Inside GM: "Fear, Terror and Panic"

In all this talk about GM’s financial health, the most important element of any potential turnaround has been woefully neglected: the company’s corporate culture. GM’s is so utterly dysfunctional that it makes John Wayne Gacey’s home life seem like Peter Brady’s. There is no way– no way whatsoever— that GM can recover with its current management. Be that as it is, I’ve been contacting recently “liberated” GM employees to get a glimpse of life inside the belly of the beast. And pretty it’s not. “I remember walking my dogs and literally dropping to my knees and praying to God I would get out of GM,” one ex-exec told me. “I’ve seen people throwing-up in the bathrooms because of the overwhelming atmosphere of fear, terror and panic… It’s the most warped and bizarre thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” This from an employee with over 20-years of industry experience in several large companies.

Our man tells us that GM’s incestuous culture is stuffed with spies– people employed by management (e.g. supplier supremo Bo Anderson) whose main function is to secretly uncover and report dissension in the ranks. Dissent? “There is no dissent allowed,” he reports flatly. “None. Only good news is reported upwards. You’d think it would be different now that GM’s admitted its problems to Congress. It isn’t. It’s worse.”

Our contact tells us that the culture stifles creativity on every level. And “nothing less than a complete regime change can fix this. Nothing. They all have to go. Wagoner, Lutz, Henderson, all of them.”

I asked the longtime TTAC reader why he didn’t come forward sooner, and why he doesn’t use his real name given that he’s recently severed his employment with GM. “These people are vindictive. I’ve seen them go after pensions and benefits of people they’ve fired. I’ve seen careers clubbed like baby seals.”

[If any other GM employees would like to come forward with their impressions– good or bad or mixed– please contact me at robert.farago@thetruthaboutcars.com]