Jack Welch Quotes – Smart Ideas to Consider

I get many great ideas by reading quotes distilled by others. The beauty of quotes (and the people that search for them and give them to us for free) is that they often are the true essence of a big idea.

Jack is no saint, but he is a heck of a businessman. He is a top ten guy in the big business Hall of Fame. Here are ten great quotes from one of the most passionate and successful corporate leaders America has ever had:

1. An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
2. Control your own destiny or someone else will.
3. Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.
4. Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
5. Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
6. If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
7. 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.
8. You measure your people and you take action on those that don’t measure up.
9. The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.
10. 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.

This brings me to another question – why does America never manage to elect a president with serious experience at running an complex enterprise with hundreds of thousands of employees? It seems that we should — someday soon — give it a try. Experience matters. But, that’s a topic for another day.

I.M. Optimism Man