Jack Welch Shares Insights with Sloan Students

Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch began teaching an 8-week-long course for MBA students at MIT's Sloan School of Management this week. The course, called "Conversations with Jack Welch," is meant to give its approximately 30 students a chance to learn about leadership and management from Welch's insights and experience.

The lessons that Welch has shared with students so far include:

- Beware of becoming overly committed to your employees. When you employ a large number of people, some of them are bound to be poor performers who should be fired.

- Don't invest large amounts of time or money in trying to help low-performing employees. Some people are simply in the wrong job. It's better for the company and the employee to help them move on to a more appropriate position.

- Having a single senior employee serve as mentor to someone younger is a bad idea because the senior person "may be a turkey." It's wiser to have young employees work with a variety of more senior staff.

- You should open negotiations by making your objectives and goals clear at the start. Your bluntness will put your opponent off-balance, and you will save time that would otherwise be used jockeying for position.

Source: "MIT Gives Welch Lectern to Air Opinions," by Mark Jewell, Associated Press (Boston), October 14, 2006.