Is More Stimulation really necessary?

Do we really need nearly a trillion dollars in government spending to save the economy?  Or can we get to a sustainable economy with less addiction to growth?  Shouldn’t we really be saving rather than spending?  Why can’t we get something like the Fair Tax, rather than bigger government that my son will need to pay interest on for the next 80 years? I think we are over stimulated.

Seems like we need a systems solution, Jay Forrester:

http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/articles/2009/winter/50201/the-loop-you-cant-get-out-of/

 

Fatherhood

 I thought I should write a message to the world.

I am in love with my new son.  He is everything to me. He will embody my beliefs in learning and excellence. He will teach me something new each day about the world and about himself. I just hope that this crazy messed up world is good enough for him and his dreams.  God bless his soul and take care of him even when we cannot.

 

Nepotism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism

From wikipedia.org

Nepotism is the showing of favoritism toward relatives and friends, based upon that relationship, rather than on an objective evaluation of ability, meritocracy or suitability. For instance, offering employment to a relative, despite the fact that there are others who are better qualified and willing to perform the job. The word nepotism is from the Latin word ‘nepos’, meaning “nephew” or “grandchild”.

I am slowly getting over it, but I fear that I have suffered a supreme insult by my boss.  No I didn’t get the promotion, …someone with more years of service did.  He doesn’t have more experience in the relevant field, he isn’t particularly good at his current job (customer service), but he has just been at the company longer than my scant two years. This despite the fact that he doesn’t really know anything about simulation software or cost analysis. I doubt he even cares (nothing personal, he just isn’t that into much of anything around the office). This despite the fact that I have been doing at least half of the work required of this job for the last 2 months,  on top of my regular job – uncompensated and unrecognized.  I am sure his teenage kids need the salary and such, but it would have been nice to get rewarded for the fact that I stepped up and kept the department going when we lost headcount. Now the time comes to fill in the lost slot and I get passed over for a veteran from the old boys club. boo.

The thing that irks me the worst is that my boss has the gall to make it seem like he isn’t giving me the shaft. Like somehow I am “winning” despite “losing.”

• “We need to get you more exposure” – maybe I can get more exposure by focusing on the more mundane aspects of my current job that I let go while stepping up to the plate to help you out.  Not getting the promotion will give me ample time to work on my routine, low exposure tasks!
• “We need to polish your presentation style” – oh really? I have seen your presentations, buddy.  They pretty much suck! I end up having to make corrections to the edits you suggest.  And I am NOT dumbing myself down for management. I am and will continue to try to raise them up to my level.
• “After the interviews it was obvious that you were the most intelligent candidate.” “You won the popular vote, but lost the electoral vote.”  “The whole process wasn’t fixed, honest” – all of this blather is contradictory and illustrative of why the staff distrusts management.

If I won and yet still lost, because of electoral office politics, lack of time served or whatever, then the process WAS FIXED.  If I was more qualified, more intellegent and better prepared, but years of service and (poor) customer service experience mattered more, then the process WAS FIXED. DUH, if I am so intelligent, how come you think I cannot see through you? If the process wasn’t fixed how come everyone in the office knew the outcome before it started (other than my brilliant boss, I guess). 

But my boss is going to work at getting me a promotion or more exposure or more professional polish.  Bah, who needs it?  If they promote me in my current role, I will not be mobile within the company any longer. If I am too high up the chain, lateral moves will no longer be available and I won’t be able to escape this poison culture.  I just hope I can last another six months until my project is over, then I can move on to bigger and better things. Nepotism is alive and well.

 

“This I believe” – thoughts on Values and Leadership

Based on our J506 – Ethical Leadership final, Prof. Austrom engaged us in this final question, to articulate our values in a essay titled, “This I Believe.”   I liked my answer enough to post it on my blog, mainly because it tells the world what I am about and credits my mother for making a difference in my life.

 

This I Believe is an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. These short statements of belief, written by people from all walks of life, are archived at http://www.thisibelieve.org/ and featured on public radio in the United States and Canada, as well as in regular broadcasts on NPR, http://www.thisibelieve.org/view_featured_essays.php. The project is based on the popular 1950s radio series of the same name hosted by Edward R. Murrow.

This I Believe offers a simple if difficult invitation:  Describe the core principles that guide your life—your personal credo. 

 

With this first question, we are coming full circle, back to the first individual assignment we were given at the beginning of J506 – Reflections on Leadership and your Leadership Practice. “This I believe,” that is my personal core values, are the things that provide that bedrock foundation for my leadership praxis. At their core I am certain that the things I believe have remained the same from the start to the end of this class:

 

1) First and foremost, I value learning new things. ‘“This I believe”… I should learn something new about the world each day.’

 

I never really got to delve as deeply into the source of my love of learning during our first assignment (how could I? it was 2 pages max!), so I will use this opportunity to explain.  My focus on learning, exploring and education was developed at an early age and is a direct result of the love, attention and teaching of my mother, Carol. As a child of a second generation Polish / blue collar family in Detroit and, my mother was taught by her parents that hard work and education was the path to success. Her experience as an elementary school teacher in a poor inner-city Catholic school also shaped her idealism and desire to mentor and shape young minds. All these experiences and values she passed on to me and my sister, but most of all was her love of learning. My fondest childhood memories involve sitting on the couch with her before breakfast and reading one of the hundreds of picture books we lugged home from the library.  As I matured I went from learning about dinosaurs, to calculus, to engineering, to system dynamics of socio-economic systems, to finance, economics & accounting, to now Ethical Leadership. I gained new and exciting insights at each step.  When I am learning new things I am performing at my best and am most engaged in my work.  I credit those first mornings on my parent’s couch reading with my mother for the enthusiasm I bring to my work at my best moments.        

 

2) Second of all, I value authenticity. ‘‘“This I believe”… I should be the best ME I can be each and every day.’

 

Authenticity to me encompasses a lot of the materials that were covered in class, but is probably best captured in my favorite chapter, 2. Credibility is the Foundation of Leadership of Kouzes and Posner’s Leadership Challenge­ (shorthand K&P from here forward). K&P cite the four major attributes that people look for in leaders from their surveys: Honesty, Forward Looking, Inspiring and Competent. I whole heartily agree with all of those characteristics being important to leadership and they form a basis for what I call individual authenticity.

 

In my opinion authentic people are honest, the never oversell their contributions or minimize their shortcomings.  Honest people are quick with good news, but honestly present bad news as well. They are forward looking, because they always hopeful and positive about the future, while sensibly preparing for what risks and opportunities lie ahead. They are inspiring because the view and vision they have for tomorrow is always better than today. They see a potential good in everyone and every situation. And they are competent, they are people of action and results – they deliver. Still beside the survey data, I think authenticity of individuals goes beyond K&P’s initial assessment.   Some other attributes of authentic individuals, I believe are:

 

·   Trustworthy – beyond honesty, authentic people will do the right thing even when they are not being closely watched. To paraphrase, they are advocates of the DWYSYWD approach.

·   Self-aware – authentic people know who they are, who they want to be and how their actions influence others.  They know quite a bit about who other people are, too. The authentic can easily identify other “authentics” and are not fooled by posers and fakes. A lot of self-awareness is related to the emotional and social intelligence concepts we read about and discussed in class.

·   Humble – authentic people know that they are human and prone to all human flaws; as such they never become too wrapped up in themselves or their own accomplishments. They credit their team when there is great success and shoulder the blame when failures or mistakes occur.

·   Driven – finally authentic people want to not only succeed in their efforts, they have the self-awareness and humility to realize that there is always room for personal growth and improvement. As such they are always striving to help others succeed and as a result they are always working to better themselves.

 

Now I realize that much of the above characterization is similar to the material in Good to Great and Collins’ discussion of Level 5 Leadership, but packaging up all of the attributes I hold dear, into a something I will call authenticity makes it a more personal contribution to the things “I believe” in.  

 

These two major attributes, learning and authenticity, are my core values. I knew that I loved learning and education, but reflection on my life brought about by this class (and many others at Kelley) reminded me of the enthusiasm learning kindles in my spirit. Through my time here in the evening MBA program I rediscovered my love of not only micro & macro economics, but also working on teams with diverse and intelligent partners. I have rediscovered my love of understanding complex dynamic systems (from supply chain bullwhips to the universe itself), but also uncovered an interest in group dynamics, organization design and ethical leadership (thanks, Doug). 

 

My awareness and appreciation for authenticity in myself in others was also highlighted by reflections this term in J506.  It was very eye opening to me that authenticity and leadership of this type is such a core value to me. I think it is evident that much of my personal struggles in the workplace and my frustrations with management are related with my belief that much of what I see in the office reeks of a real lack of authenticity (see my blog postings). Office politicking, metrics-only management, results first – people last philosophy, etc… it all conspires against creating a high level of sustained organizational performance, and as a result many people do not consistently bring their best to work. All frustrations aside, I have learned a lot about myself this term and I hope to use the above two values, learning and authenticity, as a basis for making my home, my school, my community and my workplace a better place, “this I truly believe”…     

 

Fred encourages us to spend our way out of recession.

An old high school acquaintance alerted me to this Youtube clip.  Fred Thompson gives a pretty hilarious and sarcastic plea to the American people to help “spend” our economy to prosperity. Hilarious! Well written and well delivered, he is a real actor after all. Delivery is so polished, it makes you wonder why he wasn’t a more successful presidential candidate (although he probably took as many takes as necessary to make it sound / look so perfect). Still he does rip Washington, Congress and liberal / Keynesian economists a new one. Ha.

 

 

GM’s Message to the American Public, “Thanks for the Loan!” (oops, spoke too soon)

A pretty low budget message to the American people from GM, on how our money from “Bridge Loans” (notice it is not a freebie bailout) will be used. See, they are being courteous and frugal. They gave us and Pelosi & her clowns a plan. Not like Citi and AIG. They got a blank check, no questions asked. Hope the $15 B gets them over their near term liquidity crunch. 

However they also posted, a less upbeat “plea” for help and a bleak warning to go with it too.

 

 

“Out of a job yet? No? Well then keep buying foreign cars.”

 

Why would so many cheer the demise of a virtuous enterprise?

In the past few classes we have learned about the characteristics and organizational behaviors of ethical and even virtuous enterprises.  We have learned about organizational virtuousness:

 

·        Businesses that move from avoiding doing harm to those that serve and respect their customers and the world around them.

·        Organizations where people aspire to be at their best and bring it to work every day.

·        Organizations with core set of values, aspirations and organizational goals that form the bedrock of their business.

·        Businesses that actively encourage their employee to do good things at the workplace, in the community and for people around the world.

 

I was lucky to have worked for a company that I believe in my heart did all of those things (I would assume still does the best that it can given the circumstances). The thing that ENRAGES me, however, is that so many from Wall Street to Capital Hill to Silicon Valley want to see that company die. That company is General Motors. 

 

Now I know that GM is a scapegoat for many:

·        Wall Street investors want it to go bankrupt because GM has destroyed so much investor and lender value in the last 30 odd years.

·        West coast enviro-wackos want GM to die because they were the largest automaker in the world for years and perpetuated the manufacturing, marketing and sales of GAS GUZZLING SUVs.  Plus they killed the notoriously unprofitable EV1 electric car.

·        Politicians want GM to disappear taking dirty manufacturing plants and overpaid union jobs in the fly-over Midwest states with it, leaving only ultra high tech industry and clean-hands consumer service jobs for Americans to fight over (everyone’s a Starbuck barista or Walmat greeter, yay!).  

·        Media critics and Consumer Reports would love GM to die as punishment for the decade of the 1980s – shoddy quality and rebadged look-alike product- and for the 1990s – SUV consumer fad and plasticky interiors.

 

I too am a critic of GMs past product mistakes and somewhat misguided management decisions in decades past, but the murderous glee that glints in eyes and the spiteful tone of most people in the print and TV media, in Washington and much of the consumer public is ludicrous.  GM’s products, production system, fuel economy and quality are world class these days (honestly, read any survey, any statistics, any published data). GM is onethe forefront of renewable ethanol fuel use and production, plug-in extended range hybrids, satellite navigation / communications and hydrogen fuel cells. Yet the old tired anecdotes remain, poor quality, gas guzzling, no technology. It is insane.

 

The thing that irks me the most however, is that so many would cheer what I consider a virtuous enterprise. One with strong core values, one that encourages their employees to be their best professionally, one that encourages their employees to do good at work, in their community and around the world. I know GM does all these things because I witnessed them first hand.

 

GM has strong core values, first and foremost to provide mobility and transportation to everyone it can around the world. I heard GM’s VP of R&D, Larry Burns, and CEO Rick Waggoner, speak about this many times. With so many in the world still not served with personal transportation, they spoke passionately about reaching out to developing nations where transportation is not yet affordable and congestion, energy use & environmental sustainability were emerging challenges. Yet these corporate leaders believed deeply in the democratization of the automobile that the made it a core tenet of the company.  Product development and new technology investments were targeted at reaching everyone, not only emerging economies of the world, but other underserved markets like physically handicapped drivers. This belief in the enriching impact of personal mobility and the positive contribution the automobile has on society, makes GM’s continued pursuit and engagement of new customers a virtuous endeavor in my eyes.   

 

GM also looks to bring out the best in its employees and pursues the best to join its ranks. I was lucky enough to work with some of the most knowledgeable and professional people I have ever met in my time there. My colleagues were top notch, delivered excellent work, designed and built excellent products (again check all the recent industry awards and quality stats on GM products as evidence) and encouraged each other to work hard and do a good job every day. Relationships with other organizations were at time strained, say with the UAW, dealers or suppliers, but by the 2000s everyone was really bringing their A-game in order succeed.

 

Lastly, I cannot think of a more charitable business organization than GM.  The company went well beyond encouraging employees in the annual United Way campaign (which it did).  Employees were actively encouraged to make regular deductions from their pay (with matching, of course) for a wide array of charities, even active support of environmental groups like the Nature Conservancy, http://www.nature.org/ (which I still support BTW, saved several acres of rainforest myself with GM’s help).

 

While I worked at GM in their R&D center, each employee was actively encouraged to promote and tutor students in math and science.  The company actively sponsored dozens of high school and middle school F.I.R.S.T robotics teams (http://www.usfirst.org/), where students of all backgrounds, from math to art students, were encouraged to participate the fun, learning, invention and team competition. My colleagues and I tutored math students on lunch breaks and coached math teams at local middle schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods. GM even hosted the national MATHCOUNTS finals competition in 2005 (www.mathcounts.org), staging the ESPN broadcast, providing transportation and taking students / parents on tours of various company facilities around Detroit (and we endured the snide comments from parents from the coastal states all the while). Sure encouraging student excellence in math and science is a bit self serving for GM, more engineers in the professial pipeline, but think of how many young lives were improved. Even mine, I too was influenced by engineers from the GM Proving Ground visiting our physics class to teach us about applications of science in real life careers (the tax base that GM provided my local school district helped a lot, I am sure, as well). 

 

Blood, food, clothing and Christmas toy drives are common place at GM and it is a shame that all this GOOD is under attack. The bloodlust of the liberal press, the conservative investment bankers, the twofaced politicians, the enviro-wackjobs and easily lead & mindless consumer sheep continues to drone on. They all seem to want GM to fail and I shudder to think of all the talent, all the human capital, all the virtue that will be destroyed. 

 

How can they have forgotten that GM paychecks formed the backbone of the middle class? How can they forget that GM plants built the planes and tanks that won WWII?  How can they forget that GM benefits pay for the pensions and healthcare of hundreds of thousands of elderly retirees (your own parents and grandparents)?  How can they forget that GM donated millions in cash, matched by the charity of its employees, and gave dozens of work vehicles to the recovery efforts in New York City after the 9/11 terrorist attacks? How can they forget that GM’s “Keep America Rolling” marketing campaign kept the economy going in the aftermath of 9/11?  How can they so gleefully revel in the slow decay of a company in America’s core manufacturing industry, with an impact on at least 1 in 14 jobs in this country (or more, some say 1 in 10, directly and/or indirectly)? 

 

How can they revel in the death of a virtuous enterprise?

 

Peter De Lorenzo, the autoextremist, again has a biting and acidic critical assessment of Congress’ complete hypocrisy regarding assistance to the Detroit Automakers.  They write a blank check for AIG and Citi Group no-questions-asked while forcing Ford and GM to outline their plans (I am sure Toyota, Honda and the rest of the imports are listening intently) before assisting with a bridge loan to weather the downturn.  Nice, very nice (Pelosi and her cohort are clowns).

 

http://www.autoextremist.com/

 

Teaching to the Top – Examples from Giants Football and Middle School

I have been meaning to write about this short article my wife found in the “National Football Post” .com for several weeks now. I guess Ethical Organizations will have to wait another week

 

http://www.nationalfootballpost.com/2008/10/national-football-post-tavern-talk-49/

 

The short blurb has to do with a very successful  leadership strategy that New York Giants coach, Tom Coughlin, uses to coach his team.  It is called the “Law of Threes” which states that every team has three types of members. 1) Those that buy in – these team members agree with the current path and team strategy and “will do anything that is asked; willing to help the program.” 2) Those that are undecided – these team members are “unsure what to do.” 3) Those that are malcontents – these team members “want to buck the system all the time.” Because the malcontents are a disruptive force,  are in it only for themselves and “try to breakdown the team” there is a tendency for coaches to try to win them over or convert them to the buy in category. But Coughlin believes that this attention and continued service of the malcontents converts the undecideds to malcontents and makes those that buy in bitter and frustrated. As such Coach Coughlin prefers to “teach to the top” focusing all of his attention on the type 1) players and completely ignoring the malcontents, like receiver Plaxio Burress. This isolates the malcontents and encourages the undecided players to lean toward buy in behaviors.

 

Now I know that this type of strategy won’t work in every situation and as a leader you have to be adaptive and flexible in your circumstances. However, I know that this “teach to the top” strategy works in some unmanageable situations, e.g. my mother a middle school English teacher employs it in her classes. In her situation there are a small group of interested students that want to learn new and are excited by school activities, a large mass of undecided students that are just passing time in class and a small group of complete clowns that only wish to goof off and disrupt class. She too teaches to the top and ignores the clowns, because to give the goof-offs much of her limited time will give them the credibility and attention they desire.  If she spend too much attention on the clowns, the top students will only become frustrated and the undecided kids will learn that the way to get teacher’s attention is to goof off.

 

Realizing that this model works in two very different situations, I have begun to search for times in my own office where this “teach to the top” coaching strategy has been employed by managers or when it might be effective. I have yet to identify a specific situation, but I assume they are there. One of the issues is that I realize that the situations at work are a bit more complex. Depending on the situation your team role, type 1-3, can be drastically different from project to project, meeting to meeting. In some situations you may completely support an initiative, others you may oppose, why a large majority you may just sit back and observe.  In each situation the balance and team makeup of the three groups could be very different, requiring the manager to “teach” to different individuals and groups in each instance.

 

Wow, being that flexible, observant and in-tune with the support level of the team seems incredibly challenging! If you wanted to employ a “teach to the top” strategy you might be forced to adapt you message to the audience at each individual step. No wonder management is such a tough and thankless job.   

 

Global Tech Simulation Success – Everyone Plays a Part

I was pleased by the outcome of our Global Tech organizational change simulation.   We succeeded in turning around the company despite the challenges we created by the personalities, the conflicts and the culture of the company. 

 

I was surprised by the fact that we were among the few (or only) team to succeed and it makes me wonder why our group, Team 3 on the West Side of the city (and NO our team name is NOT “Randy’s Team”), has had such success in our teamwork and team projects and maintains such a high level of camaraderie in the process. Yes, success breeds contentment and future success, but what makes our efforts continually successful? I think it is because each of us brings a different and necessary skill set to the team. Everyone plays an important role and provides their best to the end result.  I am deeply thankful for each of our team members, as we would not have gotten the results (and the grades) and had nearly as much fun without everyone contributing:   Here is what I think my team members bring to the team in each assignment:

 

Note: Keep in mind that this is only my opinion so don’t take it too seriously. This is only one member’s point of view.  I am sure everyone listed has their own perspective on our team

 

Chris:  He was at the controls during the Global Tech simulation. Calling the shots, pushing the buttons.  Very creative, experimenting and figuring out new angles.  Chris is always willing to step up and present for our projects. He was at the front of class hooking up his laptop to show off our simulation success.

 

Tasha: Tasha was all about action during the simulation.  “Just do it, push the button!” Unsurprisingly, Tasha provides a lot of energy in most of our projects. Doing what needs to be done, when it needs doing. She is already well ahead in making sure our Ethical Organization paper is getting done.  

 

Toni:  Toni provides the forethought, balance, common sense and alternate perspectives.  She was always questioning the initial gut reactions we had to courses of action in the simulation.  Toni always provides the sense, questioning and balance to our group work.  Puts me in place if I get too far out of line. Makes sure we produce professional work each and every project.

 

Omar:  Omar makes sure we are prepared and does a lot of the technical heavy lifting for the group.  His was the idea to rate each of the tactics in the simulation for appropriate place in steps 1 through 7 of the change management process. I copied his idea by doing my own rating and confirmed and supported his initial GREAT preparation plan. He also created a profile of each of the stakeholders in the simulation that we used to rate the employees on their support for teams (champion, bystander, opponent) and helped us pick the participants on the change team. All of this preparation was key to successfully executing the simulation and succeeding in turning around Global Tech.  Omar may be quiet in class be his work and preparation is often the cornerstone to our group project success.

 

Jimmy:  Don’t want to forget Jimmy.  Our former team member really helped a lot in our previous projects. His company office was a great meeting space for Team 3 – West Siiii-eed. He was always positive, encouraging and hard working (his and Toni’s effort on our Law Paper was the reason we did so well). I miss his enthusiasm and spirit very much.

 

Randy (me):  What do I bring to the team?  Well I have reflected a lot about this over the last two years in the program.  I am not really sure.  I’d say its thought and ideas that I bring, but that sounds a bit overconfident.  I guess I just try to have high standards for my own work and contribution to the team projects and encourage everyone on the team to do the same. Not sure that I bring much actually, I just try to chip in what and when I can.

 

Again, I am just grateful that I have such good team members to work with.  Everyone chips in their talents and we always seem to have fun.  Maybe that is why the projects always seem to turn out well, we enjoy our time together and don’t completely despise the work. On occasion it seems like the enthusiasm, enjoyment and success we’ve had together rankles some people. Pointing this out (and the content of this entire entry itself) will make it worse, by virtue of some perceived arrogance or showboating on my part. Then again, no one is likely reading this anyway. Except hopefully my team members, I want them to know how much I appreciate and have enjoyed the time we have spent together over the last few years.   

 

 

 

Interesting “possibly related posts” that popped up on other entries (isn’t BLOGging great!, bloggy, blog, blog):

http://agiletester.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/team-dynamics-dont-be-afraid-of-change/ 

http://tgimworklife.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/ask-the-coach-developing-the-leadership-team/

 

Detroit Auto Industry – Leadership is Sorely Needed

It has been a rough year for my home state. Michigan, with its deep ties to traditional manufacturing industries and the auto business lead us into our current US economic recession.  The state economy was the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” for our current economic challenges.  I know, I lived and worked there as a professional in the auto industry for five full years and more as a college intern. Housing prices were inflated by the profits from SUVs for much of the 90s and early 2000s. Union members with paychecks fat from overtime bought cottages, ski-doos and plasma TVs thinking the party would never come to an end.  Cheap credit, easy financing and low-low lease rates created a bubble as bad as the dot.coms, real estate or oil futures. I know that it is popular in the Wall Street and Washington media to castigate and ridicule the Detroit Automakers for building large SUVs and caving to union contract negotiators, but what could the chief execs do?  Sacrifice $10K profits per vehicle on large SUVs (markets that Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, KIA and Nissan quickly entered, now to their dismay)? Not having the foresight to  build hybrids (why would they after GM lost millions on the EV1)? Not standing up to the UAW (GM tried it and lost billions in truck profits)?

Still all of this water under the bridge.  Manufacturing and automaking in the US is pretty much on the verge of collapse (yes even mighty Toyota is hurting). Some say good riddance to the dirty and vulgar biz of manufacturing, but I cannot agree.  I do not believe that the US can survive with out a strong manufacturing sector.  We have to build some things here.  We cannot all be Coffee Baristas, Professional Sports Stars, Pop Singers or Consultants (sorry Doug). Without building innovative products, for own consumption and for the world, I fear that the US economy will be marginalized and mediocre.

I think that now is the time for the true leaders and visionaries to step up from the ranks of the Midwestern manufacturing firms and US Auto manufacturers .  Often times, at GM, Ford and Chrysler, (even at Toyota), the companies have been run by the MBA bean counters, the legal pinheads, or management process champions. But I think that there are true ‘car guys’ in these companies, with gasoline in their veins that can step up and LEAD the industry out of the current crisis. There are people at the automakers  that love the product, crave the competition of the business and want to deliver great product to US consumers, create inspiring designs for people around the world and lead the business and manufacturing in this country out of the dark ages. I know these people, I met kindred spirits from each of the Big 3  while I worked in Detroit.  I still even consider myself a ‘car guy’, even though I left the industry behind  (to this day I am saddened by my flight, a bit guilty occasionally, but now relieved given the current state of the economy in Michigan).  One of best examples is my hero Bob Lutz (please read his book, GUTS) , a veteran of Ford, Chrysler and now working at GM as VP of Product Development in his 70s. I think he embodies the principles of leadership that K&P espouse in the Leadership Challenge.

Yes, reform, recovery and survival of the US automakers IS going to require Federal help.  Aid from Washington appears to be on the way.  While I cringe at the idea of a handout from Congress, the fact that Nancy Pelosi and her band of clowns seem willing to help is better than their usual political posturing about global warming, sneering ridicule of the managers of industries in fly-over states and carping about ineffectual fuel economy regulations. As much as I hate it, this kind of aid, to industries that employ people making important, useful and beutiful machines, seems more ethical and proper than bailing out fatcat bankers shooting the “slots” on Wall Street with hedge fund money.

Am I bitter? Probably.  I hate the unfair rep my home state and favorite industry get.  But I still hope and pray that there is untapped spirit in  local Michigan governments, pride the American people to buy American products, and mostly LEADERSHIP within the US Automakers themselves to overcome these recent challenges.  There is a lot of good American auto product out there (many designed here and some coming from overseas subsidiaries via integrated global engineering systems) Below are a few photos of my favorites (if you cannot yet tell which of the Big 3 is my favorite, it should become obvious). 

In closing check out my favorite cranky Auto industry blogger, the Autoextrimist – Peter D. He echos a lot of my opinions on the matter of leadership within the US auto industry (or lack thereof) and the leadership it will take for the industry to survive. Enjoy!

http://www.autoextremist.com/