Generous Motors, A Cautionary Tale
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Once upon a time there was a successful, vibrant and diversified company; it seemed everyone wanted their products and everyone wanted to work there.
Workers even came from other companies, wanting a slice of that Rainbow Pie.
For years, the company seemed to almost run itself.
Things couldn't have been better, regardless of what Peter Drucker said.
As the years passed and the company fell victim to more and more circle-jerks, the culture seemed to change.
Talented individuals were passed over for promotion, as their managers saw them as a threat, and somewhat-less-than-great individuals were promoted higher and higher.
This left the talented individuals full of resentment and they and their products became, less inspired.
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As each new generation of middle managers promoted those people not deemed as a threat, the company management got dumber and dumber.
Soon the company was being run by morons, who didn't understand the first thing about the company or its products.
"Not to worry" they said, "we've got lots of unnecessary divisions we can sell off in order to show a profit and give ourselves huge bonuses for the excellent work we're doing."
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Eventually, after the upper management had eaten all of the seed corn, there was nothing left to eat.
Fortunately, the all-benevolent government stepped in and gave the company all the seed corn it needed.
Of course, this seed corn had come from farmers that Generous Motors and the all-benevolent government had screwed over.
But neither the "new" management or the all-benevolent government cared about the farmers, they were just unsophisticated hicks who didn't know the first thing about real business.
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The party continued, with Generous Motors losing money on every product they sold.
"Not to worry, we have NEW Math and even though we lose money on every sale, we're going to make up for it in volume."
One day, the farmers decided they were better off selling their corn to someone else or not growing corn at all.
And they all starved to death.
I was talking about Generous Motors.