General Motors - The Future
THE PLAN - FIVE POINTS

GOALS:

  • Increase General Motors U.S. market share to 33%
  • Improve customer satisfaction as evidenced by points of market share, not fractions

Each year GM spends billions in advertising and incentives in the name of marketing. Yet there exist far less expensive, and far more productive methods of acquiring and retaining customers. This plan calls for no capital investment and offers the opportunity for large reductions in marketing expense.

STRATEGY:

  • Implement both innovative and proven marketing techniques.
  • Raise market share 1 percentage point in each of five key areas
  • Remake our corporate image as a leader by acting rather than re-acting.
  • Change focus of advertising from distress to aspirational.

Loss of market share experiences over the past two decades is due to the dimished image of GM in the marketplace. The five key areas contain specific steps for the new image.

STRUCTURE:

The plan will address issues and offer solutions regarding:

  • Our Customers
  • Our Dealers
  • Our Salespeople
  • Our Employees
  • Our Retirees
To view the PowerPoint Presentation "Strategy and Structure of 'The Plan'" download a zip file.
As DeLorean said, "You don't teach a guy to play football by making him the coach."

Legacy Cost Issues to Consider

  • Liability for pension and health care
  • The tremendous increase in Long-Term debt which needs to be serviced and eliminated. Notes and Loans payable are up $70,000,000,000. There is less post retirement liability but receivables and other liablities are higher. This from a company once free of Wall Street financing.

Competition Issues

  • Competition has grown stronger while we have downsized.

How to Re-establish Dealer Trust

  • Dealers have lost confidence and trust
  • Many dealers have taken non-GM Franchises
Peter Drucker:

The purpose of the work on making the future is not to decide what should be done tomorrow, but what should be done today to have a tomorrow.

What major change in economy, market, or knowledge would enable us to conduct business the way we really would like to do it, the way we would really obtain the best economic results?

What is lacking as a rule, is the willingness to look beyond products to ideas.

If a company is to obtain the needed contributions, it must reward those who make them.

 
"This business is not about the cars, it is about people. The cars are merely the catalyst that bring people together"
--J Cherner
"Nothing happens until somebody sells something. Sales drive production, production drives profit. How much is one point of market share worth to the bottom line? Does it roughly equal an assembly plant?"
-- Buickman

"Failure to provide an adequate proving ground for ability is also inherent in the nature of modern Big Business...Thus the corporation has to find ways of giving its workers, especially its young workers, a chance to show what they can do and a personal contact with somebody interested in what they can do."

-- Peter Drucker
Concept of the Corporation

"You cannot obtain the products of a mind except on the owner's terms, by trade and by volitional consent...A man whose vision extends to a shanty might continue to build on your quicksands, to grab a fast profit and run. The man who envisions skyscrapers, will not."

-- John Galt

Remember
H. Ross Perot? When he came to General Motors, he made the statement that "revitalizing GM was like trying to teach an elephant to dance. You find the sensitive spots and start poking."