韦尔奇经典的一次演讲：2001年夏，在股东年会上的讲话（中英文）

　　GE2001股东年会于4月25日在美国乔治亚州亚特兰大市召开。这次大会是首席执行官杰克·韦尔奇在退休前致股东们的最后一次汇报。杰克重点回顾了GE创记录的业绩：GE的收益，电子商务的成功以及公司对六个西格玛质量标准的一贯承诺。

English Vesion

中文
　　我是杰克·韦尔奇，GE的董事长。和我在一起的有高级副总裁以及GE的首席财务长官基思·谢林和高级副总裁、首席法律顾问兼书记本·海内曼。

　　我要再一次欢迎大家来参加亚特兰大年会，谢谢你们的到来，特别要感谢亚特兰大股东们的盛情。GE目前在亚特兰大有4,300名员工，其中1,500名员工在GE最大的业务集团－GE动力系统集团工作，该集团在今年2月把总部设到了亚特兰大。

　　GE的员工已经深深植根于社区之中并展开了志愿者活动，最近有500名员工参加了“亚特兰大志愿日”的活动，1月份有150名员工参加了纪念马丁·路德·金博士志愿服务峰会。

　　昨天，杰夫·伊梅尔特和动力系统集团的首席执行官约翰·赖斯参观了南区中学并拜会了校长比尔·谢泼尔德博士。GE Elfun亚特兰大分会的志愿者们自1993年起开始与南区中学合作，合作内容主要是通过帮助学生备考“学业能力测验”，指导与辅导学生从而提高学业总体水平。如今在这方面所作的努力已经有了成效，南区中学学生在“学业能力测验”中达到800分或800分以上的人数提高了两倍，上大学深造的学生人数增加了32%。

　　多年以来，在GE所在的其他城市里，我们一直在走访象南区中学这样的学校，由于GE员工的指导和GE提供的奖学金，已经有成千上万原本可能上不了大学的学生进入了大学学习，我们为这些志愿者及其在社区所展现出来的公司良好形象而深感自豪。 现在让我们把话题从社区服务转到企业运营方面。
2000年是我们有史以来最好的一年。销售收入增加了16%，达到了近1300亿美元；净收入提高了19%，达到127亿美元；每股收入上升了19%。公司的现金流量达150亿美元；营业利润率达到了19%。这一水平在5年前看来是不可能的。

　　由于这一业绩以及我们的志愿者所作的努力，GE连续四年被《财富》杂志评为“全美最受推崇的公司”，同时还连续四年被《金融时报》评为“全球最受尊敬的公司”。我们的表现得到了回报，在2000年全年以及今年头4个月，我们的股票业绩超过了标准普尔指数。但这只是股票的一个方面，众所周知，股市下跌厉害，尽管我们的业绩从绝对意义上讲超过了标准普尔指数，但自去年以来，GE的股价略有下滑。

　　但是，迄今为止持有GE股票达5年之久的人已经收到了每年34%的投资回报率。那些从1980年以来就一直持有GE股票的人则获得了每年23%的总计复利回报率。

　　稍后我会谈到GE的价值观，但目前的经济已经清楚地展示了其中一个价值观－即公司对变革的热爱。GE人总是把变革看作一次机会，目前的环境给了我们一次展示它的机会，而且我们也这么做了。当许多人发出收益警报时我们会发出收益增长的消息。两周之前我们的第一季度结果就正好证实了这一点，我们的收入上升了15%。我们坚信2001年对GE来说又是一个创历史新高的年份。

　　在接下来的报告中，我将介绍公司进入第三个世纪的情况并告诉你们GE在全世界的三十四万名员工已创造出的成果。

　　简而言之，GE是一个新型公司，一个在以下各行业处于市场领先地位的公司－从利用高科技生产发电设备、医疗诊断设备、飞机发动机、塑料到消费产品（广播、照明以及电器），到24种多样化的金融服务业务。然而，真正独特的方面在于这些企业在GE的融合，它们互相交流、互相学习，追求共同的目标，对共同的价值观有着坚定的信念。 正是这种互相学习的文化和这些价值观使GE不仅仅是各个部分的一个简单组合体。这种文化以及它所促进的GE的营运系统使我们提出一个个举措－一个伟大的概念－象种子一样种下它，重视它，看着GE的员工使其繁荣并将其迅速推广到整个公司。

　　举例说，“全球化”是我们最早提出的举措，最开始是为了给我们的产品和服务寻求新市场，后来很快扩展到包括寻求成品、部件和原材料的最低成本和最高质量来源。今天，这一举措的内容变得更加丰富，并且集中到了寻找人才方面，因为我们深知，只有通过任何渠道找到最优秀人才的公司才会胜出。 “六个西格玛”是我们的第二大举措。最初这个举措是注重在公司内部减少浪费，提高我们的产品和生产过程的质量，这为GE节约了几十亿美元。如今，六个西格玛有了进一步的发展，从5年前一个注重内部的活动发展到注重外部，提高客户业务的生产力和效率。“六个西格玛”加强了GE和其客户之间的密切关系，如今我们和客户团结在了我们称之为“立足客户、服务客户”的六个西格玛项目之下。例如医疗系统集团已经完成了一千多个项目，去年为他们的客户医院创造了1亿多美元的收益。飞机发动机集团在2000年完成了1200多项“立足客户”的项目，为航空公司节约了3.2亿美元。使客户提高生产能力可以帮助客户和我们自己在这种严峻的环境中成长。

　　今天，“六个西格玛”在GE中发挥的作用更大。它严格的“过程”纪律以及对客户的重视使其成为最佳培训项目，这是GE未来领导集团的一个可以利用的完美工具。我们最优秀、最聪明的员工已经被分配去负责“六个西格玛”工作，我相信当董事会在二十年后挑选下一位首席执行官时，被挑选中的那位先生或女士一定会是血液里流淌着“六个西格玛”精神的人。“六个西格玛”已成为我们公司领导集团的语言，成为GE品牌的一个重要组成部分。

　　GE已经从一个产品公司发展成一个既生产产品也提供服务的服务性公司。20年前我们的收入中只有15%来自服务业，如今这一比例已达到70%，而且将会越来越高。“产品服务”的口号开始时比较注重传统的维修活动－比如提高飞机发动机的送修周期，或更好地发送零部件，当时的目标是提高我们的产品在客户中的可信度。

　　如今，“产品服务”已经成为一种高新技术。我们的许多最优秀和最聪明的工程师在以前专注于新产品的设计，如设计更高推力的发动机，更有效的涡轮发动机，更好的影像诊断设备，如今他们已加入到全公司范围的以高新技术改良GE已安装设备的活动中去。人们过去总认为服务业不过是拧拧扳手，而如今它却涉及到高新技术和软件产品，可以使我们的客户－全世界范围内的医院、航空公司、公用设施和铁路－的生产力大大提高。

　　我们的第四个举措“数字化”是我们最新的口号，它只在整个GE营运系统运行了三个周期，但却已经改变了我们的业务方式。

　　与其它每个举措一样，刚开始时它只是一个概念化的小种子－主要是.com从事的工作－而如今数字化早已超越了我们最初的理念。

　　与世界上的网络巨头一样，我们是从“电子销售”开始的，即主要是通过互联网销售我们的产品，把我们的传统客户转移到网上进行更加有效的交易。这一点非常成功，2000年我们在网上卖了80亿美元的产品和服务，这个数字到今年会增加到200亿，这将使我们这家有123年历史的公司成为世界上最大，或者是最大之一的电子商务公司。

　　在“电子购买”的方面，我们采取了同样的方式，在竞拍中采用了许多.com公司的思路，拥有了全球范围的六个西格玛供应商网络。逆向竞拍的概念是GE的最有效优势，我们以最快的速度把这项新技术传播到了我们的各个业务集团中。现在我们每天都在进行全球拍卖，去年达60亿美元，今年120亿美元，这在2001年为公司节省了6亿美元。

　　但是最大的突破是我们称之为“电子制造”的东西，它的起源不是.com,.com的基础设备太少，渠道不多。“电子制造”来源于对互联网能为内部过程做些什么的了解，并看到了数字化为一个能真正制造产品、并且让“六个西格玛”深植血液中的老牌大公司所带来的巨大优势。通过对客户服务、差旅过程的数字化，仅今年一年我们的运行成本就将节省下10亿美元。2001年数字化至少会为我们的每股股票增加10美分，而三年前还只是零美分，这再次显示了在通电用气传播妙计的速度之快。

　　去年我告诉过你们我认为“电子商务”既不是“旧经济”也不是“新经济”，而只不过是新技术。今天我更加坚信这一点。如果我们还需要有证明说这种技术是专为我们而诞生的，那我们已经有了证据。去年，GE被《互联网周刊》杂志评为“年度最佳电子商务企业”，而上周又被《价值》杂志授于同一殊荣。

　　对GE来说，数字化其实是一个游戏改变者，目前经济原因带来了竞争的减少，这正好是GE拓宽数字化差距，进一步增强竞争地位的时机。尽管面临衰退的经济，但我们今年仍将把信息技术方面的费用提高10％至15％以达到上述目标。

　　关于我刚才提到的这些宏大、兴盛的举措，令人激动的是它们都处于相对幼年期。GE人在这种互相学习的文化中工作的优势就在于他们将继续更新和扩展这种举措，并提出新的举措，他们将让你们这些股东相信，这个公司的总和总是大于其中各个部分的简单累加。 下面我将从这些有时间限制的口号转到无时限的价值观，那些把我们连在一起，使这个公司以不同于世界上任何一家别的公司的方式运作的价值观上面去。

　　第一个就是诚信。这永远是最首要的一条价值观。诚实意味着遵纪守法，不仅是字面上而且是精神上。但它不仅仅是指守法，它存在于我们拥有的每一种关系的核心，有了基于诚信的信任，我们的员工就可以制定业绩目标并相信我们“没有实现目标并不意味着会受到惩罚”的承诺。

　　在我们对外与工会和政府打交道时，我们可以自由地以一种建设性方式代表我们的立场：不管是“同意”还是“不同意”，我们内心知道我们的诚信是毋庸置疑的。 转型时期是充满变革的时期，我们的一些价值观念会为了适应未来的挑战而有所调整，但有一条不会，那就是我们对诚信的承诺，这意味着我们不只去正确地做每一件事，而是每次都要做正确的事。

　　其他的一些价值观，我在上面已经谈到过了，热爱变革，抓住它所带来的机遇，认识到我们所做的一切只有有利于我们的客户才会真正有利于我们自己的成功。如果说GE注定要成为二十一世纪最伟大的公司，那么我们必须同时成为世界上最注重客户的公司。

　　如果我们不去寻找、挑战并发展世界上最优秀的人才，我们就完不成上面的目标。发展优秀人才最终是GE真正的“竞争核心”。除非我们总能拥有最优秀的人才（那些总是力争成为更好的人才），否则光靠我们的技术，我们的规模，我们的运营范围，我们的资源是不可能使我们成为全球最佳企业的。这就需要在评估公司每一个员工时有严格的纪律，在和他们打交道时有完全的坦诚。

　　我们在每一个评估和奖励机制中都把员工分成三大类：顶尖的20%，具有良好业绩的中间70%以及底层的10%。GE的领导们知道有必要鼓励、激励并奖励顶尖的20%员工，并且确保激励具有良好业绩的70%员工能更上一层楼，但领导们也同时有决心以人道的方式每一年换掉底层的10%。这才是创造精英人才并使之兴盛之道。

　　多年以来我们一直在谈论这些获胜的人所拥有的一项品质，这也是我们必须在所有员工身上培养的品质，即神奇且必不可少的自信心。真正了不起的公司总是给它的员工提出大的挑战，让员工充满自信，这种自信只能由成功中获得。几周之前我们在泰格·伍兹身上就看到了这种自信，当时高尔夫锦标赛临近尾声，他信步走在球道上，周围是他的对手，个个都是优秀选手，却显得萎靡不振。当你参与竞争时自信绝对是个关键、有利的要素。

　　充满自信的一群人也以十足的简约与人交流，用清楚、令人激动的话语去激励别人，以迅速、果断的行为去抓住每一个机会。 速度非常重要，我们每天都进步得更快。我相信以后的权威会写文章讲今天的GE的步伐与明天的GE的迅雷之势相比是如何的迟缓、甚至吃力。正是对变革的热爱和渴望抓住变革的念头才使GE象今天这样重要，有活力，与众不同，我们永远不能失去这种对变革的热爱。

　　GE很庞大，以后还会变得更大。领导它的人都知道规模大本身并没什么价值，无非是有能力让一个公司一次次开发新产品，成立合资公司，进行并购，领导人非常清楚有的不一定成功，有的会失败，但这没有关系，因为规模和资源使我们能够从头再来，一次次尝试。 我们所分享的价值观几乎全是鼓舞性的、催人奋进的、有积极意义的。但有一条并非如此，我们对官僚主义的根深蒂固的憎恶源于它给任何一家公司、机构及其人员所造成的精神危害，以及它对我们坚信的其他价值观的削弱作用。官僚主义憎恨变革，不关心客户，喜欢复杂，害怕高速度而且达不到高速度，它也不会激励任何人。GE致力于和其他任何大机构一样坚决做到没有官僚。

　　我们在过去二十年里持续向官僚主义发起了斗争并且总体是成功的，我们从中创造出一种我们称之为“无边界”的行为。

　　“无边界”行为是我们一直很渴望具有的一种小公司才拥有的特性。它是指打破或不去理睬一切人为的屏障（职能、官衔、地域、种族、性别或其他障碍），直奔最佳想法。“无边界行为”只有在充满自信时才会兴盛，就象它在今天的GE，而且它在明天的GE将会更加兴盛。“无边界行为”和“不拘形式”是相伴而行的，在GE，“不拘形式”的含义远远不只是指直接称呼大家的名字，或者经理不穿西装，不打领带，或者取消预留车位以及其他表示官职的服饰。“不拘形式”是指公司任何部门的任何一个人，只要他有一个好主意，一种新观点，他就有权（事实上，我们期待他）告诉给其他任何人并且知道别人会认真倾听并重视他的观点。无论在哪一种场合，最佳创意总能胜出，整个公司也会因此而不同。 这种“不拘形式”以及它带来的“无边界”行为使GE成为一个不断学习的公司，一个士气高扬，充满好奇的企业。GE在全球搜寻、培养最优秀的人才，并且培植他们一种永不满足的学习愿望，拓展愿望，每天都去寻找更好的主意，更好的方法。就我而言，十年以来我一直在寻找的一个最佳主意就是谁将接任我成为公司下一任董事长。

　　我日益坚信这二十年来我找到的最佳主意就是在你们各位董事的积极赞同之下来推举杰夫·伊梅尔特担任你们下一任董事长兼首席执行官。 我相信杰夫和他的优秀班子将把GE带到一个我们在今天还只能梦想的发展高度和优秀水平。我完全相信这个伟大的公司的前途更加美好。
谢谢大家在这些年里对我们的热情支持。

English Vesion

　　I'm Jack Welch, Chairman of the Board of GE. Here with me are Keith Sherin, Senior Vice President and GE's Chief Financial Officer and Ben Heineman, our Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary.

　　Once again, I'd like to welcome you all to our Atlanta meeting. Thanks for coming and thanks in particular to our Atlanta share owners for their hospitality. GE now has 4,300 employees in Atlanta, 1,500 of whom work for GE Power Systems, the largest single business unit in GE, which established its headquarters here in Atlanta in February of this year.

　　GE employees have already sunk their roots into the community and begun volunteer efforts. Five hundred of them participated in "Hands on Atlanta Day" recently and 150 participated in the Dr. Martin Luther King Service Summit in January.

　　Yesterday, Jeff Immelt and John Rice, CEO of our Power Systems business, visited Southside High School and met Dr. Bill Shepherd, its principal. In 1993 volunteers from the Atlanta chapter of Elfun _ GE's global community service organization _ began a partnership with Southside High. The partnership focused on raising the overall level of academic achievement by preparing students for SATs, mentoring, and tutoring. These efforts are working. The number of students scoring over 800 or better on the SATs has tripled and there's been a 32% increase in students from Southside going to college.

　　We've been visiting schools like Southside in other cities of GE for years and seen thousands going to college who never would have been able, because of GE mentoring and GE scholarships. We are so proud of our volunteers and the bright face of your company that they present to the community.

　　Moving from community service to business operations...

　　2000 was our best year ever. Revenues were up 16% to nearly $130 billion. Net income was up 19% to $12.7 billion. Earnings per share up 19%. And the company generated over $15 billion in cash flow. Operating margin reached 19%, a level many of us would have described as impossible only five years ago.

　　This performance and the work of our volunteers both contributed to GE being named by Fortune magazine _ for the fourth year in a row _ the "Most Admired Corporation in America", and by The Financial Times as the "Most Admired Company in the World," also for the fourth consecutive year. Our performance has been rewarded, our stock outperformed the S&P in 2000 and also in the first four months of this year. Now that's the glass half-full look. Because the equity markets, as we all know, have been down significantly and while we outperform the S&P indexes on an absolute basis, GE is down modestly since last year.

　　However, those of you who've held our stock for five years, including up to now, have seen a 34% annual return in your investment. And those who have held GE since 1980 have seen a total compounded annual return of 23%.

　　I'll talk about our GE values later, but the current economy is clearly demonstrating one of them - the company's love of change. GE people always see change as an opportunity. This environment gives us a chance to demonstrate it. And we are. We'll deliver earnings growth at a time when many are delivering earnings warnings. Our first quarter results just two weeks ago demonstrated this with earnings up 15%. We're confident GE will have another record year in 2001.

　　Now, for the rest of this report, I'd like to provide a picture of this company as it begins its third century and tell you what 340,000 GE people around the world have created.

　　GE is, in a phrase, a new kind of Company, a Company with market-leading positions in businesses ranging from high technology manufacturing of power generation equipment, medical diagnostics, jet engines, plastics - to consumer products - broadcasting, lighting, and appliances - to 24 widely diverse financial services businesses. However, the truly unique aspect is the integration of these businesses in GE: their sharing with one another, learning from one another, their pursuit of common initiatives and their intense belief in common values.

　　It is this learning culture and these values that make GE so much more than the sum of its parts. This culture and the GE operating system it drives, lets us take an initiative _ a big idea _ plant it like a seed, emphasize it, and watch the people of GE flourish and make it spread rapidly across the Company.

　　Globalization, for example, our oldest initiative, began as a search for new markets for our products and services. That search quickly expanded to include finding the lowest cost, highest quality sources of finished products, components, and raw materials. Today the initiative is so much richer and is focused on talent, searching the world for intellectual capital, driven by the knowledge that the team that fields the best talent from any source wins.

　　Six Sigma is our second big initiative. Originally focused on reducing waste and elevating the quality of our products and processes within the company, it has delivered billions of dollars to GE's bottom line in savings. Today, Six Sigma has grown though, from an internally focused activity of five years ago to an outside focus, improving the productivity and efficiency of our customers' operations. Six Sigma has increased the intimacy between GE and its customer base and today we and our customers are entwined in what we call "At the Customer, For the Customer" Six Sigma projects. For example, Medical Systems completed more than a thousand of these projects, generating more than $100 million in benefits for their customer hospitals and health providers last year. Aircraft Engines completed more than 1,200 "at the customer" projects in 2000, saving more than $320 million for the airlines. Making customers more productive helps both them and us grow through this tough environment.

　　Today, though, Six Sigma has evolved to an even larger role in GE. Its rigorous process discipline and relentless customer focus has made it the perfect training ground, a perfect vehicle for the future leadership of GE. Our very best and brightest are moving into Six Sigma assignments and I'm confident when the Board picks the next CEO 20 years from now, the man or woman chosen will be someone with Six Sigma blood in his or her veins. Six Sigma has become the language of leadership in our Company, a big part of what we call the GE brand.

　　GE has evolved from a product company to a services company that also makes great products. Today, 70% of our revenue comes from services. Increasingly, product services. Twenty years ago only 15% of our revenues came from services. The Product Service initiative started out increasing the focus on traditional maintenance activities - things like turnaround times in engine shops or better delivery of spare parts across all our equipment businesses. The objective was improving the reliability of our products in our customer operations - the more traditional what we call "oil can and overalls" activity.

　　Today, product service is as high technology as anything we do. Many of the best and brightest of our engineers who traditionally gravitated to new product design, higher thrust engines, more efficient turbines, better diagnostic images have now joined this Company-wide drive to deliver high technology upgrades to GE's enormous install base. Product Services, which used to be thought of as little more than wrench-turning, is today all about high tech and software products that allow our customers - the world's hospitals, airlines, utilities, and railroads - to be more productive.

　　Our fourth initiative, Digitization, is our newest, only its third operational cycle through the GE operating system but already transforming the way we do business.

　　Like every other initiative, what started out as a little seed of an idea in this case - basically what the dot.coms were doing - Digitization today has expanded far beyond our original vision.

　　Like the Amazons of the world, we started out with what we call "e-Sell," primarily distributing our products on the Internet. Moving our traditional customers to the Web for much more efficient transactions has been very successful. And in 2000 we sold $8 billion in goods and services online, a number that'll grow to $20 billion this year, making this 123-year-old institution one of the biggest, if not the biggest, e-Business company in the world.

　　On what we call the "e-Buy" side, we followed the same path, adopting many of the dot.com ideas on auctions, having a global network of Six Sigma suppliers. The concept of reverse auctions was right in the GE sweet spot and we wasted no time in spreading the new technology across our businesses. We now run global auctions daily - $6 billion worth last year, $12 billion this year, generating over $600 million in savings for the company in 2001.

　　But the biggest breakthrough of all was what we call "e-Make" and that didn't come from the dot.coms. They had little infrastructure and few processes. e-Make came from learning what the Internet could do for internal processes and seeing the enormous advantage Digitization can give a big old company that actually makes things, particularly one with Six Sigma methodology already deeply entrenched in its veins. By digitizing our processes from customer service to travel and living, we'll take over a billion dollars of cost out of our operations this year alone. Digitization will give us at least ten cents a share in 2001, from zero three years ago, demonstrating again the speed with which good ideas are embraced across GE.

　　Last year I told you I believed e-Business was neither "old economy" nor "new economy," but simply new technology. I'm more sure of that today. If we needed confirmation that this technology was made for us, we got it. GE was named last year "e-Business of the Year" by InternetWeek magazine and awarded the same title last week by WORTH magazine.

　　Digitization is, in fact, a game changer for GE. And, with competition cutting back because of the economy, this is the time for GE to widen the digital gap, to further improve our competitive position. We will do that by increasing our spending on information technology by 10% to 15% this year despite the weak economy.

　　The exciting thing about these big thriving initiatives I've just described is that they are still in their relative infancy. The wonderful thing about the way GE people work in this culture of learning is that they will continually refresh and expand these initiatives and the new ones that someday will follow, always assuring you, our share owners, that the sum of this company will always amount to something much greater than its parts.

　　Now I'd like to move from these timely initiatives to our timeless values, values that bind us together and make this company work unlike any institution in the world.

　　The first of these is integrity and it will always be the first and most important. Integrity means always abiding by the law, both the letter and the spirit. But it's not just about laws; it's at the core of every relationship we have. With trust, born of integrity, employees can set stretch performance goals and believe us when we promise that falling short is not a punishable offense.

　　In our external dealings with our unions and governments, we are free to represent our position vigorously in a constructive fashion to agree or disagree on the issues, knowing in our souls that our integrity is never at issue.

　　A period of transition is a period of change and some of our values will be modified to adapt to what the future brings. One will not. Our commitment to integrity, which beyond doing everything right, means always doing the right thing.

　　Some of our other values I've alluded to already: The love of change for the opportunity it brings and understanding that nothing we do will contribute to our success unless it contributes to that of our customers. If GE's destiny is to become the greatest company of the 21st century, we must be the world's most customer focused company as well.
We can do none of this if we do not find, challenge, and develop the world's best people. Doing so, developing great people, in the end is the true "core competency" of General Electric.

　　Our technology, our great businesses, our reach, our resources aren't enough to make us the global best unless we always have the best people - people who are always stretching to become better. And this requires rigorous discipline in evaluating and total candor in dealing with everyone in the organization.

　　In every evaluation and reward system, we break our population down into three categories: the top 20%, the valuable high performance middle 70%, and the bottom 10%. GE leaders understand the necessity to encourage, inspire, and reward that top 20%, to be sure that high performance 70% is always energized to improve and move upward. But they also have the determination to change out, always humanely, that bottom 10% and do it every single year. That's how real meritocracies are created and thrive.

　　For years we've been talking about something these winning people have, something we must help foster in all our people - the magic and indispensable ingredient of self-confidence. A Company that aspires to true greatness furnishes its people with big challenges which, when met, fill people with self-confidence that can only come from within and only from winning. You could see that confidence just a few weeks ago in Tiger Woods' face as he walked up the fairways near the end of the Masters, with his opponents, every one of them a great player, wilting around him. What a critical, powerful advantage to have when you compete.

　　A Company of people brimming with self-confidence also communicates with utter simplicity, energizing people with clear, exciting messages, and moving with speed and decisiveness to seize every opportunity.

　　Speed is so important and we are getting faster by the day. I'm confident future pundits will be writing articles describing how relatively slow and even plodding the GE of today is compared with the lightening pace of the GE of tomorrow. And that love of change and that desire to seize it is what makes this Company so vital, so dynamic, and so special and we'll never lose it.

　　GE's big and it's going to become a lot bigger. And it's led by people who understand that size in itself has no value whatsoever other than the ability it gives a company to take swing after swing on new products, ventures, acquisitions, knowing full well that some won't make it - some will fail but that doesn't matter because size and the resources that come with it allow us to step up and swing again and again.

　　Almost all of our shared values are inspiring, uplifting, positive. But one is not - our visceral hatred of bureaucracy stems from the evil and harm it wreaks on the spirit of a company, any institution, and its people, and its dilutive effect on every other value which we believe. Bureaucracy hates change, could care less about the customer, loves complexity, is afraid of speed and incapable of it, and inspires no one. This Company is committed to keeping itself as bureaucracy-free as any big institution that has ever existed.

　　The continuous and generally successful war we've waged on bureaucracy over the past two decades has allowed us to create what we call "boundaryless" behavior.

　　Boundaryless behavior is one of the small company characteristics we've always coveted. It means simply the breaking or ignoring of artificial walls like functions, rank, geography, race, sex, and any other barrier in the way of a headlong rush toward the best ideas. Boundaryless behavior only flourishes when self-confidence reins, as it does in the GE of today and will even more in the GE of tomorrow. Boundaryless behavior and informality go hand-in-hand. Informality in GE means so much more than calling people by their first names or the absence of managers' suits and ties or reserved parking spaces and other trappings of rank. Informality means that anyone anywhere in the company with a good idea, a new view, feels empowered - and, in fact, expected - to deliver it to anyone else and know it'll be listened to and valued. Regardless of the occasion, it's the best idea that wins and that makes all the difference in the way this company works.

　　This informality and the boundaryless behavior it produces has made GE a Learning Company - a high spirited, endlessly curious enterprise that roams the globe finding and nurturing the best people and cultivating in them an insatiable appetite to learn, to stretch, and to find that better idea, that better way every day.

　　In my case, the biggest idea I've been searching for for a decade is the name of a person who would succeed me as chairman of the Company.

　　I'm convinced more and more every day that the best idea I've had in the past 20 years was to choose with the enthusiastic concurrency of your directors Jeff Immelt as your next chairman and CEO.

　　I'm sure that Jeff and his terrific team will take GE to levels of growth and excellence that we can only dream of today. And I'm utterly convinced for this great Company, its best days lie ahead.

　　Thank you for your terrific support over the years.