The new head of GM: let’s hear it for on-the-job training
The newly appointed chairman of GM admits he don’t know nothin’ ’bout makin’ cars.
But he vows to learn.
The Treasury Department thinks Edward E. Whiteacre Jr., who spent his 43-year career at AT&T, is just the ticket for the new GM. And who knows, maybe he is. He’s got a good track record for bringing his previous company into the modern era.
However, I can’t help but imagine that there must have been someone in the auto industry who would have been a lot better, and who wouldn’t have to take a cram course in the entire auto industry. And I also can’t help but think that the Obama administration is purposely avoiding anyone with such expertise.
Why, I’m not sure: revenge on the automakers? The idea that they can control Whiteacre better than someone with more knowledge?
[ADDENDUM: Great minds think alike.]
No matter who gets the job of CEO at GM it will be virtually impossible to run the company as a profitable private concern. No balanced 67 year old should crave such an thankless job. Life is too short.
Let’s not forget the guy who took over AIG as a “public service” and was rewarded by a public flogging in congress.
Mullally of Ford came from Boeing. So there’s some precedent.
Problem is, a Rasmussen phone survey shows that 42% of CURRENT!!! GM owners won’t buy another.
That’s a hell of a hit.
How is the government going to cripple Ford in order to make its own proxies, GM and Chrysler, competitive? Or will they be subsidized world without end amen? Or both?
Edward E. Whiteacre Jr….”What is that?”
UAW Flunky…”It’s an engine sir”
Edward E. Whiteacre Jr…. ” What does it do?”
UAW Flunky…”It make car go vroom vroom”
I used to be an application department manager. I want my turn running GM!
Companies that promote from within do the best (including up to the top)… I worked for one that did that and did well. They hired an outside CEO and he grew the company fast, which included bringing in managers from outside that were never in the trenches / had no clue how the company worked… lost a lot of money… You know, the company had a lot of amazing internal resources for fixing problems… but you had to know about them… and then their ins and outs… to use them… and how the balance sheets worked… or the warehouse system… et cetera… A lot of low level people in older unit’s sales departments had a better understanding of all this than people handed the keys to manage large new stores…
Re: Thomass’ statement — Proctor and Gamble is one such company who trains and promotes from within, and is reknowned for this. Their success is attributed to the culture there, and a position in their Brand Management training program is one of the most exclusive positions a college graduate can hope to attain
Mullaly (Boeing>>Ford) did have considerable experience in manufacturing when he made the move: I don’t believe Whitacre does.
Whitacre certainly does, though, have a lot of experience in dealing with governments, and this may be more important in the current situation than any product or process knowledge.
Anyone other than iowahawk would have been a bad choice for GM.
Lou Gerstner went from CEO of RJR Nabisco tp CEO of IBM during that company’s near-death experience. Though Gerstner knew little about computers, he managed to turn IBM around.
It’s a very unusual story. Gerstner did understand, however, the importance of the services IBM offered to large corporations.
David.
Depressing, that the most important quality is the ability to get along with the government.
It’s where we are.
Gerstner does seem to have done a good job at IBM (his book about the experience, “Yes, Elephants Can Dance” is interesting and amusing reading) but executives with this ability are very rare. Also, I suspect that IBM after the dark years still had many good thingsleft in its culture that only needed re-kindling….it’s not clear that this is as true at GM.
Whiteacre said to Obama, “I don’t know anything about cars.” Obama said that was OK because he didn’t know anything about the economy.
However, I can’t help but imagine that there must have been someone in the auto industry who would have been a lot better, and who wouldn’t have to take a cram course in the entire auto industry.
Wow, this is exactly what I thought of Sarah Palin.
Cheap shot nyomythus – and way off the mark anyway – she actually had a pretty good track record in Alaska and, by all accounts, is a quick study.
Anyway – I think the point that this guy will be easily manipulated is right on the mark. Like Obama, on the job training will prove to be not the best idea.
I don’t think it would have been necessary to find someone from the auto industry but I do think it was important to find someone who was familiar with assembly manufacturing and end user marketing.
All that being said, if you have a really smart person (and I mean someone who is smart ENOUGH to realize he doesn’t know 98% of the business but will listen to those who do) with energy the they could probably turn it around. But this actually isn’t about turning the company around – rather it is about a social experiment. Does anyone else remember the
“Twentieth Century Motor Company of Starnesville, Wisconsin”?
It’s not a cheap shot, it’s interchangeable, I don’t wish it to be so — but it is so whether I wish it or not, this analogy is almost perfectly interchangeable.
Sorry – think you are wrong – but, hey, it’s every American’s right to be wrong every now and then.
GM has a history of cronyism and nespotism. Still, bad management was only half of the equation. The other half was GM’s over-priced work force. I understand why a non-GM guy is now on top of GM. I’m still trying to figure out how a miserable organization like the UAW got 17% of GM’s stock.
The writing is on the wall for GM.
It may be equal portions ineptitude on Obama’s part in selecting this guy to run it, an ancient business structure that can no longer compete without government protections/support, and just flat out antagonism from the potential consumer who sees their tax dollars being wasted and refuses to support such an endeavor with what money the government leaves them.
As for the Palin remarks, I’d suggest you can always tell who the left are the most afraid of as that is the person they tend to attack the most – or in recent circumstances that person’s 14 year old child.
Ref Palin remarks.
The folks who think her inadequate preferred, obviously, Biden.
That has to tell you something.
Biden is known for….a kind of Tourette’s syndrome of nutty one-offs the press never calls, plagiarism, expulsion from law school for plagiarism, and….
You don’t need somebody like Palin to look good compared to him.
The issue is principle and in this, as usual, the libs fall short.
They pretend that intellectual firepower is important. Then they prefer Biden.
They pretend experience is important. Then they prefer a senator who has accomplished nothing and never held an executive position. I mean Biden, not Obama, but him, too.
Dumbest of all, they think people believe they have principles.
merit violates equality of outcome, so they aer constantly trying to prove that there is no innate better selection.
this is why socialists appoint people, while others employ people by merit. get the difference? an appointee who is incompetent owes everything to a master above them that protects that position, a person of merit has an indipendent claim to a position through their abilities and the needs of those who require them to perform (not necessarily their bosses).
so all totalitarians poision their positions by putting petty incompetents throughout the system. this causes corruption but creates a heirarchy (which they deny exists as with otehr thigns so we dont see them), a piss layer cake.
neo should be VERY aware of this piss layer cake if she ever had to work with hostpital administrators who are very much this kind of beast. they are incompetent beuracrats who have little knowlege in how do do their jobs and be effective at it, and so they are where they are for their ability to just promote what the boss wants over what is better.
maybe now someone might read that paper from south africa i ahve linked to and then realize that that is whats happening here, and will continue to happen till the system cant hold itself up. then we will demand things, and they will lock us down, mission accomplished.
they realized that they could not exterminate the lumpen proletariate piecemeal. that they need to have everything under one umbrella so that the conflagration (holocaust) can happen completely unopposed.
imagine if stalin and hitler waited or won, and grabbed everything, what would ahve stopped or limited the outcome then?
if you believe in merit and inate abilities and so forth, then you believe in equal opportunity but accept that there will be unequal outcomes.
if you beluive in tabula rasa there are no innage abilities just better childhoods, and so you belive that equal outcome will correct the imbalance rather than time. you will not accept any unequal outcomes.
those who have already learned the first way and have abiltiy and merit are the ones who are first crushed and eliminated in some way. (they are the conservatives, and a large portion of the independents), their very existence disproves the ideology.
this will not stop. there is no force that can stop this, since we have gone past the event horizon and have long ago accepted abnormal as normal and have taken off the table any response that could oppose this as even valid to consider.
anyone read any of those posts of what its like to actually live in those ways? anyone read the differences between the ones that liked it and the ones that didnt, or the ones that thougth things werent that bad in the past?
its time to talk to the people who have lived other lives and hear EXPERIENCE.
i bet no one noticed that they kept referring to stalin as the one, the great one, etc… that he was like a god, etc
and yet we cant draw the simple connection to him being the one, using hitlers hand sign of the O, and that some in press consider him like a god, while using the same nickname as stalin, while his mentor was as stalinist plotting the extermination of 25 million americans.
let me point out that this would be just about right to make western europeans a complete minority who will have LESS than no rights. they will be the bottom of the layer cake that others crap on to feel better. (or anyone check out how coptic christians live in cairo?)
soon the youth force will be collecting informaition, red terror is already here!!! we just dont know it yet since we think that the laws are confusing because of incompetence, not because byu doing so the law becomes irrelevent and the judge obtains absolute power over those below his level. ther est of the system then does busy work grabbing people to be ground up. anyone notice how we made labor at low pay legal?
it will be not to hard to arrest the smart people once the laws are this way, as they will no know how to live this way in the begining, facilitating their control quite easily. then put them to work in their old capacity in exchange for their survival or better conditions.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/die.htm
A Simple Example Of Communal Decline
A Letter From South Africa by Jim Peron (September 1998)
When a country begins sliding into oblivion it really is the little things that get to you. You wake up in the morning and turn to see what time it is. The clock is off. The electricity is off again. Sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for a few hours, but it seems to happen more regularly than before.
You pick up the phone at work to make a call. Nothing. Your neighborhood is without telephone service again. You breathe a sigh of relief–at least if all the phones are out, they’ll do something relatively soon to fix it. If it’s just your own line, it can take days before they’ll do anything.
After the power comes on, you turn on the television to watch a favorite program, and hope you get the right sound with the right picture. Sometimes you get the sound of one show with the picture of another. Sometimes it’s just the one or the other. Or a radio station instead of the soundtrack. You’ve read the papers–a large number of the “old” employees have walked out of the broadcasting studios. They couldn’t take it anymore. And since television is an arm of the government, their replacements are appointed politically, not because of their experience or ability.
once the new regime overtakes the old, then all those competent people they had been taking credit for their work, are removed.
new people are appointed by ideological reasons, and support, and so you get incompetence EVERYWHERE.. except in the highest levels of state where they live like old feudal kings, as that is waht they are. (its dynastic – while telling you your family isnt worht anything and has to be destroyed for the sake of the future).
easiest way to win a race against superiors is to get the supriors to doubt themselves and quit, or make the situation aroudn it so onerous they dont want to compete.
Communists in Government
The government of South Africa is actually a coalition of three groups. The ruling triple alliance is made up of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the African National Congress (ANC), which leads the coalition. The SACP has a lot of influence in COSATU and together they exercise a great deal of control over the ANC. Thabo Mbeki, who just replaced Mandela as leader of the ANC, and is pegged to be president of South Africa when Mandela steps down, was trained in Moscow. His father, Govan, is an old line Marxist and SACP activist. At a recent ANC conference the hard left solidified its control over the ANC by capturing nine of its eleven top positions. Of the ANC’s 240 MPs in Parliament, 80 were appointed by the SACP. The ANC and COSATU also used some of their quotas to appoint SACP members to Parliament.
When Chris Hani was assassinated by Janus Waluz, a Polish immigrant, CNN called Hani, “a top ANC official” or “anti-apartheid activist.” But CNN didn’t mention that Hani was the head of the Communist Party and that Waluz was a refugee from communism. Instead, the impression was given that Hani was another Martin Luther King.
In the same way, many facts about Mandela and the ANC are never reported by the media. For example, Mandela awarded South Africa’s equivalent of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom to Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi. Mandela has publicly said that Cuba is a model for a free, democratic society that is, in fact, more democratic than the United States. Castro has been here for friendly visits. When U.S. officials complained about Mandela’s cozy relationship with dictators, Mandela said that no other nation has the right to interfere in South African affairs–this from the man who supported sanctions against the old government. Curiously, Mandela dropped recognition of Taiwan at the demand of Communist China.
you cant organize opposition if everyone is a mental cripple….
Nyom the sexist said, “Wow, this is exactly what I thought of Sarah Palin.”
Too bad you don’t hold your man Obama to the same standard.
He had so little executive experience he wasn’t on Palin’s playing field. She ran a state and a town and he ran a campaign. Wup wup.
Idiot.
Nyom the sexist wrote, “It’s not a cheap shot, it’s interchangeable, I don’t wish it to be so – but it is so whether I wish it or not, this analogy is almost perfectly interchangeable.”
No. Obama’s name would be more perfectly interchangeable.
For some reason you FAIL to soak in facts about Palin. You decided to believe the accusations and do little due diligence to see if what the accusations were were true.
Dimwit.
ah,
but baklava!
you know what happens to those with the kind of big mouths and small brains that nyom shows when the kind of administration that is coming actually arrives!
why dont you let nyom what it will be like and ask him if he will be able to not say any complaints whatsoever once things get bad?
he is used to complaining when there is anotehr party or ‘enemy’ on the plate. but like the dog who chases cars, he wont know what to do when his side catches the car and there are no more targets like that.
will he then be able to not complain? 🙂
Administration: Rein in pay in US private sector
Obama administration: Executive pay needs curbs, better management, across US private sector
finance.yahoo.com/news/Administration-Rein-in-pay-apf-15500519.html?.v=6
guys, you arent noticing how this nationalizing communist is not even slowing down… schools come next… nothing can stop it since the nyoms cant even get past arguing about what they are going to argue about
But Palin might’ve nationalized quicker as she is dumber… and has less experience than Obama…
/turning liberal brain off.
Bleh
I’ve been somewhat surprised to discover that among people I know, the most anti-Palin are all women.
I suspect it’s two things. (1) As a conservative Christian mother who opposes abortion and even bore a Down’s child, Palin is a nightmare for feminist women. (2) Palin appears to be a very life-sized woman, much like other women, so why should she become so powerful? (Unlike the iconic Obama with an exotic background and a Harvard JD.)
2 women I know actually think that Palin said, “I can see Russia from my house”.
And when I said no that was Tina Fey – they thought Palin said a sentence at least as dumb. They didn’t know there was a whole paragraph about the Aleutian islands and working diplomatically with Russia.
There was a few who just made fun of her speech pattern and NEVER addressed the substance of what she had to say which was an incredibly powerful understanding of energy and the economy. And understanding that is HIGHER than Obama’s understanding by far.
Then again my 12 year old daughter understands economics better than Obama and had more executive experience…
For those of you who like Sarah Palin, check out Ice Road Truckers. This show is my new latest TV treat.
Palin is the governor of the state that builds, maintains, and manages the Dalton Road. What an amazing road, and the truckers who drive it are the kinds of Americans (and Canadians) that most of the people who read neo-neocon will love.
Palin should get some credit for overseeing the people who keep this road going. I wonder how well Obama could manage such an enterprise.
this just in…
the man who shot up the jewish museum was a leftist.. (and that others are starting to look at the supremicist sites and are starting to realize that they are the same as the lefts agenda, just not so curcumspect)
The anti-semitism of von Brunn is the first thing one notices when visiting these bizarre websites. However, like those of most “white supremacists”, many of von Brunn’s political views track “Left” rather than “Right.” Clearly, a re-evaluation of these obsolete definitions is long overdue. – The Examiner
Yeah, I don’t get the amazing contempt expressed against Palin for superficial reasons.
Much of it strikes me as class-consciousness pure and simple– the horror of having to look up to a Wal-Mart American.
huxley,
She’s not a Walmart American. She and her husband had or still have their own business–commercial fishing–and they do okay financially.
Problem is, she’s a state university American.
Walmart Americans can be sneered at or, as useful, considered a retarded victim group needing government intervention and thus required to give up power.
State university Americans are bright, energetic, probably worked a good deal to afford their education, and have the capability to be a threat.
What is interesting is the number of folks who have dull-normal IQs who think–have been convinced by the MSM–that Palin is dumber than a box of hammers and that they, themselves are, by contrast, near-geniuses.
Call that a triumph of false advertising.
http://www.esquire.com/features/obama-crazy-0709
What If Obama’s Out of His Mind?
The 2 most important females in my life both adore Palin.
My wife and my 6 year old daughter (who HAD to have a Palin T-shirt during the last election!).
I suspect most of the vitriol coming from females against Palin are strictly from those who identify with the ideological left.
As such, their opinions shouldn’t be of concern to thinking Americans.
“I’ve been somewhat surprised to discover that among people I know, the most anti-Palin are all women”
when people are jeaolous of someone’s success, they are more likely to be jeaolous of someone who looks like them. men have always had to deal with the success of people of their own gender who have succeeded way beyond what they have done/not so much for women.