The Welch Way - 24 Lessons from the World's Greatest CEO

"The Welch Way - 24 Lessons from the World's Greatest CEO"
by Jeffrey A. Krames

1. Lead
"What we are looking for... are leaders at every level who can energize, excite and inspire rather than enervate, depress, and control"

2. Get less formal
"You must realize how important it is to maintain the kind of corporate informality that encourages a... training class to comfortably challenge the boss' pet ideas."

3. Blow up bureaucracy
"The way to harness the power of these people is not to protect them... but to turn them loose, and get the management layers off their backs, the bureaucratic shackles off their feet and the functional barriers out of their way."

4. Face reality
"How do you bring people into the change process? Start with reality... When everybody gets the same facts, they'll generally come to the same conclusion."

5. Simplify
"You can't believe how hard it is for people to be simple, how much they fear being simple... Clear tough0minded people are the most simple."

6. See Change as an Opportunity
"The game is going to change, and change drastically."

7. Lead by energizing others
"We now know where productivity - real and limitless productivity - comes from. It comes from challenged, empowered, excited, rewarded teams of people."

8. Defy tradition
"Shun the incremental and go for the leap."

9. Make intellect rule
"... the desire, and the ability, of an organization to continously learn from any source, anywhere - and to rapidly convert this learning into action - is its ultimate competitive advantage."

10. Pounce every day
"Don't sit still. Anybody sitting still, you can guarantee they're going to get their legs knocked out from under them."

11. Put values first
"Early in my career... there was way too much focus on the numbers... and a lot less on the softer values of building a team, sharing ideas, exciting others."

12. Manage less
"You can't mange self-confidence into people."

13. Involve everyone
"Business is "all about capturing intellect from every person... the more people you can capture it from, the better the intellect."

14. Rewrite your agenda
"We want to be a company that is constantly rewriting itself, shedding the past, adapting to change."

15. Live speed
"Speed is everything. It is the indispensable ingredient in competitiveness."

16. Instill confidence
"Just as surely as speed flows from simplicity, simplicity is grounded in self-confidence."

17. Set stretch goals
"... self-confident people know that it is the quality of their effort toward achieving the "impossible" that is the ultimate measure."

18. Eliminate boundaries
"Boundaryless behavior evaluates ideas based on their merit, not on the rank of the person who came up with them."

19. Articulate a vision
"Leaders - and you take anyone from Roosevelt to Churchill to Reagan - inspire people with clear versions of how things cam be done better."

20. Get good ideas from everywhere
"It is a badge of honor to learn something here, no matter where it comes from."

21. Spark other to perform
"Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do."

22. Quality is your job
"Six Sigma is the most important training thing we've ever had. It's better than going to Harvard Business School."

23. Change never ends
"The wisdom may lie in changing the institution while it is still winning - reinvogarating a business, in fact, while it's making more money than anyone ever dreamed it could make."

24. Have Fun
"Leading a big company... means never allowing a company to take itself too seriously, and reminding itself constantly... that yesterday's press clippings often wrap today's fish."