Sunday morning news programs - substance and candor from a GM Executive, Thoughts on organizational change

The last image on Face The Nation is of Bob Scheiffer the host of the CBS weekly news program beaming with a very appreciative smile. I was also quite pleased as a viewer. This cause for positive emotion was the direct answers and candor provided by the CEO of General Motors, Rick Wagner. Wait, was this a case of someone from business stumbling into these weekly news shows and being duped into candor or statements that generate pseudo-news and controversy? No, Mr. Wagner was quite prepared. There is a cottage industry built around preparing talking heads, primarily politicians, to appear on these shows using their ten minutes to say absolutely nothing. He looked prepared. However, he has the luxury derived from trying to lead an organization that has been in dire need of change since the early 1960's. The approach still being pursued seems principled and is an attempt to avoid bankruptcy. When other industries being led by people of my generation don't stay the course and are not there for the duration, needing only to serve their time and cash in their absurdly unearned stock options, Wagner and his group are committed to seizing the opportunity found in a large entrenched organization with their backs finally to the wall with nowhere else to turn needing to change to survive as an independent ongoing concern.

In my consulting practice, I used to naively take on organizational change management projects and enjoy the adrenaline rush of being a change agent. After years of failed organizational change projects I had to revise my views and then also go back and do some serious formal study of organizational change research and practice. My experience as a managing director at The Options Clearing Corporation taught me a valuable lesson, Organizational and cultural problems cannot be solved by technology. I continued studying the work of Rosabeth Moss Kanter and others and continued, though much more carefully, taking on these organizational change projects masked as technology projects. Finally, a failed attempt in helping a very close long term client in improving their development process and culture, I decided to swear off organization change projects like I swore off alcohol. The effort was so ineffective that the client called it a success. The conclusion I now operate under after studying the literature, observing change attempts in the private and public sectors, and my failed attempts at affecting truly substantive change are:

Organizational Change can only occur if a very serious external threat exists and that each person in the organization believes in the validity and risks of that threat. People are too smart to be motivated by manufactured external threats.

Even in the face of what would be considered a real external threat - organizations do not have to change they can become extinct.

Organizations, from marriages up to global businesses, can only change if each individual in the organization changes. [See last paragraph of Jiddu Krishnamurti Biography

Change cannot occur without the top leadership really wanting, truly wanting, the change.

Organizational change does not have to stick - organization habits are the summation of individual habits, and there is a stickiness to habits and behaviors. Many organizations and people appear to change only to revert to old scripts and behaviors years later.

Bottom line for me: Avoid organization change initiatives like the plague

Mr. Wagner's candor revisited

Mr. Wagner was candid because he has to be. His time window in creating substantive change is shortening and reaching its end. He really has nothing to lose with candor. The latest decision was to sell 51% of the golden goose, GMAC, the part of General Motors that has kept them solvent and able to avoid change. In fact the returns provided by GMAC were like alcohol to the alcoholic - GM didn't have to fundamentally change as long as GMAC was making the cash. Used to be GM could lose money on each car built and still make an overall profit because of financing revenues from GMAC. So in addition to obtaining the much needed cash to continue to evolve the core company, maybe structurally removing the easy fix of profits will further force change, or will accelerate GM's slide toward bankruptcy. At least GM did not kill the golden goose. The buying habits of Americans are very entrenched. There are many adults aged 22 to 40 that have never purchased a big three automobile, instead being much more comfortable with Toyota, Honda, and Nissan as alternatves. Changing the buying habits and perceptions of the market place is tough business. There is that word again habit in the same sentence with change.

Like, Military Intelligence and Jumbo Shrimp, Habit Change is a bit of an oxymoron it occurs so infrequently.

The US market place does not have to change now. Even if you believe my opinion on the 2006 Chevy's from earlier posts and the myriad of others that are coming to the same conclusion, it is unlikely that a satisfied owner who is on their second or third Toyota Corolla or Camry are likely to react in any other way than saying "that is nice". They are not very likely to run out and buy a Chevy.

This Week on ABC - In memorium

Thank you ABC for continuing to put the names and homes of our soldiers that are killed in the Iraq conflict in a sensitive and appropriate segment at the end of This Week. Real names of individuals, children my sons age many of them, from real places like Florence, Wisconsin near us.

Also thank you to ABC and thank you to George Stephanopoulos and his producers for putting together a group of articulate, well educated, and experienced reporters that don't spend all their time yelling across each other, spewing forth ill conceived and unretrospected ideological lines in the RoundTable segment. Fareed Zakaria, E.J. Dionne, Cokie Roberts, and George Will, do communicate to each other and at a minimum feign thinking. This group is led but never shouted down ( as in The McLaughlin Report) by a tactful and civil Stephanopoulos. Keeps my all too naive wish alive that the best and brightest are leading our country (obviously I don't hold this belief about the executive, legislative, and judicial branches at this point in time).