A large number of credible commentators call him the most successful CEO of modern times. He turned Edison's company, General Electric, from a $13 billion to a $400+ billion turnover company. His gruff way of expressing himself and his early reputation as 'Neutron Jack' when he began leading GE by slashing jobs ('Neutron' as in the bomb that kills people but leaves buildings standing), plus GE's performance development structure of 'culling' the bottom 10% of performers, has meant people think of Welch as the archetypal tough guy, take no prisoners, ruthless leader.

This reputation is, at best, 50% of the picture. It has blinded a lot of people to the fact that Welch pioneered enlightened leadership practices such as: 'bossless leadership', sharing new ideas across units, techniques for bringing people together to challenge bosses with solutions to problems that had to be implemented to a deadline (GE's famous 'Workout' technique), the learning organization (he set up GE's learning centre at Crotonville and taught classes there himself), putting 'living the values' behaviour above 'making the numbers', moving from 'command and control' to giving away control...and a whole lot else besides.

I've put together ten quick lessons from him. Here they are:

1. WHAT TO MEASURE?
“If I had to run a company on three measures, those measures would be customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and cash flow.”

2. BUILD CONFIDENCE. THAT’S YOUR JOB DESCRIPTION
“If you’re not simple, you can’t be fast. And, if you’re not fast, you’re dead. So, everything we do (at GE) focuses on building self-confidence in people so they can be simple.”

3. SET YOUR PEOPLE FREE
“You’ve got to balance freedom with some control, but you’ve got to have more freedom than you’ve ever dreamed of.”

4. SHOUT WHEN YOU WIN
"People feel guilty about stopping to celebrate a little victory ... but it lets people know they've won. It's so critical to an institution. It brings it alive, gives it character."

5. NUMBERS AREN’T ENOUGH
“Numbers aren’t the vision. Numbers are the product. I never talk about numbers.”

6. SPEND MORE TIME ON TALENT DEVELOPMENT
“In most companies, the talent review process is a farce. At GE, Jack Welch and his top two Human Resources people visited each division for a day. They reviewed the top 20 to 50 people by name. The talent review process…at GE…has the intensity and importance of the budget process at most companies.”
McKinsey’s Ed Michaels, in his book The War For Talent.

7. FAIR DOESN’T MEAN ‘THE SAME’
“Every person should be treated fairly in an organization, but every person should be treated differently in an organization."

8. MAKE PEOPLE SHARE GOOD IDEAS
“What makes a company flourish is transferring ideas.” At quarterly meetings, Welch insisted that GE bring together the leaders of all of its businesses to share best practice ideas. “We take the best of diversity and use it,” said Welch.

9. MEET CUSTOMERS MORE OFTEN
Welch made a point of personally meeting GE’s major customers in the spring and fall of every year. He put much of his and GE’s customer insights down to these twice-a-year reality checks with customers.

10 DON’T DITHER. JUMP.
“I’ve learned in a hundred ways that I rarely regretted acting but often regretted NOT acting fast enough.”