Editorial: General Motors Zombie Watch 5: Cross-Eyed and Painless

I had an interesting conversation with PCH101 about New GM’s governance. Like many observers, the TTAC commentator is not ready to dismiss The Presidential Task Force on Automobiles (PTFOA) out of hand. I, of course, am. Have done. Will do. But before I do (again), consider PCH101‘s logic. He credits the PTFOA for clearing out the deadwood: finally ridding the failed automaker of the troublesome man who guided the company on its final descent into bankruptcy. He also believes that the 25-member PTFOA is a better bet for GM than the original plan for federal oversight: a car czar. “I remember a study in B-School that concluded a committee of managers without any direct experience in an industry made more effective decisions than a single autocratic insider.” With all due respect, crap. And completely irrelevant.

What’s GM’s single largest problem? Uncompetitive vehicles? Yes, well, there is that. Dead brands? Sure. Too many dealers? Doesn’t help. But it’s executive torpor that’s the root cause of the automaker’s longstanding inability to take in more money than it spends. The automaker has far too much bureaucracy, and all of it’s deeply dysfunctional. Ipso facto.

In fact, GM’s management ethos is so obviously broken it’s become a PTFOA talking point. Despite President Obama’s semi-pledge to kinda keep his distance from GM’s [hand-picked] executive team, PTFOA jeffe Ron Bloom recently promised to tackle GM’s moribund culture in a non-interventionist way (presumably).

Good luck with that. Before we calculate the odds, let’s be clear about the problem.

The majority of GM’s executives don’t care about the customer. They may pay lip service to the people paying the bills (before the U.S. taxpayer stepped in). But their day-to-day decisions are not motivated by a desire to provide GM customers with the best possible products and services.

Their single, over-riding concern is . . . themselves. Their career. Every decision that GM’s suits make is made with an eye to protecting and (perhaps) extending their territory within the automaker’s byzantine structure. CYA is their modus operandi. “Yes” is the operative word.

No surprise there. That’s how they got where they are in the first place. Case in point: VP of sales and marketing for GM North America Mark LaNeve.

From 1981 to 1995, LaNeve worked his way up Cadillac’s executive ladder. When he assumed the General Manager’s job, LaNeve knew Caddy’s survival depended on remaining resolutely upmarket. “Young people should aspire to owning a Cadillac,” LaNeve said back in the day. “They shouldn’t be able to afford one.” And then LaNeve joined the corporate mothership. He did what had to do: “modify” his beliefs. Go along to get along. STFU. Entry-level Caddies arrived without debate or delay.

Actually, it’s worse than that. GM’s suits don’t even care about the company. Yes, even now. Especially now. If anything, Chapter 11 means they’re even LESS motivated than before. Think of it this way: if GM’s overlords screw the pooch (again), what are the feds going to do? Declare bankruptcy?

PCH101 believes the PTFOA will, eventually, clean house. Even if we accept the idea that all the president’s men kept a GM insider at the helm in order to fire him in favor of a genuine reformer who will eliminate and/or replace, say, 25 percent of GM’s upper management, the bigger picture still sucks.

“Hands-off” or not, the 25-member PTFOA adds another level of bureaucracy above the existing GM bureaucracy. If each PTFOA member fires off fifty emails a day, that’s 1,250 more internal comms per day. The PTFOA also has a staff. Meetings. Agendas. Targets. Reports. Memos. The federal quango is a shadow governing body for a company that needs less management, not more.

True story: New GM is inherently worse than old GM. And it’s going to get worse from here.

At the moment, Ron Bloom and Steve Ratter are running GM well. I freely admit that President Obama’s minions are outperforming GM’s previous administration. (Of course, Captain Kangaroo could do a better job than the last mob, and he’s dead.) If the PTFOA orders the night of the long knives at RenCen, if they clear the forest of deadwood, I’ll publicly acknowledge the appointees’ collective wisdom.

And then what? By the time the PTFOA’s new brooms fail to sweep GM to a rapid turnaround—a virtual impossibility given the depth of GM’s decay and the car biz’s timelines—Bloom and Rattner will be long gone. Leaving . . . what? Administrative kudzu.

If President Obama wanted to save GM, he should have let it fail. There’s only one way to change deeply-ingrained habits: pain. GM’s management will not change its slavish devotion to its fundamentally inefficient way of doing business until and unless it’s more painful for them to keep doing what they’re doing than to do something else.

By making bankruptcy painless for GM’s upper echelons, by adding complexity rather than removing it, the President has effectively sealed GM’s fate.