Thoughts on teams and GM

If you are trying to tackle a problem by yourself it is pretty straightforward who gets the credit for success and/or failure. It can get trickier if you are part of a team. There have been many studies conducted that demonstrate that team dynamics do lead to better outcomes in most instances. More ideas get brainstormed and fallacies in logic get exposed. Working in a team can cause some individuals to get extremely frustrated and others to effectively shut down and just go along for the ride. So to get the most out of a team you need a leader/facilitator who can keep things moving forward while getting everyone to participate.

No team can be successful if it doesn't have a clear idea of what it is trying to accomplish. This can be harder than many people realize. If you ask a team to improve inventory control, you need to make sure they understand what improve means. If they decide it means inventory is always available when needed, there is a chance that improvement will drive up your costs. If they decide it means manage inventory at the lowest possible cost, you may end up with production delays. There have been many solutions presented by teams that accomplished what they thought they were asked to do but turned out to be disastrous in implementation because of unintended or unconsidered consequences.

In the current litany of problems facing the country and the world, what I think must be remembered is that many of them are linked. If you want the cheapest energy source, you may very easily end up aggravating pollution, global warming, and in the long run drive up cost. If you are a private industry, you generally are interested in maximizing profit now. So if you are asked to add pollution control devices, you will resist because it is going to increase costs that probably can't be passed along, therefore driving down your profits. This is the best decision for that particular company but not the best team solution. This is where Government, which after all is designed to assure the interests of all the people are protected, has a role to play. Government can and does impose standards that must be met.

Next week it is likely that GM is going to declare bankruptcy. It seems that at this point, the results of the bankruptcy are very well understood and the only real reason for the bankruptcy is to invalidate and change many of the current contractual obligations. After the process the Government is going to end up owning about 70% of the new GM. So I guess congratulations are in order to all us taxpayers! Bet you never expected to be a majority shareholder in GM!