I have owned a Ford, but never a GM car. I looked at the long infomercial today at the GM site and, well. It's kinda like going to a new church and being greeted. Within a short period of time you start to get the lingo. And after you've heard it for the sixth time it starts to get a little creepy.
I should stay away from analogies because in fact I am rather experienced in reading corporate culture. As a management consultant, I've worked with scores of different companies and I assure you that few things are as deterministic of a company's ability to deal with change as their culture. I look at it from the perspective of technology. Consider email, for example. Does the email at your company work flawlessly? If not, it's a cultural problem. Email technology is 30 years old. There is no reason why yours shouldn't do exactly what it needs to do. It's simply a matter of the culture involved that makes your company ready to solve the email problem or not.
When it comes to GM. Their problem is rather simple. It is that they have never built cars that are irresistible to my generation. Nobody my age or younger wants a Cadillac or a Corvette. I used to rent Buicks back in the 90s but it wasn't until 1998 that GM started to put CD players in their rental fleet. That was 14 years after the invention of the compact disc. I was told, obviously the Buicks are for mature drivers, but the Skylark was the one for young folks. What? A Buick Skylark? I kept looking at this infomercial thinking, they have absolutely no idea what the next generation of car buyers want. None. You look at Scion and you understand why GM doesn't lead, but follows.
My own guess at why has to do with the fact that GM has forgotten about gearheads - that in the era of hot rods, the cars were cheap and fixable and young people loved them because they added their own stamp. That's why DeSotos didn't survive the 50s. These days Mitsubishi Evos and Subaru WRXs evoke hot rodding. A Camaro? Not with my kids. I think GM thinks they can do Baby Boom numbers in a GenY economy. Retro ain't that chic.
I'm simply convinced that GM thinks old and wrong. Then again, I knew that when Perot was there.
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