Jack Welsh

Management
As a manager it's your job to:
-Field the best employees. Compensation-wise if you have to err, err on the side of paying them too much money; intrinsic rewards only go so far
-Reward your best employees with great jobs & lots of money
-Build candor with good employees; give them praise & training
-Be frank with all your employees & let them know where they stand, professionally
-Push out the "losers"
-If you have to fire an employee, make sure they've been on a correction plan & know the route to improvement. You don't want them leaving mad

If someone who works for you doesn't like you, why do you care? There will always be people who don't like you. But you should care if their negativity spreads to the rest of the team; you can't let that poison spread.

Tele-commuting is a fad that will die. If you want to get to the top, you must have face-time. On the other hand, for non-aspiring occupations, it can work.

If you own a start-up, you want "animals" & "players" on your team. You want people who essentially live at work.

Unions
As far as the US auto industry, Jack thought it was generally a bad idea to have the UAW run those companies for so long. Consumers will generally only buy inferior when no alternative exist. Once foreign competition started offering cars consumers perceived as more desirable, the massacre began.

As an aside, when Jack joined GE in 1980, there were 125k union workers. By the time he left 20 years later there were 19k & the company was in much better shape fiscally.



As far as global challenges facing business-like environmentalism-companies have no choice but to embrace it, sell it, & capitalize on it.