Bail Me Out
I am not going to take one side or the other on the topic of bailing out Detroit. There are strong arguments on both sides. On the other hand, we don’t see the NFL stepping in and handing the Lions free checkmarks to place in their win column.
What I find more fascinating is all the writing out there now about the failures of the collective management within the big three of the American auto industry. The list of things that they seem to be doing wrong appears to be endless. It appears that the problem might be boiled down to an unwillingness to make fundamental changes. They needed to transform their organizations to be competitive, but they were not up to the task.
Based on what I have read it may be that there was significant effort put into blocking change. At the heart of the problem is a legacy that may have been handed down to the industry by that Detroit paternal figure, Henry Ford. We have been told that the whole assembly line thing included a catch - Henry is accused of delcaring that the customer can have any color car they want as long as it is black.
Detroit was tooled up to crank out cars and that is what they did, whether the customer wanted them or not. In the beginning it was black. In the 70’s it was junk. Most recently it has been large and thirsty. Somehow other countries seem to be better at targeting what the American consumer demands and the current results provide the moral to the story.
Our automobile manufactures are not the first to find themselves in this predicament. My second job as a professional was at a place called Digital Equipment Corporation. At the time it was the world’s #2 computer company. Ironically my first job was with the world’s #1 computer company, but, it is the story of #2 that is more interesting. In the 1980’s we were riding an amazing wave of success. Ken Olson, the founder and Chairman, was named by Forbes as the most successful entrepreneur ever. Then something happened and the industry took a right angle turn.
What changed was the introduction of the personal computer and an operating system called Windows. However, Ken Olson believed it all to be a fad – he would wait out the temporary changes and the computing world would eventually return to its senses. Seemingly overnight my stock options went from $199 to $1.99. It was a devastating crash. And, with the exception of a few skeletons inside of HP and Oracle, the company today is gone (with no Washington bail out either).
Ken Olson refused to change. He would not accept that his customers wanted personal computers. He knew what they needed and his better judgment would prevail. In the end 130,000 employees had to find jobs.
If nothing else, paying attention to your customers and building your organization to satisfy their requirements, should be at the core of your CRM strategy. This is your best approach to avoid a trip to Washington and asking for your bail out.