Re: the tragedy of General Motors


Well, in the 70's when the imports were just starting to show up on
the radar.... Japan Inc got a real wake up call, Some of the absolute
crapp they shipped over here would not last 2 N.E Ohio Winters.. made
Vegas look like battleships..
I remeber seeing an entire cargo ship of little toy hondas being run
around a souther Calf. go -kart track in a demo durby, as the entire
shipment was un- licensable in Ca.
BUT Japan INC. Learned their lessons that the great unwashed would not
just drive/buy anything.
..
Toyota, a Japanese company and GM, an American company, decided to
have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and
hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day
the Japanese won by a mile.

Afterward, the American team became very discouraged and morally
depressed.

The American management decided the reason for the crushing defeat had
to be found. A Management Team made up of senior management was formed
to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the Japanese had eight people rowing and one
person steering, while the American team had eight people steering and
one person rowing. So American management hired a consulting company
and paid them an incredible amount of money.

After six months of hard work, they advised that too many people were
steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing. So the
American Team acted: To prevent losing to the Japanese again next
year, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized
to four steering supervisors, three area steering superintendents and
1 assistant superintendent steering manager.

They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1
person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called
the "Rowing Team Quality First Program," with meetings, dinners and
free pens for the rower. Even new paddles and medical benefit
incentives were promised for a winner. "We must give the rower the
empowerment and enrichments through this quality program."

The next year the Japanese won by two miles. Humiliated, the American
management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development
of a new canoe, sold the paddles and canceled all capital investments
for new equipment.

The money saved was distributed to the senior executives in
appreciation for a job well done.

SOUND FAMILIAR?

On 22 Mar 2006 13:35:16 -0800, "Jon Enslin" <jenslin@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


GrtArtiste wrote:
"it's the fault of those execs who ran the company in the 50s, 60s,
70s, and 80s, who signed all those welfare-giveaway contracts with the
UAW. "

Isn't it amazing how few people realized this at the time, or refused
to speak up and simply stuck their heads in the sand and hoped the
problem would go away.


Yeah, but if you were a GM exec in 1965 and needed to cut short term
costs, giving free health care to retirees seemed like a great idea.
GM was a big, innovative, profitable company that churned out popular
products - you had no idea that Japan would be eating your lunch 20
years later and that technology was going to lesson your reliabilty on
manual labor. And while you probably did realize that your retiree
workforce was going to grow, you probably did not realize how long they
would live and how health care costs would rise.

Can you say with any degree of certainty what the business world will
be like in 40 years?

Jon

.

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