17 quotes
Business has to be fun. For too many people, it's "just a job."
Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)
The best way to support dreams and stretch is to set apart small ideas with big potential, then give people positive role models and the resources to turn small projects into big businesses.
Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)
Getting every employee's mind into the game is a huge part of what a CEO job is all about. Taking everyone's best ideas and transferring them to others is the secret. There's nothing more important.
Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)
Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy.
Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)
Change has no constituency—and a perceived revolution has even less.
Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)
In manufacturing, we try to stamp out variance. With people, variance is everything.
Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)
Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.
At the heart of this culture is an understanding that an organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive business advantage.
Robert Slater (1998)
In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.
Winning (2005)
Business success is less a function of grandiose predictions than it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to real changes as they occur.
Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)
The Internet is the Viagra of big business.
Loyalty to a company, it's nonsense.
Six Sigma has forever changed GE. Everyone—from the Six Sigma zealots emerging from their Black Belt tours, to the engineers, the auditors, and the scientists, to the senior leadership that will take this Company into the new millennium—is a true believer in Six Sigma, the way this Company now works.
In GE every day, there's an informal, unspoken personnel review—in the lunchroom, the hallways, and in every business meeting. That intense people focus—testing everyone in a myriad of environments—defines managing at GE. In the end, that's what GE is. We build great people, who then build great products and services.
Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)
I wanted to change the rules of engagement, asking for more— from fewer. I was insisting that we had to have only the best people...If you wanted excellence, at a minimum, the ambience had to reflect excellence.
Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)
The best Six Sigma projects begin not inside the business but outside it, focused on answering the question—how can we make the customer more competitive? What is critical to the customer’s success?... One thing we have discovered with certainty is that anything we do that makes the customer more successful inevitably results in a financial return for us.
There are advantages to being the chairman. One of my favorite perks was picking out an issue and doing what I called a "deep dive." It's spotting a challenge where you think you can make a difference—one that looks like it would be fun—and then throwing the weight of your position behind it. Some might justifiably call it "meddling." I've often done this—just about everywhere in the company.
Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)