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Corporate Leadership: the Jack Welch Way
Jack Welch has been with the General Electric
Company (GE) since 1960.
Having taken GE with a market
capitalization of about $12 billion, Jack Welch turned it into one of the
largest and most admired companies in the world, with a market value of
about $500 billion, when he stepped down as its CEO 20 years later, in 2000. Although Jack Welch is "the celebrated leader of
a global manufacturer often noted for its technological prowess, he has
utilized a very human process to
drive change
through GE's vast organization. Having respect for the individual as a
pivotal force in organizational change, Welch created a model of exceptional
performance every corporate leader can learn from.
The Role of the Leader in the New Economy
As Jack Welch wrote in a letter to shareholders:
"In the old culture, managers got their power from secret knowledge: profit
margins, market share, and all that... In the
new culture, the role of the leader is to express a
vision, get buy-in, and implement it. That calls for open, caring
relations with every employee, and face-to-face communication. People who
can't convincingly articulate a vision won't be successful.

But those who
can will become even more open – because success breeds self-confidence."
Welch believed that great business leaders have
to:
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possess large doses of energy, and
-
know how to use that energy to energize
others.
Welch moves from meeting to meeting, conveying
that message – and the host of other ones as well, some of which have become
his trademarks:3
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Business is simple.
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Don't make it overly complicated.
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Face reality.
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Don't be afraid of change.
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Fight bureaucracy.
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Use the brains of your workers.
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Discover who has the best ideas, and put
those ideas into practice.
Prescription for Winning in
Business: 3Ss
Jack Welch summed up his prescription for winning in three words:
More
5 Strategic Question
According to Jack Welch, to
understand where your business is going, you should ask the following five
questions:
Strategies for Leading Breakthroughs
So what separates
extraordinary leaders from proponents of the status quo?
They break the rules. Except, not in an arbitrary or
capricious way. When you look at examples of extraordinary
leadership, like the Founding Fathers of the United States or
Jack Welch of
GE, certain practices or principles become apparent. To
start, there is a
declaration of what the future will be. There is also a
purpose, something to stand for. And finally, there is a clearly
articulated commitment...
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Employee Empowerment
Under Welch's leadership, managers had wide
latitude in building their
GE units in entrepreneurial fashion. Determined
to harness the collective power of GE employees, Jack Welch redefined also
relationships between boss and subordinates.
He wrote: "The individual is
the fountainhead of
creativity
and
innovation, and we are struggling to get all of our people to accept the
countercultural truth that often the best way to manage people is just to
get out of their way. Only by
releasing the energy and fire of our employees
can we achieve the decisive, continuous productivity advantages that will
give us the freedom to compete and win in any business anywhere on the
globe."

Jack Welch's
Recipe for Winning Employees' Hearts and Minds...
Understanding
Strategic Issues...
Asking
Effective Questions...
Redesigning
Organization...
Creating
Change...
Leading
Transformational Change...
Business
Innovation...
Transforming
the Old Management Model...
Getting Rid of
Bureaucracy...
Turning
Managers into Leaders...
People
Power...
Employee
Empowerment...
Energizing
Employees...
Attitude
Motivation...
Build a Star
Team, Not a Team of Stars...
Harnessing the
Power of Diversity...
Organizational
Transformation...
Building a
Learning Culture...
Learning
Organization...
Idea
Management...
Creativity
Management...
Entrepreneurial Organization...
Behave Like a
Small Company...
Systemic
Innovation...
Creating
Vision...
Setting
Stretch Goals...
Stretching
Business Strategy...
Setting
Objectives...
The Four E's
of Leadership...
Venture
Strategies...
Speed...
Simplicity...
GE Leadership
Effectiveness Survey (LES)...

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