Jack Welch Quotes

200 Jack Welch Quotes

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I’m an optimist, someone who is often accused of seeing the glass as always half full.
Jack Welch

The people with whom I have been associated have worked harder, enjoyed it more – although not always initially – and in the end, gained increased self-respect from accomplishing more than they previously thought possible.
Jack Welch

I have to be perceived as demanding. There are six companies going after every order out there…
Jack Welch

GE is a bubbling cauldron of ideas and learning, with tens of thousands of people playing alternate roles of teacher and student.
Jack Welch

One thing we’re discovered with certainty is that anything we do that makes the customer more successful inevitably results in a financial return for us.
Jack Welch

In our society, like it or not, we have to satisfy shareholders.
Jack Welch

The hero is the one with the ideas.
Jack Welch

Von Molke believed strategy was not a lengthy action plan, but rather the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances.
Jack Welch

We strive for the antithesis of blind obedience.
Jack Welch

In a global business, you can win without bribes.
Jack Welch



If you have quality, price, and technology, you win – and nobody can sleaze-ball you.
Jack Welch

In an environment where we must have every good idea from every man and woman in the organization, we cannot afford management styles that suppress and intimidate.
Jack Welch

Weak managers destroy jobs. They are the killers of business; they are job killers.
Jack Welch

I never associate passion with the word manager, and I’ve never seen a leader without it.
Jack Welch

I don’t run GE. I lead GE.
Jack Welch

We’ve got to take out the boss element. We’re going to win on our ideas not by whips and chains.
Jack Welch

The three most important things you need to measure in a business are customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and cash flow.
Jack Welch

I can’t stand predictions. What I have to do is try to visualize the world, and I have to be agile enough to live with it and win in it.
Jack Welch

Wisdom may lie in changing the institution while it’s still winning – reinvigorating a business, in fact, while it’s making more money than anyone ever dreamed it could make.
Jack Welch

We want to be a company that is constantly renewing itself, shedding the past, adapting to change.
Jack Welch



I haven’t changed a thing! I try to adapt to the environment I’m in.
Jack Welch

Shun the incremental and go for the leap.
Jack Welch

When a business becomes productive, it gains control of its destiny.
Jack Welch

My biggest challenge will be to put enough money on the right gambles and to put no money on the wrong ones. But I don’t want to sprinkle money over everything.
Jack Welch

Restructuring is a road, not a destination.
Jack Welch

If you’re in a fight, your job is to win. But if you can’t win, you’ve got to find a way out.
Jack Welch

One thing I learned… is that perception matters.
Jack Welch

I’ve always believed that when the rate of change inside an institution becomes slower than the rate of change outside, the end is in sight.
Jack Welch

Speed, simplicity, and self-confidence.
Jack Welch

Simplicity is absolutely essential to getting the environment, the vision, the plan across to large groups of people at all levels, both inside and outside the company.
Jack Welch



Simple messages travel faster, simpler designs reach the market faster, and the elimination of clutter allows faster decision making.
Jack Welch

Punishing failure assures that no one dares.
Jack Welch

Decimal points are for bureaucrats.
Jack Welch

I don’t mind being wrong. The key is to win a lot more than you lose.
Jack Welch

The Soviets couldn’t beat us, but economically, the bureaucracy and bureaucrats still can.
Jack Welch

You can have all the energy in the world, but if you don’t get other people energized, nothing happens. The ability to energize, excite, bring in, share; it is the most exciting thing.
Jack Welch

You can’t prevent the Chinese from copying any of your efficiency-boosting processes, and guess what, you can’t prevent the Romanians, Mexicans or the Americans, either. In fact, you have to assume that every on of your competitors from Indonesia to Ireland, is eager and able to imitate your best practices. And that they will. …. Instead, you have to get yourself energized by the challenge of finding breakthrough ideas and processes. Today’s competitive dynamic has to make you want to run faster, think bigger, and work smarter.
Jack Welch

Hope comes from many things – freedom and dignity foremost among them. But hope also comes in large part from work that has meaning and opportunity.
Jack Welch

I firmly believe my job is to walk around with a can of water in one hand and a can of fertilizer in the other and to make things flourish.
Jack Welch

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.
Jack Welch



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