Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy.

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

Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.

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.

The best way to support dreams and stretch is to set apart small ideas with big potential, then give people positive role models and the resources to turn small projects into big businesses.

If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.

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 manufacturing, we try to stamp out variance. With people, variance is everything.

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.

I wanted to change the rules of engagement, asking for more— from fewer. I was insisting that we had to have only the best people...If you wanted excellence, at a minimum, the ambience had to reflect excellence.

I enjoy challenging a person's ideas. No one loves a good and passionately fought argument more than I do. This isn't about being tough-minded and straightforward. That's the job. But so is sensing when to hug and when to kick. Of course, arrogant people who refuse to learn from their mistakes have to go. If we're managing good people who are clearly eating themselves up over an error, our job is to help them through it. That doesn't mean you have to take it easy on your top performers.