Jeffrey R. Immelt Quotes

Executives are rarely comfortable speaking on the record, particularly in secretive Silicon Valley companies.

When you're building a business or joining a company, you have to be transparent; you can't have two sets of information for two sets of people.

Google's a strange place. When I met Eric Schmidt, he said, "If you are kind to everybody, then you will make good decisions because people will give you good information, and if you are truthful to everybody, they will be truthful to you." That's what's different about Google. They screw up and make mistakes, but they genuinely mean the good stuff about "don't be evil."

Alibaba spends money on improving the products and services, not on kickbacks. That's a good thing. It's called a value system, and because of that, we get more and more small- to medium-sized companies to support us in China.

That is all you can ask, for a manager to be honest and tell you how things are.

Transparency is so important in business.

People that have integrity violations should be fired, not coached. How many integrity violations does it take to ruin the reputation of your company? Just one. You don't coach integrity violations. You fire them.

I believe no amount of business school training or work experience can teach what is ultimately a matter of personal character. Businesses are not dishonest or greedy, people are. Thus, a business, successful or not, is merely a reflection of the character of its leadership.

If you work at an insurance company that sells premiums you wouldn't even sell to your mother, how happy would you feel to work there? It's going to eat you up. It might last a few years, but it doesn't attract the best people, and it certainly doesn't create the energy and engagement you need to be a long-term performing company.

Branding jails corporate America, but honesty sets entrepreneurs free.

Why can't it be awesome to work for a food company? Why can't we create an environment where people are trying to push each other to do great things, and we're not trying to steal from anybody - we're trying to be good to our farmers and run an honorable business, if there is such a thing anymore?

There's one thing very important to me in business and for the long-term: always be honest with people. For the past 60 years, I always pay my debts.

Shareholder meetings are not usually the occasion for utter candor - or for that matter, arch sarcasm - by chief executives.

I think good companies can navigate being public and doing the right things for their customers.

Some day, someone will do something wrong and there will be a scandal to report in the paper. When that happens, we will address it honestly and openly and try to deal with it as quickly and as fairly as we can, and keep moving the city forward.

To be powerful in South America, you have to be transparent and you have to have a very clean reputation. Transparency for me today is a magic word in South America. Power comes from transparency and a track record of execution.

When you are led by values, it doesn't cost your business, it helps your business.

It's easy not to bribe. But it's not so easy to keep a business running at the same time.

There are not many companies in China that dare to say in public, 'We don't offer bribes', or companies that operate only by market rules.

I'm less concerned about whether being a good corporate citizen burnishes a company's reputation. That's just an added benefit. I believe it's a responsibility, and there is no negotiating on responsibilities.

Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.

In the final analysis, finding a way to do clean business and not to pay bribes actually improves your bottom line.

There's been a sea change in our focus on corporate ethics. We've made more progress in the last three years than the previous 30.

History has shown that one cannot legislate a culture of integrity. And yet, one of the paramount responsibilities and challenges of corporate leadership is to ensure such a culture.

The world is full of CEOs that think that just because they write a memo or they write a letter inside an annual report or they give a little video speech that gets sent around the company, they think that's what's really going to affect employees.