70+ Best Jack Welch Quotes: Exclusive Selection

John Francis Welch Jr. was a controversial American business executive, chemical engineer, and writer. He was Chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001. When he retired from GE he received a severance payment of $417 million, the largest such payment in business history. Profoundly inspirational Jack Welch quotes will brighten up your day and make you feel ready to take on anything.

If you’re searching for inspiring quotes from top CEOs and inspirational entrepreneur quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of profound Jp Morgan quotes, famous Lee Iacocca quotes and top Mark Cuban quotes.

Famous 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

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

In the end, your integrity is all you’ve got.  Jack Welch

Effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information. Little is worse than a manager who can’t cut bait. 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

Control your own destiny or someone else will. Jack Welch

In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement it like hell. 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

When you are a leader, your job is to have all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room. Every conversation you have about a decision, a proposal, or a piece of market information has to be filled with you saying, What if? and Why not? and How come? Jack Welch

Change before you have to. Jack Welch

Today, all arrows point toward the biotech, nanotech, and information technology industries, and the convergence among them. Jack Welch

The world belongs to passionate, driven people 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

Protecting underperformers always backfires. Jack Welch

We’ve all been guilty at one point or another in our careers of boasting of perfect hindsight. It’s a terrible sin. If you don’t make sure your questions and concerns are acted upon, it doesn’t count. 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

No vision is worth the paper it’s printed on unless it is communicated constantly and reinforced with rewards. Jack Welch

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

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

Differentiation favors people who are energetic and extroverted and undervalue people who are shy and introverted, even if they are talented. Jack Welch

I helped people understand that leadership is helping other people grow and succeed.

When launching something new, you have to go for it playing not to lose’ can never be an option. Jack Welch

To repeat myself, leadership is not just about you. It’s about them Jack Welch Jack Welch quotes on leadership

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

Control your own destiny or someone else will. Jack Welch

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

Someone, somewhere has a better idea. 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. 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

The mission announces exactly where you are going, and the values describe the behaviors that will get you there. 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

You can look at the situation and feel victimized. Or you can look at it and be excited about conquering the challenges and opportunities it presents. 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

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

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

People development should be a daily event, integrated into every aspect of your regular goings on. 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

There are no finite answers to many questions. What really counted was your thought process. Jack Welch

Never miss out on an opportunity like a good recession. Jack Welch

Don’t lose yourself on the way to the top. Jack Welch

Hierarchy is an organization with its face toward the CEO and its ass toward the customer. Jack Welch

Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others 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

Every job you take is a gamble that could increase your options or shut them down. 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

At the end of the day, effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible. They give people a clear sense of the direction to profitability and the inspiration to feel they are part of something big and important. 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

Indeed, the biggest winners in the world are those who answer yes to the question, Am I living the life I choose? 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

Take every opportunity to inject self confidence into those who have earned it. Use ample praise, the more specific the better. Jack Welch

When employees underperform, a leader tells them so. Jack Welch

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

I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success. 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

Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don’t love. 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

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

The secret of success is changing the way you think. Jack Welch

Don’t lose yourself on the way to the top.

Companies don’t give job security. Only satisfied customers do. Jack Welch

An organization’s ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly is the ultimate competitive advantage.

Strategy is not a lengthy action plan. It is the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances. Jack Welch

Control your own destiny or someone else will.

Nothing of any importance has ever been accomplished by a pessimist. Jack Welch

There’s no such thing as work life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences