[Land-speed] GM ?? Ford ?? Mopar ??

Bryan Savage b.a.savage at wildblue.net
Tue Nov 11 21:24:28 MST 2008


It's an old story, for some reason, Mayf.
I worked for IBM Corp. 1963-2001 and saw the same thing. all went well until
the '80's. From about '83 on, we would talk at lunch about the strange 
things the
company was doing. We couldn't understand why we were still making a profit.
We weren't!
What we didn't understand was the mass inertia (I don't know the correct 
term)
a Billion dollar company has.
Our CEO in the '80's solved that problem. IBM filed the largest in American
corporate history in 1992 of $4.92 Billion after a loss of $1.46 billion 
in 1992.
This from a company that 15 years earlier was criticized for having 
hundreds
of millions of cash on hand.

Guess what Mayf, that CEO was one of the good old boys!!!!

Through the rest of the '90's the company changed from one of the Fortune
magazine best to work for, to not even on the list. I retired 3-31-01, a 
year
and 3 months earlier than I had been planning for almost 40 years. I was
too spoiled to work there anymore. I was a political zoo.

Sorry for the rant ..
Bryan




drmayf wrote:
> There are pros and cons.  Most really good technical people have no 
> more understanding of how to run a large corporation than the 
> financial people know how to engineer or manufacture.  There are 
> clearly exceptions. At Boeing, T.A. Wilson was one who excelled as an 
> engineer and learned how to manage later. Phil Condit was a fine 
> aerodynamicist and made it to CEO and wasn't worth spit running the 
> company. Harry Stonecipher of MacDac  turned out to be much the same. 
> Frank Schrontz a past CEO at Boeing was not a technical person yet 
> learned how to deal with the technical side of things and was a 
> respected CEO.  Too many people get promoted because they are part of 
> the good ol boy system instead of being promoted for what they know.
> I am open to  Aerospace Management Consulting through my company, T-0 
> Test Support Operations....  Bring your big checkbook as my  hourly 
> rates are significant, lol....
>
> But for you weinees, any motorsports consulting is free....( and worth 
> every penny, lol)
>
> mayf


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