What makes a good leader? Jack Welch, Executive Chairman at the Jack Welch Management Institute and Senior Advisor to Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, recently offered thoughts on CNBC:
- Employee engagement: “If you don’t get alignment around leadership, around the mission… If you don’t give purpose to the work, you get nowhere.”
- On Leadership: “I never thought about it that much. I just did it.”
- On the importance of Supply Chain Leaders: “It’s as tough to get a great supply chain leader as it is to get an IT person… And that’s changed the dynamic of pricing in business. IT’s compressed pricing all the way through the system. No one talks about it. Information and a whole new intellect around supply chain has changed the inflation equation in this country. I’ll guarantee you.”
Welch also was joined on air by Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL. One key topic: The positive effect of management taking ownership in private equity deals & the alignment of shareholder interest and the management
- Jack Welch: “I’ve seen that in spades in private equity, as ownership is spread in a big way to the management. The dedication and commitment and alignment of shareowner interest and top management is unbelievable. They get up every morning and live the company…. and that’s why private equity succeeds over and over again.”
- Tim Armstrong: “I was the largest individual shareholder in AOL. Every time you sit down with an investor, actually our stuff is more personal than the investors’. So if you’re an outside public company investor, you want Kevin Plank (sp??), Tim Armstrong, Jack Welch, basically drilled into our success is their success. That’s where the alignment is.”