A quote from JZD used in current corporate management context

[Rich W]

Nice to see JZD quoted (in a visionary context) regarding what is often wrong with corporate management.

JZD content listed below, followed by the link to the entire article:

So what happens when corporate management pays more attention to their personal piggy banks than the corporate cash box?
The late John DeLorean, a 17-year veteran of General Motors, stated it quite succinctly back in 1979 in his book, “On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors.”

“Our inability to compete with the foreign manufacturers is more due to management failure than anything else. Past management spent our lush advantage extravagantly ...
the system and management are stifling initiative. Leadership and innovation are impossible ... Not only is management of no help, most of what they do is wrong ...
Isolated executives find their markets taken away by competitors attuned to the wants and needs of the public.”

Keep in mind that DeLorean wrote those words over 33 years ago, well before the current level of lavishness set in.
Therefore, you should always try to seek out those companies that demonstrate a fair and efficient management style, while avoiding those where management is more self-serving.

Link:
http://www.gainesville.com/news/2016...ders-employees

[Jonathan]

Open discussion thread and related to the intent of the quote so I'll ask it here... is what was written in the "Dream Maker - Rise and Fall of JZD" book considered accurate because it paints the man as not only a rather large hypocrite (lavish management spending, personal gain) but kind of a bully and jerk?

I was pretty shocked when I finally got around to reading the book (only this past summer) as I had not been aware of what it said had gone on behind the scenes. It doesn't make him look like a very swell guy, quite the opposite really.

[DMCVegas]

Truth? JZD absolutely had great insight into just how GM was being mismanaged. The man was positively spot-on with his observations as to how the company was doomed. One of his most haunting quotes IMO is, and I'm paraphrasing here, "No man will ever challenge the very system which supports him."

There are a good many books out there that talk about successful businesses, but when it comes to my top 3 that explain corporate politics and function, On a Clear Day... is one that I always recommend to people to seek out. It's like car repair: The best way to know how to keep an engine, let alone an entire car running isn't just through maintenance application alone. If you know how to destroy something, you know how to preserve and protect it. That book shows the pitfalls to avoid for a company.

Now then, having said that, let us get down tot the nitty gritty. The first thing to understand is that the books that we commonly reference are all over 30 years old, and are products of a time where even less was known about JZD and DMC's goings-on. Back then, JZD was not well received by the press, and there was allot of spending which did not make sense when you look at it solely at face value. It seems ridiculous and positively wasteful. Until you start speaking with other people about the big picture of what was going on.

Which, when it comes to DMC's operations and their corporate vision, who exactly do we have as reference points? We have JZD who in his own autobiography hinted at that vision, but otherwise there absolutely no other friendly sources on that upper-corporate level. William Haddad? The man's testimony fell apart about the "Gold Facets" memo. And there are also unanswered questions regarding potential industrial espionage with him given the fact that he was receiving some rather large checks from General Motors during the same time period he worked at DeLorean Motor Company. So he is a rather biased source. As are many of the other authors who wrote about DMC. There were also many other potentially biased people with DMC as well. C.R. "Dick" Brown who quipped that they should call the car the "Brown" since he put so much work into it. Gene Cafiero who was not on good terms with JZD and left the company, etc.

The other thing to consider is that JZD was also a product of that GM environment as well, so he would have come into DMC with a significant amount of General Motor's Corporate Culture since that would have been all he knew. With that were lots of items such as the old SOS routine (getting "Shit On Shoes") to try and knock someone down. But that wasn't all on him since quite a few other executives had similar grooming in that same corporate culture. Sure he would absolutely have known what was going wrong, but in a culture that conditions you to never ever challenge the very system which supports you, there isn't an ingrained way to make things better. Example: One employer I worked for had one key ideal for their stores which was to make employees spend time in other stores for a week at a a time. The idea being an exchange of best practices: You see what they're doing more efficient to bring back to your own store to integrate into your work flow. And likewise you bring new "Best Practices" procedures with you to demonstrate so that the store you're visiting can do better as well. Another employer had a "Walk a Mile" program to walk a mile in someone else's shoes to shadow them for a day. It was great for both career exploration, as well as executives that needed to see what we did in order to be able to relate better with us on new procedures going forward.

So you have two cultures; an defensive one that eliminates threats to change (GM), and then a fluid one which allows for evolution & adaptability (my experiences). The latter of the two is still a rather new concept for many corporations to be honest. But for DMC with many employees having such a background, then clashing with others, you can see where the challenges came from.

Granted this is separate from JZD's life post-DMC, and doesn't touch LMC, personal bankruptcy, and the later lawsuits. That's a different story, and possibly one where JZD then did what he had to out of survival. But as for the company what that vision was that actually makes sense of DMC's spending, and how they could have survived, I actually have a 3-part series of articles that will be published in DeLorean World magazine issues.

In the end, JZD was only human of course. He made mistakes, as did others at DMC. But one thing that you have to understand is that executive culture is one that comes with a massive amount of privilege and entitlement. So there is going to be a certain no-so-nice guy persona that many times accompanies it. It just depends upon how it comes out.