Change before you have to.
I was afraid of the internet... because I couldn't type.
Public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO speeches. CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It's just cultural. People just don't want to do it.
In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I've ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.
Short cycle business are being impacted by credit, and are being impacted by gasoline prices, food, distribution businesses, chemical business.
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.
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.
A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.
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%.
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.
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.
Any jerk can have short-term earnings. You squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and the company sinks five years later.
Out-innovating them is the way to beat China. And to do everything that we do in this country to support innovative policy, that drives innovation and new products and more jobs and creates jobs. You can't - you can't put a wall up around here. We tried that in the '30s. It didn't work.
The Internet is the Viagra of big business.
Give me a highly successful unionized industry.
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.
I actually think that the economy has got some positives. It's got the market. It's got consumer confidence and it's got banks throwing - I mean central bankers throwing money at it around the world.
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.
Number one, cash is king... number two, communicate... number three, buy or bury the competition.
Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.
Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.
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.
If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you're stuck.
CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It's just cultural. People just don't want to do it.
Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.
I've learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.
You measure your people and you take action on those that don't measure up.
There's no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.
You got to be rigorous in your appraisal system. The biggest cowards are managers who don't let people know where they stand.
Be candid with everyone.
We've only been wealthy in this country for 70 years. Who said we ought to have all this? Is it ordained?
The story about GE that hasn't been told is the value of an informal place. I think it's a big thought. I don't think people have ever figured out that being informal is a big deal.
The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well. I don't like to use the word efficiency. It's creativity. It's a belief that every person counts.
Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
The team with the best players wins.
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.
In order to lead a country or a company, you've got to get everybody on the same page and you've got to be able to have a vision of where you're going. America can't have a vision of health care for everybody, green economy, regulations - can't have a bunch of piece-meal activities. It's got to have a vision.
Control your own destiny or someone else will.
An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
If you don't have public hangings for bad culture in a company, if you don't take people out and let them say, they went home to spend more time with the family. It's crazy.
You can't grow long-term if you can't eat short-term. Anybody can manage short. Anybody can manage long. Balancing those two things is what management is.
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.
The biggest cowards are managers who don't let people know where they stand.
I was never the smartest guy in the room. From the first person I hired, I was never the smartest guy in the room. And that's a big deal. And if you're going to be a leader - if you're a leader and you're the smartest guy in the world - in the room, you've got real problems.
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
Don't manage - lead change before you have to.
We bring together the best ideas - turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.
The productivity now at universities is terrible. Tenure is a terrible idea. It keeps them around forever and they don't have to work hard.
Culture drives great results.
