Jack Welch, former CEO and near-legendary leader of General Electric, in his book Jack: Straight from the Gut, lists the following six rules that are key to leading a company successfully:
1. Control your destiny or someone else will
2. Face reality as it is, not as you wish it to be
3. Be candid with everyone
4. Don’t manage, lead
5. Change before you have to
6. If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete
It’s clear to me why Jack Welch was so successful and famous as a leader; this list is concise and power-packed. Immediately upon reading it I can think of companies that violate all six completely! Conversely, as I skim back through the pages of author Jim Collin’s book Good to Great, it is apparent that the great companies all live by these simple but powerful rules. 
An interesting question might be why the difference between companies? Why do some organizations wallow around in irrelevance, allowing outside forces and markets to move them rather than the opposite, ignoring reality and instead believing some home-spun placebo self-spin, tweaking and spinning the truth to everyone else, managing and controlling instead of leading and inspiring, resisting change to the point of stodginess, and existing in the marketplace without any distinguishing capabilities, while at the same time other companies push boldly forward, with eyes wide open and focused upon brutal realities, being candid and open and honest, leading from the front, changing rapidly and with agility and buy-in, and establishing clear competitive advantages?
I believe the answer is already eloquently spelled out in both Welch’s and Collin’s book: leadership.
As students of leadership, all three of you dear readers out there would do well to learn from this conclusion: leadership makes all the difference. That is why we hash through its principles so incessantly on this blog. Many so-called leaders are simply imposters; or what we used to call ‘posers’ in the motocross world. And many companies just exist, riding out their run until they simply can’t make it anymore. Excellent leaders understand and confront this brutal reality, learning from bad examples and aspiring to the clarity and courage espoused by Jack Welch’s list. Those that can fulfill his mandate are few but phenomenal. And the rest, well, they are simply on the race track to give the real leaders someone to pass.
May you be among those lapping the traffic! Pursue leadership excellence by memorizing and living this list! See you at the podium!
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