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Jack Welch and the Ten Commitments of Leadership: A True Human Resource Leader One of the greatest and most effective Human Resource and Business leaders of all time was Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric. Over his 20 years as CEO, he has established himself as the most admired business leader in the world. His initiatives of Six Sigma, globalization, and e-business have defined the modern corporation. He relied on being boundaryless and sharing ideas with all workers, he had an intense focus on people, and he had passion and integrity for GE. The Ten Commitments of Leadership, laid out by Kouzes and Poszner in the book, “The Leadership Challenge”, serve as a guide on how leaders get extraordinary things done in an organization. The strengths and style of such a remarkable leader like Jack Welch can be compared to these commitments with great accuracy, as he has followed them throughout his career and his dealing with people on a day to day basis. By looking at these Ten Commitments and the qualities of a leader such as Jack Welch, we are able to better understand what it takes to be successful in an organization and become better leaders ourselves. Jack Welch fully embodies the first of the Ten Commitments, which is “Find your voice.” A key element to finding your voice is to clarify your values and express yourself. Jack Welch did both of these starting his first day at GE. “In just one year, GE’s bureaucracy would nearly drive me out of the company” (Welch, p. 20) Jack stated in his book. His values were molded when he received his first raise of $1,000. Jack felt that this was an insufficient raise for all the work had had completed. He then negotiated with his boss, even put in his resignation, and he offered Jack an extra $2,000 to stay, a promise of increase in responsibility, and cover from the bureaucracy. This made a powerful impression on a young Jack Welch. His values from this point on were for “rewarding the best and weeding out the ineffective” (Welch, p. 25). Jack had begun his unwavering commitment to his set of values early in his career. As CEO of GE, Jack began to express these values with his own voice. Throughout his career at GE, Jack stuck closely to the idea that rewarding the best and removing the weakest was the only way to run this business. As stated in his book “Rigorous differentiation delivers real stars, and stars build great business” (Welch, p. 25). He has spoken on this view throughout his career at GE, and acted on it in many ways. The second of the Ten Commitments is to “Set the Example,” meaning a leader needs to build and affirm shared values and align actions with those values. Tremendous energy is generated when the values of an organization are all working towards the same goal. Jack’s values of dealing with his people were shared by all his executives at GE, and eventually his managers too. Everyone was “always fighting to raise the bar” (Welch, p. 25) and focusing on Jack’s need to build great people. In a company with over 300,000 employees and 4,000 senior managers, Jack knew that there needed to be some structure so that standards are always met. He uses the term “differentiation” as his way of looking at his people within the organization. By getting excited and passionate about his people, Jack was able to gain enthusiasm and commitment from them. Jack always worked by the same standards he expected from his people: be number one. If an employee was not able to live up this expectation, Jack followed what he said and “removed the weakest.” He began with the Session C’s which are meetings held once a year where each manager discussed the performance of each of their subordinates, and the bottom ten percent are let go. These sessions got many employees involved in the decision making process, which gained their buy in of his values. Jack leads by example and follows his values in every action he takes. The next of the 10 commitments is “Envision the Future” which was a real strength for Jack Welch at GE. As CEO, Jack knew that in order for GE to stay in business, he needed to be forward-looking and work towards the future. On December 8, 1981, Jack made his first speech as CEO to financial representatives in New York City. During this speech, Jack laid out his visions for the future. He said that he will insist upon being the number one or number two producers of every product GE makes. The businesses where they are not in this position will be sold or closed. This was his central idea for the future success of the Company, along with three dominant soft values of reality, quality/excellence, and the human element (Welch, App. A). Jack lived by this No. 1 or No. 2 vision for the future his entire career. “Like every goal or initiative we’ve ever launched, I repeated the No. 1 or No. 2 message over and over again until I nearly gagged on the words. The organization had to see every management action aligned with the vision” (Welch, p. 109). ) Throughout Jack’s career with GE, he stuck to this vision for the future, and sold off all his businesses that fell below number two and would buy other businesses that were number one or number two in a different industry. Jack rarely talked about the past; he constantly talked about the present and the future.
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