Weekend Head Scratcher: Rick Wagoner. Was He All Bad?

Cammy Corrigan
by Cammy Corrigan

History is written by the victors, or so the saying goes. You lose, not only do you get beaten up in real life, but also in the history books. Few losers come much bigger than Rick Wagoner. The man who oversaw the last slide into Chapter 11. Yep, there wasn’t much love out there for “Red Ink” Rick. Until a few days ago.

I was grazing the internet when I found this article from the Wall Street Journal where they talk about a bloke called Malcolm Gladwell. Now Mr Gladwell has a different take on Rick Wagoner’s legacy. Malcolm (if I may be so informal), posits that Rick’s career wasn’t the failure that history is making of it. Mr Gladwell supports this theory by pointing out that “Rabid” Rick cut hourly labor costs and improved productivity until they were in line with Toyota’s US plants. He also managed to shift health care obligations on the unions via VEBA. Then Mr Gladwell jumps the shark by saying that Wagoner delivered GM to the point where its product quality and features were competitive with those of the best auto makers in the world. Which weren’t actually “Rabid” Rick’s achievements but the Maximum’s ones. “What Rattner cannot seem to see,” says Gladwell, “is that his contempt for GM’s leadership is contradicted by the evidence of the company’s accomplishments.”

This got me thinking. Have we been blinded and maybe there was more to Mr Wagoner’s tenure than meets the eye? Or is this a load of tosh and “Rabid” Rick’s career had more failures than successes?

What say you?

Cammy Corrigan
Cammy Corrigan

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  • Buickman Buickman on Nov 07, 2010

    Wagoner was made CFO without evening an accountng degree. he was lackluster in purchasing, a failure running North America, and a complete disaster as CEO. IMO he was a puppet who drained the company of cash by selling anything not nailed dow, fed the capital to his bankster masters, then led GM into BK so it could be rinsed of liabilities and handed back nice and neat to those same financiers.

  • Bryan Kauffman Bryan Kauffman on Nov 09, 2010

    GM and Chrysler had to be the whipping boys for the gov't since Bush/Obama had no intentions to be tough with the banks. So a deal was struck, politically, that the automakers would be roughed up to make it appear that their were strings attached to the TARP. Also, the auto companies represented lots of middle class jobs. The banks represented the elite class. So the gov't had to protect the elites and put another nail in the coffin of the middle class.

  • Steven02 Steven02 on Nov 09, 2010

    GM had a lot of improvements under Wagoner, so he wasn't all bad. But one place severely needing improvements was the balance sheet and income statements. That didn't happen like it needed to.

  • BklynPete BklynPete on Nov 11, 2010

    Two days ago, I was happy to get a call/email from The New Yorker saying my letter in response to Gladwell's review of "Overhaul" was being considered. Hopefully it will appear, but here it is for TTAC: As a fan of Malcolm Gladwell, I was disappointed by his review of Steven Rattner's memoir about the auto industry rescue (Books, November 1st). Gladwell argues that Richard Wagoner didn't deserve to be fired because he took positive steps prior to the bankruptcy. But doesn¹t the new majority owner of a company that has lost eighty billion dollars of shareholder money over four years have the right to demand change, especially when the management seems to feel no accountability for the losses, and simply chalks the situation up to market conditions? The decision to replace Wagoner was no doubt a tough choice, and one that business schools will be debating for decades, but I was surprised that Gladwell declined to take the other side of that argument seriously. Peter Engel, New York City I'll just add that I agree with others; too much of Gladwell's review was about Steve Rattner, rich Wall Street private equity guy, Democratic Insider, and banned securities trader. Yes, Rattner does come across as a self-aggrandizing weasel, but that's no excuse for Gladwell to be so cursory about the important work done by Ron Bloom, Harry Wilson and others on Team Auto besides Rattner, and the insight into how GM and Chrysler's operations really were running. To me, that's the best thing about "Overhaul."

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