If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you're stuck.

Hierarchy is an organization with its face toward the CEO and its ass toward the customer.

We bring together the best ideas - turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.

The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well. I don't like to use the word efficiency. It's creativity. It's a belief that every person counts.

Some think that it is cruel or brutal to remove the bottom 10 percent of our people. It isn't. It's just the opposite. What I think is brutal and "false kindness" is keeping people around who aren't going to grow and prosper. There's no cruelty like waiting and telling people late into their careers that they don't belong - just when the options are limited and they're putting their children through college or paying off big mortgages.

I believe that in any initiative, you can't have a flavor of the month. When you believe something is profound in a company, you can not be a logical leader. You have to go to the lunatic fringe. There is no way that logic is what you need to change people.

GE's businesses turned in a terrific first quarter. Our products and services are being well received in unusually robust global markets.