Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Kirk's Windmill

I have a cartoon at home that I used to have posted on my wall when I worked for a former employer. It showed Mikhail Gorbachev talking with a corporate recruiter after the 'fall' of Russia. The recruiter says something like 'This job would involve running multiple competing organizations without a clear purpose and with a large number of customer organizations with conflicting requirements'. Gorbachev says "I can do this. What is the position?" And the recruiter replies "Chairman of General Motors."

A different reference is also applicable: an article which I read at least a decade ago, about Boeing and its process of deciding what kinds of aircraft it wanted to build, juggling the competing requirements of customers and users, referred to the entire environment as 'the sporting life' -- the idea being that there was as much guesswork as science in what they did.

Kirk Kerkorian, notorious for slash and burn evisceration of companies, wants to ignore all that and simply have GM slash prices and salaries across the board so as to improve shareholder payout. His motivation is not a better organization or a better process or a better product. It's greed.

What enduring organization has Kirk Kerkorian built?

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