The Fall of GM – Have the Lessons Been Learned?

After months of speculation, the wait has come to an end.  On June 1st, the largest North American car manufacturer, General Motors, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.  The move comes as little surprise as the writing has been on the wall for some time.  The question now, though, is what the future holds for the restructured, and to be anticipated rebranded “New GM”, car manufacturer.  Some clues on that can be gleaned from what measures they choose to undertake during their restructuring process.

Obviously, one major step that the “New GM” will need to take is to pull itself off the radar.  I know this might sound counter-intuitive when they have so much inventory left to move.  However, what GM needs to do now is take the time to redefine itself, both in terms of its product as well as how the company views itself if they are to once again draw consumers to their products.  Besides, if they had difficulties selling their cars before, I can’t imagine any amount of advertising is going to sway consumers to purchase a car from a company under bankruptcy protection while economic uncertainties still loom.

The reality for GM is that their current restructuring is not merely a setback that they can rebound from and go back to business as usual.  The bottom line is that they are in this mess for the simple reason that not enough people want to buy their cars.  While the investments made by the Canadian, US, and Ontario governments will aid GM in paying off some of their debts, it won’t help them sell cars.

For that to happen, GM needs to convince consumers that the company has learned from their past mistakes, some of which I discussed in my earlier piece “US Auto Manufacturers and The Dodo Bird – Birds Of A Feather?“.  To do that, though, means more than simply coming up with new car models or designs.  It means getting the public to see them in a whole different light, something GM is obviously trying to accomplish with their latest commercial seen here -

However, the “New GM” cannot simply be a marketing campaign, featuring cinematic visuals of sunrises and scenes of kinetic motion framing some vague, undefined notion of “reinvention”.  Instead, it has to be something that is clearly evident and tangible, from the car dealer lots right up to their boardrooms in Detroit.

Thanks to the injection of public funds, GM has an opportunity that few companies are given the luxury of – a chance to re-define what their company is all about, the corporate equivalent of the playground do-over.  If GM truly embraces this process of genuine introspection and quantifiable change, perhaps our taxpaper dollars will not have been squandered.  Only time will tell if GM has learned its lesson well.

Some other posts you may enjoy:

1. 4 Lessons On Team-Building I Learned From My Garden
2. Is Leadership an Art or a Science?
3. Olympics Lessons On Improving Our Approach To Business
4. Leadership Lessons From a ‘Miracle Worker’
5. A Tale of Two Businesses – Some Lessons on Improving How You Manage Your Company
6. A Lesson From School on Understanding Your Employee’s Value

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