understand that leadership is helping other people grow and succeed.
To repeat myself, leadership is not just about you. It’s about them” ~ Jack Welch , Jack Welch quotes on leadership -
“Control your own destiny or someone else will.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Someone, somewhere has a better idea.” ~ Jack Welch
- “There are only three measurements that tell you nearly everything you need to know about your organization’s overall performance: employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow…It goes without saying that no company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve 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
- “There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Innovation is not a big breakthrough invention every time. Innovation is a constant thing. But if you don’t have an innovative company [team], coming to work everyday to find a better way, you don’t have a company[team]. You’re getting ready to die on the vine. You’re always looking for the next innovation, the next niche, the next product improvement, the next service improvement. But always trying to get better.” ~ Jack Welch
- “A leader’s job is to look into the future and see the organization, not as it is, but as it should be” ~ Jack Welch
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“Never miss out on an opportunity like a good recession.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Hierarchy is an organization with its face toward the CEO and its ass toward the customer.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Business is a game, and as with all games, the team that puts the best people on the field and gets them playing together wins. It’s that simple.” ~ Jack Welch
- “If you’re a leader and you’re the smartest guy in the world – in the room, you’ve got real problems.” ~ Jack Welch
- “The team with the best players usually does win – this is why you need to invest the majority of your time and energy in developing your people.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Too often we measure everything and understand nothing. The three most important things you need to measure in a business are customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and cash flow. If you’re growing customer satisfaction, your global market share is sure to grow, too. Employee satisfaction gets you productivity, quality, pride, and creativity. And cash flow is the pulse—the key vital sign of a company.” ~ Jack Welch
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“When employees underperform, a leader tells them so.” ~ 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
- “Some people have better ideas than others; some are smarter or more experienced or more creative. But everyone should be heard and respected.” ~ Jack Welch
- “I think every leader has an obligation – the absolute obligation – to treat everyone fairly. But they also have the obligation to treat everyone differently. Because people aren’t all the same, and the last thing you ever want to do, in my opinion, is let the best in your organization be treated like the worst in your organization. It does nothing for your future.” ~ Jack Welch
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“The secret of success is changing the way you think.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Companies don’t give job security. Only satisfied customers do.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Strategy is not a lengthy action plan. It is the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Nothing of any importance has ever been accomplished by a pessimist.” ~ Jack Welch
- “No company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Celebrating creates an atmosphere of recognition and positive energy. Imagine a team winning the World Series without champagne spraying everywhere. And yet companies win all the time and let it go without so much as a high five. Work is too much a part of life not to recognize moments of achievement. Make a big deal out of them. If you don’t, no one will.” ~ Jack Welch
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“Excellence and competitiveness aren’t incompatible with honesty and integrity.” ~ Jack Welch
- “I might not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I’m pretty good at getting most of the other bulbs to light up.” ~ Jack Welch
- “I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.” ~ Jack Welch , Jack Welch quotes on success
- “Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.” ~ Jack Welch
- “If work is just going in every day and getting a check, it’s an ugly life. When you can make work a meaningful purpose, you’ve hit the jackpot for people.” ~ Jack Welch
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“The 3Ss of Winning in business are speed, simplicity, and self-confidence.” ~ Jack Welch
- “The most important job you have is growing your people, giving them a chance to reach their dreams.” ~ Jack Welch
- “The team with the best players wins.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Be candid with everyone.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” ~ Jack Welch
- “First and most obvious, bring out the three old warhorses of competition – cost, quality, and service – and drive them to new levels, making every person in the organization see them for what they are, a matter of survival.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Take time to get to know people. Understand where they are coming from, what is important to them. Make sure they are with you.” ~ Jack Welch
- “A leader’s role is not to control people or stay on top of things, but rather to guide, energize and excite.” ~ Jack Welch
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“Don’t lose yourself on the way to the top.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Genuine leadership comes from the quality of your vision and your ability to spark others to extraordinary performance.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Our behavior is driven by a fundamental core belief: the desire, and the ability, of an organization to continuously learn from any source, anywhere; and to rapidly convert this learning into action is its ultimate competitive advantage.” ~ 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 , Jack Welch quotes on change
- “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
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“Any company trying to compete…must figure out a way to engage the mind of every employee.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Cash is king. Get every drop of cash you can get and hold onto it.” ~ 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
- “Does coaching work? Yes. Good coaches provide a truly important service. They tell you the truth when no one else will.” ~ Jack Welch
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“Every employee, not just the senior people, should know how a company is doing.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Number one, cash is king… number two, communicate… number three, buy or bury the competition.” ~ Jack Welch
- “Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy . . . Your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.” ~ 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
- “One of the jobs of a manager is to instill confidence, pump confidence into your people. And when you’ve got somebody who’s raring to go and you can smell it and feel it, give ’em that shot.” ~ 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
- “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
