Peter sez: "up or out", "internal competition", and similar backstabbing systems replace actual teamwork, and wooden heads abound, driving all the smart and capable young bright people off.
YEP! For instance, the genius at the time in charge of IH decides to have some "football" in the company. At the end of whatever year, the light truck division "team" did not sell as many $$$$$$$$$$$ as heavy trucks or Farm equip. "teams". SO, the division got the axe. The end of good solid pickups. In the company I worked for, the guy in charge of the nut roasting (the bulk of the business) was continually complaining that the chocolate line was not allocated enough overhead compared to what his unit was allocated. Well, after many years of repeated complaints, a new prez got tired of the complaints, and contracted the chocolate coating to another company. Guess how much of the overhead was now allocated to the roasting line? Yup! all of it! (The company has been sold 4 or 5 times since) Peter Frederick via Mercedes wrote on 8/7/19 9:36 PM:
Sadly the Asian culture, while it has it's own quirks, hasn't taken to the US style management structures. It would greatly reduce the competition if they did, as Toyota would be making the same poorly designed and built cars that GM does. Not that junky cars are a good outcome.... A few years ago there were typically 15 management people in an American automotive company per management employee at Toyota. Don't know if that is still true, but I do know that at our local Toyota plant the VP of finance used to come over from Japan once a month or once a quarter, review the books, and write checks personally. GE contracts all that out...... In my experience, the reason American companies have such huge overhead costs is due to too many management people who know too little and spend far too much time doing everything but running their operations. "up or out", "internal competition", and similar backstabbing systems replace actual teamwork, and wooden heads abound, driving all the smart and capable young bright people off. Five more years...... Peter
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