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Of course, the answer is yes. But then we might ask, Why wasn’t the company competitive—coming up with the new models and better quality that American consumers were looking for? Business coach Michael Hyatt suggested this morning that it was a lack of realistic goal setting. He quotes others in his post as saying that the company itself blamed “the competition”--always a bad excuse. (See link to Michael’s post below.)  However, I suggest that a number of other major forces stood in the way of innovation at GM. I was keeping a close eye on U.S. car like makers like GM for 10 years, while I was Editor-in-Chief of PDMA’s Visions magazine from 2001 to 2011. I was constantly looking for an opportunity to publish articles about their “innovativeness.” That never happened. On the other hand, there were plenty of interesting articles to publish about Hyundai’s research and new models, as well as about the Chinese car company Geely (now owner of Volvo), a company that was working hard to become competitive—and succeeded. Here are my thoughts about the underlying causes of GM’s lack of innovation: #1--Complacency. Top executives did not believe they had to be “innovative” and develop new car and truck models. They thought their GM brand was enough to attract buyers and keep them competitive. #2--Outrageously High Executive Salaries. Top executives did not want to rock the boat and have their own salaries examined. #3--Union Contraints. High worker salaries contributed to making their products uncompetitive in the marketplace. GM constantly gave up on restructuring of worker salary packages. Do you have other ideas about this? I’d love to hear them, since this is certainly a warning story for the Harvard Business School’s case histories. Also, now that GM is back on its feet, could this happen again? Chime in with your ideas. NOTE: Here is a link to Michael Hyatt’s post.michaelhyatt.com/goal-setting-pitfalls.html
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