However, if the PTFOA saw a better guy, I’m pretty sure that they would have brought that person in. Also, I think that separating the CEO role from the Chairman title was a very good call.

Say what you will about PTFOA and the whole idea of the bailout, I think PTFOA got most of it right. They were pretty brutal in their assessment of GM and held tight to forcing GM to make the tough decisions that have languished for years.

The New GM is now on its own to make this work. My sense is that Henderson is a change agent. Could there have been better choices? Perhaps. Should he clear out the executive ranks? Absolutely. Does he need new blood? Yes.

Remember, however, that the fish stinks from the head down. Deming said that management is 85% of the problem. With a good CEO things can fall into place.

I would have liked to see Henderson introduce the New GM on Friday with a bevy of changes to really set the tone. That didn’t happen. We’ll see very soon if GM is going to be faster-greener-leaner-smarter or just more of the same.

You’ll need to blame Jack Smith for that one, as the decision to buy into FIAT was made on his watch.

CarnotCycle: Selling your best hybrid technology assets (Allison) to essentially finance the VEBA and buy yourself two more quarters of breathing room, that’s another.

At that point they literally were pumping water out of the Titanic, as I said — the ship was already sinking fast.

In any case, if you look at the total hybrid sales volumes, doing a better job on those would have made little difference to GM. The critical mistakes were far bigger and made far earlier.

Your cancer analogy rocks, but to be fair in the withering criticism of these schmucks, those guys WERE the metastasizing tumor. Trained and succored for decades in the cultural cocoon of bad management – and isolated from the actual car business – they were the incubating tumor. When they got their mitts on the operation, that was the cancer spreading to the lymph nodes. Free to clusterf*ck everything, everywhere, they killed all the healthy tissue left.

Good example is giving Fiat $3 billion in cash so as not to be forced into buying the mess for $5 billion. VEBA’s another one. Missing the hybrid boat, badly, by years and years, was another. Selling your best hybrid technology assets (Allison) to essentially finance the VEBA and buy yourself two more quarters of breathing room, that’s another. There is no 20/20 hindsight on these moves being stupid. Most of them were called for what they were in real-time here on the Truth.

The job is so politically toxic that no good exec would touch it for 3x the TARP max.

And for those who think 500K is enough compensation, note that the pool of qualified CEO candidates is already comfortably wealthy. Only a few and marginally qualified potential CEO’s would give up what they’re currently doing (or about to retire from doing) in exchange for running GM @ 500K/year.

@akear…I think your right. Fritz is on a very short leash. The New GM had better start showing some life real soon.

Change and hope we can all believe in.

On the other hand, when I worked at the company from 1991 to 1999 I think most of the employees on the front lines were pointing out what needed to be done and how problematic these issues were. Let’s just start with the fact that someone at GM actually was paid to decide that all correspondence using the word employee should be spelled “employe”… as saving ink and wear and tear on the e-key on the typwriters were going to save the company into profitability. Of course, every outside of the company just thought that GMers couldn’t spell.

Wagoner and Henderson didn’t kill the patient, the metastasized tumors growing for the past 50 years did. However, they and most of their predecessors in the privileged class at GM failed to create the correct sense of urgency and were unable to or unwilling to make the difficult decisions that could have attacked the disease head-on. Nobody, it seemed was able to make the desicion to cut off the arm to save the body.

It’s easy, in hindsight of course, to see that more drastic actions were needed earlier. The billions of dollars is would have cost to axe some brands, for example, seem like a pittance to what it has cost to support them for too long. But if executives and c-level managers claim to be so necessary (and worth so much pay) it’s solely because they are supposed to anticipate these issues and deal with them.

And then proceed to kill GM.

Where do you think the Treasurers Office weenies like Henderson came from? Duh Harvard and MIT.

MBA’s kill car companies dead.

Henderson may not be the right guy for the “new” GM … but if you think that Wagoner and Henderson single-handedly destroyed the company, you are deluding yourself.

The seeds of destruction were sown in the 1950s and 1960s when the company agreed to automatic cost-of-living adjustments, defined-benefit pensions and healthcare for life. Complacency and poor product planning in 1970s and 1980s really sealed the company’s fate.

In the last 10 years, there is little that could have been done to reverse the company’s course. It was a matter of pumping water out of the Titanic, and at best you could have prolonged the agony by another decade.

It worked in numerous small countries, why not here?

Modus Operandi

I am sure there are many thousands of people who would accept 500k for a salary and who are also more than capable of running GM.

I say take some graduate MIT and Harvard bods, maybe throw in a couple of TTAC B’and B’ :) and set them loose at new GM !!

At least it would be fun seeing what they decided to make/sell, as opposed to seeing the slow boring inevitable demise that is sure to happen with Uncle F still at the helm !!

“Fritz” is a career Mo Fo who played a major role in the downfall of this once-mighty auto maker.

Fritz (the cat) is being rewarded for his incompetence. How many of you hard working readers are “rewarded” for YOUR incompetence?

Kind of goes against the grain of this country, don’t you say?

Fritz…GO HOME. Play with your dog, your wife, your kids, your flowers…just get the hell out of GM, ok? YOU DON’T HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO RUN A SLURPEE STAND…LET ALONE GM (new or old).

Besides, Fritz, the American tax payers don’t want you in office. This is our company now…now either bow out gracefully, or get the hell out due to belligerent owners…your choice.

Sure, they dumped the dead brands, but the engine that took them into the brick wall at 90mph is still red-lining and is now heading toward the beach.

Unless someone gets their head screwed on straight fast, this company is ultimately headed to Ch. 7.

Uh, these are private equity guys, exactly the type you’d generally want to run or wind things down effectively.

Also, I’m pretty sure OJ snuffed Ron Goldman, or somebody did.

BTW, I’m not sure why you keep calling the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, the PTFOA

Excellent article, by the way.