[英漢對照]Jack Welch: The Former C.E.O of General Electric

　 Jack Welch: The Former C.E.O of General Electric

After becoming C.E.O of General Electric in 1981, Jack Welch was ranked as one of America's toughest bosses for the layoffs and "Fix, Sell, or Close" strategy by which he revolutionized the company. Two decades later, he hand made C.E. the most valuable corporation on the planet -- and himself the most admired C.E.O. of his era.

　　 ★Paying the highest wages, while having the lowest wage costs. We had to get the best people in the world and had to pay the hell out of them. But we couldn't carry along people we didn't need. We needed to have better people if we were going to get more productivity from fewer of them.

　　 ★Managing long term, while "eating" short-term. Squeezing costs out at the expense of the future could deliver a quarter, a year, maybe even two years, and it's not hard to do. Dreaming about the future and not delivering in the short term is the easiest of all. The test of a leader is balancing the two.

　　 ★Needing to be "hard" in order to be 「soft.」 Soft stuff won't work if it doesn't follow demonstrated toughness. It works only in a performance-based culture.

　　 ★Maximizing an Organization's Intellect. Getting every employee's mind into the game is a huge part of what the C.E.O job is all about. The first step is being open to the best of what everyone, everywhere, has to offer. The second is transferring that learning across the organization.

　　 ★People First, Strategy Second. Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy. We learned the hard way that we could have the greatest strategies in the world, but with the wrong leaders developing and owning them, we』d get good-looking presentations and so-so results.

　　 ★Informality. Bureaucracy strangles. Informality liberates. Informality isn't first names, unassigned parking spaces, or casual clothing. It's so much deeper. It's about making sure everybody counts-and everybody knows they count.

　　 ★Self - Confidence. Arrogance is a killer, legitimate self-confidence is a winner. The true test of self-confidence is the courage to be open-to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source.

　　 ★Stretch. Stretch is asking for more than what you thought possible. In a stretch environment a field team is asked to come in with "operating plans」 that reflect their dreams -- the highest numbers they thought they had a shot at: their "stretch."

　　 ★Celebrations. Business has to be fun. For too many people, it's "just a job."

　　 I always found celebrations were a great way to energize an organization.

　　 ★Differentiation Develops Great Organizations. Year after year, forcing managers to weed out their worst performers was the best antidote for bureaucracy.

　　 ★Managing Loose, Managing Tight. Knowing when to meddle and when to let go was a pure decision. I managed tight when I sensed I could make a difference. I managed loose when I knew I had little if anything to offer. Consistency was not a requirement here. Sometimes being an undisciplined, unmade bed got the job done faster. I loved to go on the field when I thought I could play, and I loved cheering from the sidelines when I didn't think I belonged in the game.

　　 ★Your Back Room Is Somebody Else's Front Room. Management guru Peter Drucker gets credit for this one. We practiced it. Don't own a cafeteria - let a food company do it. Don't run a print shop -- let a printing company do that. Back rooms, by definition, will never be able to attract your best. We converted ours into someone else's front room and insisted on getting their best.

　　 ★Forget the Zeros. In a big company, what's small tends to get lost. The entrepreneurial benefits of being small -- agility, speed, and ease of communication -- are often lost. Plastics taught me the value of being small, of 「feeling like you owned it.」 I came to the C.E.O job knowing that isolating small projects and keeping them out of the mainstream was the way to grow.


通用公司前總裁傑克

Haha, I choose the chinese to read.....benefit from it ....

glad you like it. And yes, it is an excellent Chinese translation. I liked it too.