We haven’t published a lot of linked items over here at ER, but Jim Wallis’ reflections on GM’s apology seemed worth printing here.
This week GM printed a full page ad in Automotive News magazine to make a public apology. They said:
While we’re still the U.S. sales leader, we acknowledge we have disappointed you. At times we violated your trust by letting our quality fall below industry standards and our designs become lackluster. We proliferated our brands and dealer network to the point where we lost adequate focus on our core U.S. market. We also biased our product mix toward pickup trucks and SUVs. And we made commitments to compensation plans that have proven to be unsustainable in today’s globally competitive industry. We have paid dearly for these decisions, learned from them and are working hard to correct them by restructuring our U.S. business to be viable for the long-term.
This gesture could easily be interpreted as “too little too late”, a desperate P.R. campaign, or as a “bizarre” and “pointless exercise” as some analysts have put it. While I do not know the hearts of the executives at GM, I would like to take this apology at face value and accept it. Read the rest of this entry »
