The world is moving at such a pace that control has become a limitation. It slows you down.
Loosen, not lose.
- Jack Welch
The world is moving at such a pace that control has become a limitation. It slows you down.
Loosen, not lose.
- Jack Welch
Nurture the employees who live up to company values, even if they don’t make their numbers. Consider reassigning them if their numbers continue to falter.
Eliminate employees who do
not live the company values, even if their numbers are good!
Difficult, yes, but absolutely necessary.
- Jack Welch
The biggest advice I give people is you cannot succeed alone.
You’ve got to be very comfortable with the brightest human beings alive on your
team. And if you do that, you get the world by the tail ...
Always get the best people. If you don’t, you’re shortchanging
yourself.
- Jack Welch
20 years ago, being named CEO of a company was the culmination of
a career. But today's CEO must think of stepping into the top job as only the
beginning of the real battles:
No one can come to work and sit, no one can go off and think of
just policy, no one can do any of these things. You’ve got to be live action
all day. And you’ve got to be able to energize others .... You’ve got to be on
the lunatic fringe.
- Jack Welch
Too many of you work
too hard to make low-performance employees [into] average-performance. It is a
wheel-spinning exercise.
Push low-performers
on to average-performance companies or low-performance companies, and they’ll
do just fine...
Take care of your high-performance
employees. Reward them. Promote them. Pay them well. Give them a lot of perks and
don’t spend all that time trying work plans to get low-performers to be average-performers.
Move them on out early. It’s a contribution.
* Derived from the book "29 Leadership Secrets From Jack Welch",
by Robert Slater
Surround yourself with category A's — that is, the
best possible people.
The biggest advice to be given is that you cannot do all these
jobs alone. You’ve got to be very comfortable with the brightest human beings possible
on your team. And if you do that, you get on top of the world.
Always get the best people. If you don’t; you’re short-changing
yourself.
A. Delivers on commitments—financial or otherwise—and shares the organization's values?
“His or her future is an easy call; onward and upward.”
B. Does not
meet commitments and does not share the organization's values?
“Not as pleasant a call, but equally easy; out.”
C. Misses
commitments but shares the values?
“He or she usually gets a second chance, preferably in a
different environment.”
D. Delivers on commitments but does not subscribe to the organization's values?
What
happens to managers who deliver the numbers but do not live the organization's values?
"They get fired."
"Questions answered by Jack Welch"
* Derived from the book "29 Leadership Secrets From Jack Welch",
by Robert Slater
· Create values that are consistent with the company vision. Values should reflect the
vision, culture, and goals of the organization.
· Make sure there is room to maneuver. Core
values should be constant, but the strategies may need to change with
the competitive environment.
· Set out a general framework for your team. Do
not try to set a detailed game plan for every situation.
* Derived from the book "29 Leadership Secrets From Jack Welch",
by Robert Slater
§ Are passionately focused on driving customer
success
§ Live Six Sigma quality, ensure that the customer
is always its first beneficiary, and use it to accelerate growth
§ Insist on excellence and are intolerant of
bureaucracy
§ Act in a boundaryless fashion; always search for
and apply the best ideas regardless of their source
§ Prize global intellectual capital and the people
that provide it; build diverse teams to maximize it
§ See change for the growth opportunities it brings,
e.g., e-business
§ Create a clear, simple, customer-centered vision,
and continually renew and refresh its execution
§ Create a clear, simple, customer-centered vision,
and continually renew and refresh its execution
§ Create an environment of “stretch,” excitement,
informality, and trust; reward improvements and celebrate results
§ Demonstrate, always with infectious enthusiasm for
the customer, the 4 E's of their leadership; the personal Energy to welcome and
deal with the speed of change, the ability to create an atmosphere that
Energizes others, the Edge to make difficult decisions, and the ability to
consistently Execute.
by Robert Slater
- Create a clear, simple, reality-based, customer-focused vision and be able to communicate it in a straightforward way to all constituencies.
- Understand
accountability and commitment and be decisive; set and meet aggressive targets;
always with unyielding integrity.
- Have
a passion for excellence; hate bureaucracy and all the nonsense that comes with
it.
- Have
the self confidence to empower others and behave in a boundaryless fashion;
believe in and be committed to Work-Out as a means of empowerment; be open to
ideas from anywhere.
- Have,
or have the capacity to develop, global brains and global sensitivity, and be
comfortable building diverse global teams. Stimulate and relish change; do not
be frightened or paralyzed by it. See change as opportunity, not just a threat.
- Have
enormous energy and the ability to energize and invigorate others. Understand
speed as a competitive advantage.
* Derived from the book "29 Leadership Secrets From Jack Welch",
by Robert Slater
Business strategies are not to be etched in stone! But instead should evolve over time.
It is important to set broad business objectives that are consistent
with your company's values and to apply those values as situations
arose.
Instead of directing your business on the basis of a specific step-by-step
strategic plan, you'd better set out only a few clear, general goals. This
would permit your employees to make the most of opportunities that come their
way.
What companies and business leaders must do is to provide an atmosphere, a climate, a chance, a meritocracy, where people can have the resources to grow, the educational tools are available, they can expand their horizons, their vision of life. That’s what companies ought to provide.
“Managing Less” means that
his managers have more time to think big thoughts and be more creative.
They gain time to look
beyond their own fiefdoms and think about how they might help grow the business.
Behind
this prescription lies a key idea: Your employees deserve respect. You‟ve hired the best people and trained them well, right?
So
treat them with respect. Show them you understand that they are doing something
important for the company. Build their confidence—in you, in the company, and in
themselves. And then get out of their way.
Managers
should do less monitoring and less supervising and to give their employees more
latitude.
There
should be far more decision making at the lower levels of any
organization.
Managers
shouldn't interfere with their employees at every turn. Instead, managers
should concentrate on creating a vision for their
employees and should make sure that the vision is always on the mark and is being
acted upon.
Managers
should stop getting in people's way. Stop looking over their shoulders. Stop
bogging them down in bureaucracy.
Managers
should give their employees more freedom.
Let them perform.
Leaders —and you take anyone from the middle ages till our modern day— inspire
people with clear visions of how things can be done better.
Some managers, on the other hand, muddle things with
pointless complexity and detail!
They equate [managing] with sophistication, with sounding smarter
than anyone else. They inspire no one!
To get the critical
information, a manager must ask five key questions:
1.
What
does your competitive environment look like?
2. In the last 3 years, what have your competitors
done?
3. In the same period, what have you done to them?
4. How might they attack you in the future?
5. What are your plans to leapfrog them?
- Jack Welch on the Importance of Critical Information
I operate on
a very simple belief about business. If there are six of us in a room and we
all get the same facts, in most cases the six of us will reach roughly the same
conclusion.
The problem
is, we don’t get the same information. We each get different pieces. Business
isn’t complicated. The complications arise when people are cut off from
information they need.
People always overestimate how complex business is. This isn’t rocket science. We’ve chosen one of the world’s simplest professions.
- Jack
Welch on the importance of proper availability of correct information within
business contexts.
Manage
Less
Teach your managers to manage less,
even though their training may be to manage more.
Instill
Confidence
Treat
employees with respect and build their confidence.
Get Out Of The Way
Employees
do not need constant supervision. You already did a lot of effort in hiring the
best possible employees, and trained them to the best of your ability. Let them
do their jobs. You will be surprised at the results.
Emphasize
Vision, Not Supervision
Managing
less lets managers think big thoughts and come up with new ideas to benefit the
business.
- Jack Welch on Macro Management
As
we became leaner, we found ourselves communicating better, with fewer interpreters
and fewer filters.
We
found that with fewer layers we had wider spans of management.
We
weren’t managing better. We were managing less, and that was better.
-
Jack Welch on the benefits of Lean Organizations
· Face Reality.
Business leaders who avoid reality are doomed to failure.
· Act on Reality Quickly! Those who truly face reality can’t stop there. They must adapt
their business strategies to reflect that reality, and they must do so quickly.
·
Turn
Your Business Around. Stick your head in the sand,
says Welch, and you will fail. Face reality, and you may turn a bad situation
into a great one.
It may sound simple, but getting
any organization or group of people to see the world the way it is and not the
way they wish it were or hope it will be is not as easy as it sounds.
We have to permeate every mind in
the organization with an attitude, with an atmosphere that allows people—in
fact, encourages people—to see things as they are, to deal with the way it is
now, not the way they wish it would be.
The
art of leading comes down to one thing; facing reality, and then acting
decisively and quickly on that reality.
- Jack
Welch
It
may sound simple, but getting any organization or group of people to see the
world the way it is and not the way they wish it were or hope it will be is not
as easy as it sounds.
We
have to permeate every mind in the company with an attitude, with an atmosphere
that allows people—in fact, encourages people—to see things as they are, to
deal with the way it is now, not the way they wish it would be.
Managers and employees need to be prepared to reexamine their agenda and to make changes when necessary.
Be ready to rewrite your agenda.
- Jack Welch on Change
Let your employees know that change never ends.
Teach your
colleagues to see change as an opportunity; a challenge that can be met through
hard work and smarts.
- Jack Welch on Change
Accept change.
Business leaders who treat change
like the enemy will fail at their jobs.
Change is the one constant, and
successful business leaders must be able to read the ever-changing business
environment.
- Jack Welch on Change
“We want to be more than that. We want to change the competitive landscape by being not just better than our competitors, but by taking quality to a whole new level."
"We want to make our quality so special, so valuable to our customers, so important to their success, that our products become their only real value choice.”
- Jack Welch on Quality
Always start your work day as if it was your first day on the job.
In other words…
1- Always think fresh thoughts.
2- Make it a habit to think about your business. Don’t rest on
your laurels.
3- Make whatever changes are necessary to improve things.
4- Re- examine your agenda, and rewrite what needs to be
rewritten.
1- New products
2- A different business environment every day
3- A company within which every employee has to embrace change.
The global business environment is going to change, and change drastically, and we'd better to get a plan, a program together, to deal with the coming decade which will be totally different.
Change is easy, right? The boss
makes a decision, and employees implement it—right?
If you’re in business, you know
that change almost never works like that. In fact, it can be the most difficult
thing in the world.
- Rober Slater in his book "29 Leadership Secrets from Jack
Welch"
The world is moving at such a pace that control has become a limitation. It slows you down. Loosen, not lose. - Jack Welch