Jack Welch Quotes

Leadership changes, and evolving marketplace conditions can significantly impact business strategy.

Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.

We haven't rushed to set up targets, either in business or in football. Our goal was to understand how to act and then to move gradually.

Visionary CEOs don't need someone else to demo the company's key products for them. They deeply understand products, and they have their own coherent and consistent vision of where the industry/business models and customers are today, and where they need to take the company.

Technical co-founders are great at envisioning where the company's going from a strategic standpoint. They have what I call the 'gut-feel' of building out their business.

Great execution is at least 10 times more important and a 100 times harder than a good idea.

Business purpose and business mission are so rarely given adequate thought is perhaps the most important cause of business frustration and failure.

The key issue when you're looking at cost cutting is to always plan for the future.

The CEO is, by far, the most important decision for a company... The company is going to rise and fall with the CEO.

It may seem odd to talk about something as soft and fuzzy as "passion" as an integral part of a strategic framework. But throughout the good-to-great companies, passion became a key part of the Hedgehog Concept.

The board is currently undertaking what could be its most important task, ... We are confident that we're going to make a choice that is in the best interest of the company, shareholders and others.

Our plate is full. We have a lot to do building our company organically and that is our key focus.

Massive elimination is the most important step and the most neglected step for entrepreneurs.

I'm really hoping just to keep building on what we're doing. You have to build your core business first which is really important.

The key thing in any kind of guiding of the business is how do you create a strong organization that is kind of accelerating into the future. And when you're in trouble, the question is, what are the techniques that you can, you know, trim, refinance, sell, et cetera, in order to get this business back to that characteristic.

I can turn an idea into a business before you know it's going to be important. My first step will blow by you.

The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.

Develop a clear vision for your organization. Where do you want to be in five years?

Most good founders that I know at any given time have a set of small overarching goals for the company that everybody in the company knows.

I would tell startups to just keep your head down, keep building. Your contingency plan, if you have one, should be because you are still spending more than you make and you still don't have a line of sight for that J curve. That is the most important contingency. Because otherwise you are betraying that equation to your cofounders, to your investors, to your employees and to your customers.

Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.

I'm very analytical about the industry and I understand that there are value systems, and all sorts of things like that.

Business logic and musical logic are utterly incompatible.

If a business has to be told that it needs more focus, accountability and decisiveness, there is a bigger problem at hand.

Most companies spend all their time looking for another management concept and very little time following up the one they have just taught their managers.