Jeffrey R. Immelt Quotes

September 11 was horrific, but I've been through enough crises before that I had my own pattern as to how to collect facts, what a leader should do, how to communicate with people, how to set up operating mechanisms to work our way through it.

Surviving a failure gives you more self-confidence. Failures are great learning tools.. but they must be kept to a minimum.

I think there's a need for somewhat of a mindset change. We need to have a consistent external focus. We've always had the research labs. We've always had the resources to be innovative, and we've been innovative in a number of businesses. But, in any big company, you have to constantly push people to look at markets and customers, rather than look internally at themselves.

I'm a complete globalist. I think like a global CEO. But I'm an American. I run an American company. But in order for GE to be successful in the coming years, I've gotta sell my products in every corner of the world.

I think this notion that it's the population of the U.S. against the big companies is just wrong.

Every leader needs to clearly explain the top three things the organization is working on. If you can't, then you're not leading well.

As one of America's largest exporters, GE remains committed to producing more products in the United States, which is our home and largest market.

Values can't just be words on a page. To be effective, they must shape action.

Is France a completely open market to G.E.? No, of course not. I think we're more discerning about China because it's China, and they're big, and they're more concerning. But the best global companies are ones that are nuanced.

Leadership is an intense journey into yourself. You can use your own style to get anything done. It's about being self-aware. Every morning, I look in the mirror and say, 'I could have done three things better yesterday.'

I'm an optimist.
I've always believed the future is going to be better than the past.
And I also believe I have a role in that.
The great thing about human beings, myself in particular, is that I can change.
I can do better.
If you can get up every day, stay optimistic, and believe the future is better than the past, those few things get you through a lot of tough times.

I love working with customers. Sales has really influenced everything I do. It has instilled in me the important traits of operating with a sense of urgency and listening to people.

I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and my parents are really right wingers. My dad watches, like, five or six hours of 'Fox News' every day and stuff like that.

Managing innovation better may be the only way out of the abyss called commodity hell.

The most important thing I've learned since becoming CEO is context. It's how your company fits in with the world and how you respond to it.

I think that if you run a big company, you've got to, four or five times a year, just say, 'Hey team, look, here's where we're going.' If you do it 10 times, nobody wants to work for you. If you do it zero times, you have anarchy.

I was never afraid of failure. I realized that I was responsible for my own success and that every day offers a new beginning and I was confident in my ability to improve.

Many bought into the idea that America could go from a technology-based, export-oriented powerhouse to a services-led, consumption-based economy - and somehow still expect to prosper. That idea was flat wrong. Our economy tilted instead toward the quicker profits of financial services.

In business as in life, sometimes bad things happen to good people, and sometimes good things happen to bad people. But over time, if you play long enough, everybody gets what he deserves.. good and bad.

When I was a young guy, when I first started with G.E., Jack Welch sent us all to Japan because in those days Japan was gonna crush us. And we learned a lot about Japan when we were there. But over the subsequent 30 years, the Japanese companies all fell behind. And the reason why they fell behind is because they didn't globalize.

You can stay too long in a job, that's for sure. But by the same token, in the 12 years I have been CEO of GE, there have been four CEOs of Toshiba. So there's too short a time to do it, and there's too long a time to do it.

If the only common thread you have as an industrial company is the fact that you think you're well managed, you can still be a pretty good company, but you're not going to be a dominant company, a competitive company over time.

Work hard with passion and courage. Life is a marathon of contribution. You really must work hard to accomplish something ... Find your passion and get good at it.

President Obama has asked me to chair his new President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

I've been seeing the change. It's been steady. It's been more controlled than people think. And my own belief is that China knows it also needs to be part of the world, and that it needs to be able to have trade with Europe and the United States in order to house and feed a billion people. That's really kind of single-mindedly what they see their role as being.

I think we should have basically the same tax policy that Germany, Japan, the U.K., everybody else has, which is a tax rate in the mid-20s and no loopholes. Zero. The U.S. has the most antiquated tax system. And that means some people are going to pay more taxes, and some people are going to pay less.

It's the sustained ability to change that really counts.

And people is the most important part of my job. I spend one third of my time on people.