Winning (32 page)

Jack: Straight from the Gut

(with John A. Byrne)

I have been asked literally thousands of questions. But most of them come down to this:

I think winning is great. Not good—

Have a positive attitude and spread it around, never let yourself be a victim, and for goodness’ sake—have fun.

Effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible.

Setting the mission is top management’s responsibility. A mission cannot be delegated to anyone except the people ultimately held accountable for it.

In the most common scenario, a company’s mission and its values rupture due to the little crises of daily life in business.

Lack of candor blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It’s a killer.

We are socialized from childhood to soften bad news or make nice about awkward subjects.

Eventually, you come to realize that people don’t speak their minds because it’s simply easier not to.

To get candor, you reward it, praise it, and talk about it. Most of all, you yourself demonstrate it in an exuberant and even exaggerated way.

It is true that candid comments definitely freak people out at first.

My bosses cautioned me about my candor. Now my GE career is over, and I’m telling you that it was my candor that helped make it work.

A company has only so much money and managerial time. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest. They cut their losses everywhere else.

I didn’t invent differentiation! I learned it on the playground when I was a kid.

Protecting underperformers always backfires. The worst thing, though, is how protecting people who don’t perform hurts the people themselves.

Differentiation rewards those members of the team who deserve it.

Once we made the case for differentiation and we linked it to a candid performance appraisal system, it worked as well in Japan as it did in Ohio.

While being in the middle 70 percent can be demotivating to some people, it actually revs the engines of many others.

In China, a young woman asked how any businessperson in her country could practice candor and differentiation when “only the voice of the boss is allowed.”

I’d ask, “Why aren’t you asking those questions to your own bosses?” The answer would come back, “I can’t bring that up. I’d get killed.”

Some people have better ideas than others; some are smarter or more experienced or more creative. But everyone should be heard and respected.

Take every opportunity to inject self-confidence into those who have earned it. Use ample praise, the more specific the better.

There were times I talked about the company’s direction so many times in one day that I was completely sick of hearing it myself.

Leaders never score off their own people by stealing an idea and claiming it as their own.

You are not a leader to win a popularity contest—you are a leader to lead.

If you’re left with that uh-oh feeling in your stomach, don’t hire the guy.

“We’ll look into it,” they kept assuring me. I was a know-nothing, meddling pain in the neck, and they were just trying to mollify me.

Just because you’re the boss doesn’t mean you’re the source of all knowledge.

Work is too much a part of life not to recognize moments of achievement. Grab as many as you can. Make a big deal out of them.

Over time, many of us develop an instinct for integrity. Just don’t be afraid to use it.

People with positive energy just love life.

Effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information. Little is worse than a manager who can’t cut bait.

Some of the smartest people I hired had real difficulty with edge. For several of them, that was a fatal flaw.

The best leaders in brutally competitive environments have a sixth sense for market changes. They can imagine the unimaginable.

I particularly liked the people who had had the wind knocked clear out of them but proved they could run even harder in the next race.

A good rule of thumb is not to hire someone into the last job of his or her career, unless it’s to be head of a function or CEO.

Don’t beat yourself up if you get hiring wrong some of the time. Just remember, the mistake is yours to fix.

If you managed a baseball team, would you listen more closely to the team accountant or the director of player personnel?