Quote of the Day – December 4, 2008

First thing every morning I send out a “quote of the day” to the agency. The topics range all over the place. Occasionally, I might post one up here, like today’s.

“They prefer stability over conflict, continuity over disorder, and GM’s way over anybody else’s. They believe that hard work will overcome adversity, and that tomorrow will be better than today – despite four decades of evidence to the contrary. In many ways the story of General Motors since the 1960s is a tale of accelerating irrelevance. Customer preferences changed, competition tightened, technology made big leaps, and GM was always driving a lap behind….. Over the years the company has tried to reform itself any number of times, but it has been doomed by what ONCE made it successful: doing it the GM way.”

Alex Taylor III, a writer that has been covering GM for the last three decades. This quote is from his latest article in the December issue of Fortune. I am sure you are all familiar with GM’s woes, but consider this –Toyota, through their progressive direction of capitalizing on changing consumer interests and technology is no where near needing a bailout and has a market cap of $103.6 Billion. GM, who has said they are not interested in thinking like Toyota, has a market cap of $1.8 Billion.

If you want to be relevant in business and stay there, consumer driven-continual change, harvesting technology to your benefit and some level of conflict and disorder are all conditions of success. You can quote me on that…

-jamie