"As soon as everything is important, nothing is important."

That's a quote from a GM manager in a very interesting New York Times article you might want to check out.

According to those quoted in the article, prior to bankruptcy, GM was paralyzed by bureaucracy.  No shock there...

What I found instructive were the anecdotes giving insight into the day-to-day management practices.  One manager says that his binder full of job expectations has now been replaced with a one-page set of goals.  Performance reviews used to be book-length and have since been reduced to a page.  A budget mind-set made any request for dynamic adjustments to plans in the face of unanticipated information or events a career limiting move and encouraged all kinds of other unhealthy behaviors. 

It seems there is a now an attempt to move away from prescriptive, detailed rules to an approach that emphasizes the more general - goals, values, results, norms of behavior, conditions - necessary for success and to start holding employees accountable to those, allowing them more freedom to determine the particulars.  If that is true, it's a good start.

Maybe they are reading The Science of Success?  If so, let's hope they keep reading.

Comments

[ben]

-- Stepping onto Soapbox --

Interesting back-stories are: (1) GM's historical use of the political means to maintain uncompetitive positions and destroy value in society; (2) the perhaps well-intentioned but misguided attempts by leaders and politicians to prevent GM from failing. Both have played a significant role it's downfall.

The short story? Once again, we find out that the market process works, and when we allow it to be subverted, really bad things happen. The human toll in suffering and lost opportunity that has resulted from allowing GM to avoid market discipline through the use of political means has been devastatingly large and avoidable.

In the article you will hear employees say that bankruptcy is finally allowing them to make the changes needed to be healthy and competitive again. Why did we have to wait for the inevitable to happen? Because of years and years of political manipulations that allowed GM leadership to pretend they would never be allowed to fail. Because of politicians who thought they might know better than the market. I am sure it was all for the best of intentions. But check out what happened after the Kelo decision to find out one more instance of how that generally works out (http://tinyurl.com/yh3anmw).

Also, read "The Suicidal Corporation" by Weaver for a sense of how this stuff plays out in Detroit historically.

-- Stepping off of Soapbox --