New Evidence In GM Case Points To Systemic Management Incompetence Or Worse

Jeff Bennett at the Wall Street Journal has done an excellent job covering the recent GM fiasco.  There are three articles he has penned that are a worthy read.   The titles are shown below.  Unfortunately, they are pay articles unless you find them through Google.  So, if you are interested, copy each of these titles into Google, hit search and the full article will pop up on the search results. 

In the first article link, the CEO of GM is asked point blank questions by Congress and she clearly gives answers that are misleading.   And, I suspect that is her intent in an attempt to throw the engineer under the bus in charge of the switch in question.  Yet anyone who has worked in engineering, IT or any process-reliant organizational construct knows it is impossible without willful intent of fraud for any single person to make changes that are not approved by known processes that require sign off from management.    In other words, GM CEO’s remarks were either willful deception or ignorance.

In the last article just posted, new information clearly shows the CEO is either outright lying or there is a culture of management unaccountability and incompetence at GM.   And, yes there certainly is.  The GM salute is to point at the person next to you as a sign of it being his or her responsibility.  The culture of cost-cutting or efficiency, driven from the executive offices played the primary role in the failure of GM to report and fix this problem.   In fact, in the last article, the engineer who was originally blamed by the CEO is actually shown to be the only person attempting to fix the problem.  Yet is being stonewalled by management that seeks quick and cheap solutions.   That is their own words.

This is an example of how the world works.  The person blamed for all of GM’s ills may have actually been the only person truly trying to fix the problem.  Yet, he was thrown under the bus by the pathological who control the bureaucracy.    In Japan, under the Bushido Code, we would likely see the CEO resign or jump in front of a train for dishonoring his workers and society.  If only that would    happened in the U.S., we’d rid ourselves of the vast majority of politicians, CEOS and Wall Street responsible for our economic and social collapse.

As reality is exposed, by failing to address these issues and take responsibility for a culture of incompetence, GM’s CEO is now almost guaranteed to be fired.  If not worse.   If Barra was sworn in before her congressional testimony, she is in serious trouble.  Interestingly, when Wall Street testifies before  Congress, are they ever sworn in?

Lawmakers Skeptical GM Bosses Were Unaware of Defect

GM Fires 15 Employees Over Recall Failures

GM Documents Show Senior Executive Had Role in Switch