The wide ranging conversation between the Wall Street Journal’s Alan S. Murray and legendary GE CEO “Manager of the Century” Jack Welch touched on dozens of topics.
Not being a trained journalist, and not having a strong partisan opinion on US politics, I had some trouble getting my arms around a summation of Mr Welch’s talk. In the absence of a synthesis of his comments, I offer choice quotes from his talk:
“[The USA] still the engine of innovation. Google & Apple aren’t imported from somewhere else.”
“You want to send your best, brightest, youngest, most aggressive people to China to expand the business.”
“Every good leader I know has a generosity gene in them. They like to see people win in their organization.”
“Non-profit doesn’t mean non-performance. Its a harder job to run a non-profit effectively, because you have to instill purpose.”
“You can’t put fire in the belly in a training course.”
“Community colleges are critical to the next century. I went to a fifty buck a semester public school.”
“CSR is to win. When you win, you can reallocate your resources back to society. You can’t do it from an empty wagon.”
“Change has to be explained, and the benefits of the change have to be explained to your people.”
“Go at what scares you most about what the competition is doing.”
“Every meeting should be a HR review. You watch your employees perform and you take notes. I spent more than 60% of my time on HR reviews.”
“Good people will do good things.”
“Over Deliver!”
The last quote was direct advice to young graduates. Allegravita absolutely endorses this axiom, especially in this very blog, which we named Relentless Delivery!
Thanks to the World Business Forum 2012 team which which kindly invited me to represent Allegravita and attend the conference as their guest.
Please consider all our blogged stories from the World Business Forum 2012:
Management guru Jim Collins, on “return on luck”
NYC property mogul Barbara Corcoran on her top-8 lessons learned from her career as an entrepreneur
MIT psychologist professor Sherry Turkle on the danger presented to society by being always-connected
Interbrand CEO Jez Frampton on what makes a great brand
Nissan SVP Andy Palmer on the importance of melding engineering with marketing and communications
Legendary GE CEO Jack Welch’s choicest quotes from the conference
Harvard Business School’s Prof. Michael Porter on ‘Shared Value’ for-profit CSR
Inspirational entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson’s choicest quotes from the conference