Friday, June 30, 2006

3 Auto CEOs go to Washington - Another Example of “The Demise of American Management”

I’m sick of picking up the paper to keep reading that the Leadership at GM and Delphi (to name a few) are adding to their buyouts, cuts and early retirement packages. Worse is the praise they get from business reporters and some academic professor that researches but never has worked in the industry or faced continuous downsizing/unemployment year after year.

It is so easy to get rid of employees, just bring in hatchet person who likes his/her job and give them free reign to destroy your company. It will not happen overnight or next week and perhaps maybe even next year, but it will eventually happen.

Why should executive management care, most of them if not all of them will be long gone before the cutting, outsourcing and downsizing takes place or finishes? First to go are the so-called poor performers (Fat), then the so-said evaluated mid range performers (Muscle), along with training, travel, and off-site meetings. Lastly, the so-professed best employees (Tendons) are given early retirements, severance packages or just plain pink slips. In addition, at this time no new technology or upgrades are to be done until the company again becomes profitable or at least has a good quarter and Wall Street says “Good Boys and Girls.” Your company is now “Bad To The Bone,” I mean Bone Head!

Do you not realize you will never again have the work ethic and experience that you have sliced away? The best employees are also your smartest and most flexible employees. They will leave before the fat, muscle and tendons are cut away. Why? Because they can you Bone Head. You have cut the company’s throat, not your own because you get to go to another company and start all over again being a Bone Head. The Vultures are circling.

The floowing question and answer was asked of a GM official:

QUESTION: Will these cuts, and buyouts hurt General Motors or Delphi Quality?
ANSWER: GM and Delphi say that quality will not be affected. But the job cuts will create some worker shortages this year at dozens of plants across North America. Both companies plan to hire temporary workers to ease the transition, and some observers say quality could be hurt.

Below is a graph that will help explain why this is statement is so wrong and just plain stupid on the part of GM and Delphi and any other company that wants to "lie" about losing experienced or older workers.
CLICK ON PICS TO ENLARGE



The table below provides data on the savings GM expects to get on labor. The only problem is they are looking at these figures like they do for many of their reports. It is vague, does not include all of the inputs to make that decision and is void of any type of Systems Thinking (i.e., It is Independent of itself, it should be Interdependent and take into account more factors, like the ones shown in my graph above). Where is the cost of poor quality that will be inherent with all of the "new" employees? Click pic for better view.

CLICK ON PICS TO ENLARGE



The table below provides data on the savings GM expects to get on labor. The only problem is they are looking at these figures like they do for many of their reports. It is vague, does not include all of the inputs to make that decision and is void of any type of Systems Thinking (i.e., It is Independent of itself, it should be Interdependent and take into account more factors, like the ones shown in my graph above). Where is the cost of poor quality that will be inherent with all of the "new" employees? Click pic for better view.
Since the early 1980s quality and management experts like the late W. Edwards Deming have been advising American Managers (especially auto industry) to create short and long-term plans that emphasize continual process improvement. The essence of a great plan or roadmap is that it never ends it just keeps getting better and it avoids pitfalls and dead-ends by Bone Heads. The plans were going to take time and endurance but that is not the American way, there were no short-cuts.

I've said before that the most important skill a manager can have is "predictability." Predictability comes with having your nose to the ground watching, listening and above all tracking ( with good customer data, not bad financial data) to the rumbles in the marketplace, knowing exactly what your competition is going to do and then prevent it from happening or beat them to the punch.

Have you taken a look where the CEOs of the Ford, GM and Chrysler Corporations have been hanging out?

The CEOs came to the Capitol to meet with members of Congress to discuss fuel efficiency and other issues.


What's wrong with this picture? The members of Congress used to come to Detroit to meet with the Big 3.

Each generation may grow wiser but they will also be more powerless.

American Management Executives cannot create an environment of consistency, and long-term plans (aim). Wall Street will not let them (i.e., Kirk K), their egos wont let them, their performance evaluations won’t let them, their union won't let them, their country club won’t let them and nor will their board of directors.

The only chance we have to compete in this Global Marketplace is to send our American Management Techniques and Bone Heads overseas.

I wonder if Gustav Humbert ex-CEO of Airbus who just resigned studied American Management techniques? Here is his out going statement:


"As president and CEO of Airbus, I must take responsibility for this setback and fell the right course of action is to offer my resignation to our shareholders."


Another example of arrogance and WRONG priorities by a CEO. Where does he mention the setback he did to the employees, what about their customers? It's always about the short-term financial dollar (you see management delays costs the company $2.6 billion, that is a whole bunch of Euros).


Perhaps since he is French he can go to Renault and help out GM? probably not, K.K. wants Nissan.


For more reading on the plight of Delphi & GM go to

http://qualityg.blogspot.com/2006/07/quality-fools-gm-death-watch-part-vii.html

See numbers 9, 10 & 18

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