by David Schwinn
Guest Author
Bankruptcy? General Motors? Are you kidding?
When I started at General Motors in the 1960s, we were the biggest and best company in the United States and most of the world. As a matter of fact, I believe that only a couple of state industries in Russia surpassed the number of people GM employed. Many of us, observing the poor quality of work done in the factories as we first entered them, found it hard to believe that GM could be so good. One of my friends and colleagues, Mark Horvath, captured the situation insightfully: “We (GM) can depend on the stupidity of our competition.”
As time went on and we became more a part of the GM culture, we began to think of Mark’s observation in a different way. We began to unconsciously believe that the reason we were so large, powerful, and successful was that we really were smart. As a matter of fact, in those days, one of the criteria we used for making decisions was “Will this enhance our market position so much that the anti-trust guys will try to break us up?” We thought we had to be careful not to be too good. So what happened to this most omnipotent company?
