Jack Welch’s presentation at The World Business Forum 2010 was an interview conducted by Alan Murray of The Wall Street Journal. Welch shared a lot of political views during his interview (e.g. Obama sucks), but I want to focus on sharing with you some of his thoughts on leadership:
- Leadership development must be a priority. The company that fields the best team wins. One of the primary jobs of a board is to prepare the next generation of leadership.
- An important job of a leader is to celebrate winners, to celebrate successes.
- Fear is a dead issue as a management tool. You need to have a compelling explanation about “what’s in it for them” to offer your people.
- As a leader of a company or unit, you need to be hungry for new ideas. Creating an open architecture and sharing information is critical to making that happen.
- “A nut with an idea” is the ideal entrepreneur. There are a lot of people with lots of cash right now looking to fund those nuts, and there are a lot of talented unemployed people willing to go to work for those nuts.
- You want people that want to build a great team. Help them be part of something significant, bigger and better than themselves. Among talented knowledge workers, leaders need to create an environment of “directed collegiality.”
Jack is a very candid guy. I like that, even if I don’t agree with everything he has to say.
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