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Meet Me Half-way
Meet Me Half-way
A man, we’ll call him Bob, walks into a church one day and sits in the front pew. “God, please let me win the lottery. If only you would let me then I would be able to fix all of my problems and I would go to church every Sunday and give it half my winnings.” The lottery game comes and goes and Bob returns to the church. “Please Lord, just let me win and I will become the man that you want me to be and all my problems will be gone!” Another drawing comes and goes, and Bob again goes to the church. “Lord God, why haven’t you helped me? I have promised you everything!” And with this the earth begins to tremble and a bright light beams down from above. Suddenly a deep voice says, “Bob, meet me half way, buy a ticket.”
This, my friends, typifies the attitude taken by everyone from Detroit auto companies to the average man on the street in relation to the current financial disaster. They are lining up to ask Washington for help but aren’t making the effort themselves to fix their own problems. For example, if I were the president of GM today I could start to make things happen, government or not, by making some strong moves. I would immediately take the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Don’t believe the BS that people won’t buy cars from a bankrupt company; they buy airline tickets from bankrupt airlines all the time and that represents their lives, not their vehicle warranty. Then I would shut down or sell all my losing divisions: Saturn, Buick, Pontiac, and Saab. Now leaner and meaner, I would force the union to the table and in bankruptcy abrogate all prior agreements and negotiate terms that are favorable to the company in return for employees getting a share of ownership. Finally, I would cut-off ridiculously generous benefits for retirees and stop paying into the idiotic union fund that pays workers not to work. And after all of this, I would only ask the government to relax the silly fuel economy rules that forces me to produce cars that don’t sell like the coming and exceedingly foolish Chevy Volt electric car that isn’t really a car anyway but a golf cart with gadgets that will cost north of $40,000 and will still lose money for the company. Simply, I would buy the ticket before beseeching God (taxpayers).
So, why hasn’t the president of GM done this? He is a prisoner of company culture, his own biases, and the desire for an easy way out as opposed to the hard one. As life should have taught everyone by now, the hard way and the right way are always the same thing. These car dudes along with the morons in Congress who support them ought to get this. And as for Ford and Chrysler, they need to fix their own problems too.
In your own business, if you are in the position of needing to go to your lenders or shareholders for more money to get through the crisis, you need to demonstrate buying the ticket first. Cut expenses, streamline operations, create new efficiencies and then and only then go to the money people to make your case. It will be a lot more credible and therefore a lot more likely to succeed.
Posted by Herb Kay on Thursday, November 27, 2008
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