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Jack Welch was the CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001. Under his leadership the GE stock went up by 4,000 per cent, making it the most valuable company in the world. Fortune named him the ‘Manager of the Century’ in 1999

Suzy Welch is a former editor of Harvard Business Review. She is also the co-author of Jack Welch’s latest book Winning

You can e-mail Jack and Suzy Welch questions at winning@nytimes.com

(Please include your name, occupation, city and country)

I have worked for five years at a very successful company where many exciting challenges lie ahead. But I know that the independent contractors employed by my department earn a lot more than I do – in some cases, almost triple. So, I find myself at a crossroads: should I go out on my own as a hired gun or stick it out as a company man?
–Name withheld, Dublin, Ireland

You hail from one of the world's most robust economies, but your question is universal. It's the ‘it’ career question of our times – and not just for newly minted college grads or MBAs. Virtually every businessperson with some form of marketable expertise now has the opportunity to outsource those skills to the growing number of employers attracted by the flexibility of hiring people without chains. Indeed, as one such employer told us recently, "Independent contractors make my life so easy. I don't have to pay their benefits, write their appraisals or manage their neuroses." Best of all, she added, "If things don't work out, I don't have to roll in the muck with HR or legal. I just have to say, 'So long."' The deal can work very nicely for independent contractors, too.

Most of us in the corporate world have to deal with a yearly review, and we hate it. How about just letting employees know when they are performing way under or way beyond expectations? That would save companies a lot of wasted time. Is it a good idea?
–Haihui Niu, Naperville, Illinois

With all due respect, we think it's a terrible idea. Look, companies can't win without great people, and you can't develop great people without performance appraisals. Now, we are not talking about elaborate forms and piles of paperwork. That is way too bureaucratic.

All managers need to do is sit down with each direct report and share with him or her a single page that says, "Here's what you do well," and "Here's what you can do better." And that should happen not once a year but – brace yourself – three or four times, particularly with every raise, bonus or promotion.

We have said before in this column that mana-gers have many jobs. But at the end of the day, almost no managerial responsibility trumps building the best team. And to do that, you can't just connect with the outliers. Everyone needs to know where he stands, and often.

Since there is such a bias in the markets for the short-term results, how can you prepare for the long-term?
–Wayne Abernathy, Washington

In a word: management. That is, balancing the demands for quarterly results with the pressure for a profitable future is what good managers do for a living. Sorry to sound exasperated, but every time we hear this question, we wonder, "What do you think you were hired for?" You were hired to wrestle a paradox – and pin it to the mat. And not just once, but over and over again.

Look, anyone can manage for the short-term. Just keep squeezing the lemon, wringing out costs to the pulp. And anyone can manage for the long-term. Just keep telling people, "Be patient. Our strategy will pay off in time."

The mark of a leader is someone who has the rigor, vision and courage to do both simultaneously. Take the example of managing people. Of course, you want to motivate your team to deliver immediate results. You can do that with incentives and rewards, clear goals, and your own attitude about winning – the more passionate the better. But you can never stop thinking about growing your people too: sending them to internal training programmes or outside courses, giving them different experiences and assignments and encouraging them to take risks. Those may not deliver instant results, but they are an investment in the future that you must make.

It is the same story with managing research and development. Obviously, you need to fund projects that will improve and expand your existing products. That is usually money well spent – with relatively quick and certain returns. But some portion of your budget also needs to be earmarked for the kind of research that will deliver results in several years. Now, how much should go to each investment bucket? Your call, boss.
Perhaps the most common managerial balancing act has to do with marketing. With one phone call, you can take the easy way out and cut your advertising budget by 20 to 50 per cent. That will drop the savings right to the bottom line, with no sales impact for a quarter or two and no blood spilled in terms of programmes or people. But what about the long-term hit to market share and brand? That is the judgment call and you are the judge. Work requires dozens of decisions a day, but yours is the uber-question of them all. As a manager, you'll spend your career answering it.

Companies let go of troublesome employees. Is it ever a good idea to apply the same practice to troublesome customers?
–Matt Silver, Wichita, Kan

You mean, "Is the customer always right ... really?" The obvious answer is yes. You cannot hope to build a business without trying to satisfy every customer, even the annoying, unreasonable, or cranky ones. After all, customers are like relatives. You can't pick them, so you better learn to love them.

But – and this is not an insubstantial but – there are some circumstances where that old adage about customer supremacy can actually be destructive and it makes sense to say no or even goodbye. The first is easy: It's when a customer's demand for price destroys your profitability, or worse, creates industry pricing chaos. That's when you have to hold the line and dump the customer.

The second circumstance is similar – it's when a customer demands a one-off product that sends your R&D group off in the wrong direction, away from your own strategy and financial goals. Again, this is a case where your salespeople might be hollering for support, but where the long-term diversion of resources is a killer. Unless it is an exceedingly profitable customer, you have to just say no.

The third circumstance is more nuanced. It's when a customer shows your people disrespect. Now, sometimes your big customers can act a little obnoxious. They own you and they know it, and with them, you may need to endure some rudeness or outrageous demands as part of the cost of doing business. It's different when the customer doing the berating is not your meal ticket, but is just a jerk. Then, may be your first line of defence is to switch the salesperson on the account, putting in someone with tougher skin and the mettle to say, "Hey, this has to stop." If that too fails, it's time to walk away.

Bottom line, we're not recommending that ‘The Customer is Always Right’ plaque be ditched or amended. We would just add a little asterisk. Five years ago, we started a company in the then-red-hot fibre-communication industry. We've fought hard to stay viable, but now it's obvious that the growth space for our company is much more limited than we'd hoped. Should we give up and start again in a new area or stay in the survival game?
–Ling Chen, Sunnyvale, Calif.

Since you are from Silicon Valley, it seems to us that you probably know the answer to your question. The survival game stinks, perhaps in no place more than the technology sector.

It appears your company has a business model in which survival, at least for the foreseeable future, is an option. That's good news. It means your immediate challenge will be harvesting the living daylights out of what you have to keep the cash flow coming. Meanwhile, you can figure out the new game, allocating the resources to acquire a business or start one from scratch.

Look, change requires leaders to overcome all sorts of completely human dynamics, like inertia, fondness for tradition and hopefulness that things will get better. But strategic moments require a kind of courage, or at least a lack of sentimentality, that is rare. It is in these moments that the best leaders find a mirror and ask the defining question that the late, great Peter Drucker posed nearly 50 years ago. "If you weren't already in your business, would you enter it today?" If the answer is no, Drucker said, you need to face a second tough question. "What are you going to do about it?" Every leader today should heed his advice and follow it through to its conclusion, whether it is to fix, sell or close the business.

I run a small shop – just five employees. Lately, I've been thinking about sharing my financials with the team, hoping they'll come to see why we need to be efficient every hour of every day and minimise absenteeism. I'm also hoping that exposing our numbers could build teamwork and foster innovation. What's your advice?
–Bob Winyard, Cherry Hill, N.J.

Surely you know the old saying "No good deed goes unpunished." Well, you might be saying it about yourself very soon. We don't mean to disparage transparency. In general, the more information you share with employees about costs and other competitive challenges, the better.

It's as you suggest – when people know what they are up against, they can feel a greater sense of ownership and urgency, often sparking homegrown improvements in processes and productivity. And the sense that "we're all in this together" can certainly jumpstart teamwork and innovation.

But there are real perils involved with opening the books, the main one being that it's very hard to open them just a little bit. Once you start exposing costs, to have them make sense, you also need to expose revenues and profits as well. So, are you sure you're comfortable with the team's knowing how much the business makes?

Remember that every employee, no matter what size the company, has a personal pay scale in his head that estimates what he and every co-worker is worth due to output and performance. If you get the sense that your information spree will upend those notions, then leave this particular deed undone for the time being and try to find other, perhaps less perilous ways to get your team to care about work the way you do.