Goodbye Saturn
My wife and I drive a Saturn. It’s a great vehicle—my second Saturn!
I’ve always admired the fact that Saturn was different, not just from a design engineering perspective, but also different as a total company in the way they treated customers with respect.
So, it was very disappointing to get a letter from Jill Lajdziak this week, the General Manager at Saturn Corp. She explained that Penske isn’t buying Saturn. It turns out Saturn is being phased out of GM’s future.
Way back in 1988, management guru Tom Peters published his book Thriving on Chaos. In it, he describes GM executives in denial.
“I’ve heard GM executives flatly deny the extent of the erosion of GM’s market share within hours of my talking to a leading analyst,” said Peters.
In retrospect, it makes one wonder if the denial penetrated deeper and much further into the corporate culture at GM. Even though parts of the world experienced an energy crisis in the seventies, GM and other US-based automobile manufacturers went on to design fleets of gas guzzlers instead of focusing more attention on electric and other energy efficient vehicles. GM is where it is now in 2009 partly because of the denial among its executives.
I always try to look for a silver lining at times like this. The only good part about the hard times Saturn and other manufacturing companies experienced recently, particularly in the US, is that the illusion of invulnerability is mostly gone. It’s time for manufacturing companies of all sizes to re-invent themselves. The reinvention out of necessity can be a good thing because it forces all of us to try harder and use our brains, our creativity.
So, tell us how your company is changing. Tell us how you are re-inventing yourself for 2010. Maybe we can help.
Send your letters to me by clicking here.
Bruce
P.S: Be sure to check out our exclusive story later in this issue with Industrial Light and Magic’s Greg Hyman about the new Star Trek movie, which comes out on DVD this month.
I’ve always admired the fact that Saturn was different, not just from a design engineering perspective, but also different as a total company in the way they treated customers with respect.
So, it was very disappointing to get a letter from Jill Lajdziak this week, the General Manager at Saturn Corp. She explained that Penske isn’t buying Saturn. It turns out Saturn is being phased out of GM’s future.
Way back in 1988, management guru Tom Peters published his book Thriving on Chaos. In it, he describes GM executives in denial.
“I’ve heard GM executives flatly deny the extent of the erosion of GM’s market share within hours of my talking to a leading analyst,” said Peters.
In retrospect, it makes one wonder if the denial penetrated deeper and much further into the corporate culture at GM. Even though parts of the world experienced an energy crisis in the seventies, GM and other US-based automobile manufacturers went on to design fleets of gas guzzlers instead of focusing more attention on electric and other energy efficient vehicles. GM is where it is now in 2009 partly because of the denial among its executives.
I always try to look for a silver lining at times like this. The only good part about the hard times Saturn and other manufacturing companies experienced recently, particularly in the US, is that the illusion of invulnerability is mostly gone. It’s time for manufacturing companies of all sizes to re-invent themselves. The reinvention out of necessity can be a good thing because it forces all of us to try harder and use our brains, our creativity.
So, tell us how your company is changing. Tell us how you are re-inventing yourself for 2010. Maybe we can help.
Send your letters to me by clicking here.
Bruce
P.S: Be sure to check out our exclusive story later in this issue with Industrial Light and Magic’s Greg Hyman about the new Star Trek movie, which comes out on DVD this month.
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