Leadership Training Tips From Jack Welch

1	Measure three things   If I had to run a company on three measures, those measures would be customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and cash flow.
2	Build confidence That's a leader’s job description. Managers hide behind complexity when they lack confidence. If you're not simple, you can't be fast. And, if you're not fast, you're dead.  So, everything we do (at GE) focuses on building self-confidence in people so they can be simple.
3	Set your people free  You've got to balance freedom with some control, but you've got to have more freedom than you've ever dreamed of.
4	Shout when you win  People feel guilty about stopping to celebrate a little victory ... but it lets people know they've won. It's so critical to an institution. It brings it alive, gives it character.
5	Think vision, not numbers Numbers aren't the vision. Numbers are the product. I never talk about numbers.
6	Fair doesn’t mean ‘the same as’ Every person should be treated fairly in an organization, but every person should be treated differently in an organization.
7	Make people share good ideas  What makes a company flourish is transferring ideas. At quarterly meetings, you must bring together the leaders of all of the businesses to share best practice ideas. Take the best of diversity and use it.
8	Do lots of these two things Spend lots of time developing people and lots of time with customers. I make a point of personally meeting GE's major customers in the spring and fall of every year. I put much of my and GE's customer insights down to these twice-a-year reality checks with customers.
9	Don’t dither; jump I've learned in a hundred ways that I rarely regretted acting but often regretted NOT acting fast enough.
10	Get out of your office - now Your job is to touch people and get into their soul. Every moment you are in your office, you are useless.
My favourite Welch story: when Jack blew up the plant One of the first things Welch did as a 24-year-old manager of a GE plant was blow up the part of the plant he was responsible for. The head of the plant called him to his office to explain. Welch, assuming this was the end of his managerial career, duly explained that he was experimenting with a different mixture and it caused an explosion. The plant boss probed further, asking him why and what he had hoped to achieve. Satisfied that Welch had a) learnt a lesson from the experiment and b) had practised sound thinking; he just needed to adjust his risk analysis the plant head protected Welch and Welch kept his job. “That act of leadership had a profound effect on me for the rest of my life,” Welch said. As head of GE, Welch championed experimentation, learning from mistakes and not blaming people unless they repeated the same mistakes. *  *  * Thanks to Leaders in London for gathering these tips. Visit their website www.leadersinlondon.com to review the  Summit where Jack Welch was a keynote speaker. For more information on leadership development programmes visit our website.

 

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