Whitacre Vows to ?Learn About Cars? as GM Chairman

GRtak

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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aQ._YJhEj_Jo#

June 10 (Bloomberg) -- Edward E. Whitacre Jr. built AT&T Inc. into the biggest U.S. provider of telephone service over a 43-year-career. By his own admission, he becomes chairman of General Motors Corp. knowing nothing about the auto industry.

The 6-foot-4-inch Texan nicknamed ?Big Ed? said steering the nation?s largest automaker after bankruptcy is ?a public service.? People who know him say he can meet GM?s need for the type of transformation he orchestrated at Dallas-based AT&T.

?I don?t know anything about cars,? Whitacre, 67, said yesterday in an interview after his appointment. ?A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I?m not that old, and I think the business principles are the same.?

Whitacre?s selection bucks more than a half-century of tradition at GM, where the only non-executives to lead the board since 1937 were interim Chairman Kent Kresa and John Smale, who held the job from 1992 through 1995. Whitacre will take the post when Detroit-based GM exits Chapter 11, perhaps by Aug. 31.

Don't know if you peeps don't care, or have just missed this.
 
Ummm,..... yeah, I stopped reading that thread. Besides, it deserves it's own thread.
 
So basically what he's saying, is: "How hard can it be?"

GM is doomed...
 
Well, I've always had a feeling that to run a car company properly you had to have business talent, _and_ some passion for the industry..

Let's see if I'm completely bunkers :b
 
At that level of management selling a product is like selling any other product. A CEO/Chairman should no more be designing phones or food than cars. Its all about direction and funding, not the global RWD market or styling and interior quality.
 
At that level of management selling a product is like selling any other product.

That's what Apple thought when they hired John Sculley away from Pepsi. That didn't work out so well.

At that level of management, no, selling cars (or other manufactured non-commodity goods) is not like selling soap or telephone service or generators or other commodity items where there is little to differentiate between your own and your competitors' merchandise. There is a huge and fundamental difference there.
 
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Well it could be worse - "Whiteacre vows to learn nothing at all about cars." ...

Keep the bean counters at bay, let them count beans not fuck up the product
Keep an eye on the competition, what are they doing and why
Employ a futureologist (I am being serious here)
Do focus group but do not focus group the passion out of the product
Do not be a 'me too' product company
Be a 'good guy' company
Sort out the unions properly
SWOT the place to death and do something about the Ws and Ts oh and see above

It's not rocket science, although British Leyland could not manage it.
 
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He's not got the best track record, either.

He moved AT&T (at the time called Southwestern Bell aka SBC) from Saint Louis, Missouri to San Antonio, Texas in 1992. This was good in that he got a good deal from the city and SBC had to pay lower taxes.

However, this was also dumb because all the telecommunications equipment companies were in the Dallas, Texas area (~250 miles away), and San Antonio had almost no telecom industry infrastructure - the big backbones for the US telecom networks also go through Dallas and don't go anywhere near San Antonio. This is the equivalent of British Petroleum saying, "Good news everyone! We're relocating for tax reasons and to be closer to our suppliers in the Middle East or Southwest Asia." "Where are we relocating to?" "Afghanistan." "..." Right idea, right area, wrong specific place.

SBC, which later bought out and assumed the identity of AT&T, spent boatloads of money under Whitacre's tenure to upgrade the San Antonio HQ's connectivity (which apparently never worked out as they'd hoped) and on flights to the Dallas area to talk with vendors. After Whitacre left in 2007, his successor quickly relocated the company to the Dallas area, where from all reports they are entirely happier - and talking with vendors like Nortel and Sony Ericsson is just a cross-town drive.


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Keep the bean counters at bay, let them count beans not fuck up the product
Keep an eye on the competition, what are they doing and why
Employ a futureologist (I am being serious here)
Do focus group but do not focus group the passion out of the product
Do not be a 'me too' product company
Be a 'good guy' company
Sort out the unions properly
SWOT the place to death and do something about the Ws and Ts oh and see above

Per his track record:
1. Not going to happen - SBC under Whitacre was notorious for having the most expensive and least featured services. Beancounters dictated what services would be offered. As late as 2001, voicemail was an extra cost option on some SBC cell phones, for example.
2. Not going to happen. Thanks to Whitacre ignoring the competition, AT&T is a decade behind in its FTTP project and will be decades matching FIOS.
3. Hah! See #2.
4. "What's a focus group?"
5. Under Whitacre, SBC was mostly a "me too" company.
6. Not going to happen. Whitacre's SBC was one of the most despised in the US.
7. Not going to happen.
8. Do you really think the guy that screwed up the corporate move like that is going to care about SWOTing the place? Especially when, in the words of Jeremy Clarkson, he knows that the equally stupid and weak government will bail him out?
 
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The title says it all, I think.
 
At that level of management selling a product is like selling any other product. A CEO/Chairman should no more be designing phones or food than cars. Its all about direction and funding, not the global RWD market or styling and interior quality.

A CEO is ment to provide direction for the company, how is a CEO ment to provide direction if he doesn't have any clue about the product he is selling?
 
Spectre has gotten me all depressed - the Euro GM products were OK - I personally preferred the Fords usually but they are good stuff (Opel/Vauxhall - branding).

They make a super 1.9 ltr Diesel engine btw - now where could that be used if scaled up a bit I wonder?
 
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