An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
Jack Welch

Be candid with everyone.
Jack Welch

Change before you have to.
Jack Welch

Control your own destiny or someone else will.
Jack Welch

Don't manage - lead change before you have to.
Jack Welch

Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
Jack Welch

Give me a highly successful unionized industry.
Jack Welch

Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
Jack Welch

Globalization has changed us into a company that searches the world, not just to sell or to source, but to find intellectual capital - the world's best talents and greatest ideas.
Jack Welch

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


I was afraid of the internet... because I couldn't type.
Jack Welch

I've learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.
Jack Welch

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.
Jack Welch

If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete.
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

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

Number one, cash is king... number two, communicate... number three, buy or bury the competition.
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

The 1980s will seem like a walk in the park when compared to new global challenges, where annual productivity increases of 6% may not be enough. A combination of software, brains, and running harder will be needed to bring that percentage up to 8% or 9%.
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