Getting every employee's mind into the game is a huge part of what a CEO job is all about. Taking everyone's best ideas and transferring them to others is the secret. There's nothing more important.

If you like business, you have to like GE. If you like ideas, you have to love GE. This is a place where ideas can flow freely from and through more than 20 separate businesses and more than 300,000 employees. Boundaryless behavior allows ideas to come from anywhere. We formalize our freewheeling style in a series of operating meetings that blend into one another.

In GE every day, there's an informal, unspoken personnel review—in the lunchroom, the hallways, and in every business meeting. That intense people focus—testing everyone in a myriad of environments—defines managing at GE. In the end, that's what GE is. We build great people, who then build great products and services.

From the day I joined GE to the day I was named CEO, twenty years later, my bosses cautioned me about my candor. I was labeled abrasive and consistently warned my candor would soon get in the way of my career. … and I’m telling you that it was candor that helped make it work.