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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of high standards and excellence in a team's composition and work environment.
Jack Welch's quote highlights the necessity of transforming the standard practices within an organization to achieve excellence. He advocates for surrounding oneself with top talent and ensuring that the surrounding environment fosters a culture of high performance, suggesting that to attain exceptional results, both the people and the conditions must be of the highest quality.
In practice
In a corporate training session on leadership styles.
You've got to eat while you dream. You've got to deliver on short-range commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and implement it. The success of doing both. Walking and chewing gum if you will. Getting it done in the short-range, and delivering a long-range plan, and executing on that.
A leader's role is not to control people or stay on top of things, but rather to guide, energize and excite.
Control your own destiny or someone else will.
The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well. I don't like to use the word efficiency. It's creativity. It's a belief that every person counts.
An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn't have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.
Genuine leadership comes from the quality of your vision and your ability to spark others to extraordinary performance.
A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.
Let us conduct ourselves so that all men wish to be our friends and all fear to be our enemies.
The leader...is rarely the brightest person in the group. Rather they have extraordinary taste, which makes them more curators than creators. They are appreciators of talent and nurturers of talent and they have the ability to recognize valuable ideas.
A person, who no matter how desperate the situation, gives others hope, is a true leader.
What to an outsider will be no more than the vigorous presentation of a conviction, to an employee may be the manifestation of a determination which it is not safe to thwart.
To be a good leader, you have to be a good communicator. As a leader, you have to communicate your intent every chance you get, and if you fail to do that, you will pay the consequences.
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