Bob Lutz Demonstrates GM’s Decline Through A Christmas Card

A couple of weeks ago Bub Lutz, a former Chrysler and GM Executive was in the wall street journal with an excerpt from his new book “Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business.”

Very early in the story Lutz quickly illustrated GM’s lavish spending by none other than a Christmas card. At first it might sound a little bit ridiculous, and really make you wonder about Lutz. In reality he made a great point that any business could gain knowledge from.

Excerpt from Wall Street Journal Piece:

One of my favorite anecdotes about the long postwar decline of General Motors came from a senior executive in the advertising agency that served Cadillac back in the 1950s and ’60s. At the time, Jim Roche was head of the division. It was time to design the annual Cadillac Christmas card, and Mr. Roche instructed the agency to find something “heartland”—down-home American, an original work from a good artist.

One painting found Mr. Roche’s favor: a snowy scene with a small boy pulling a sled upon which was tied a Christmas tree. The lad’s destination was a modest cabin on a hill, with a winding road leading up to it.

Lutz went on to say how the Christmas card went through more than five revisions before Mr. Roche was satisfied with the final product. One of  these changes was to ensure that the tire tracks left in the snow were an approved snow tire.

Lutz Continued in the story: Can anyone begin to fathom what that card cost—the material and intellectual resources that were squandered in its tortured path to perfection? Did any recipient of the card bother to look at the tire tread imprints in the snow?

Was the card with the large house, the multi-car garage, the expanded hill and the Cadillac sedan more appropriate and artistically meritorious than the original boy-with-sled?

In a normal corporate culture, a senior executive would have looked the card over, checked the text (easy in those days, since “Merry Christmas” was still a politically correct wish), and said, “Sure, looks good, get ’em printed.” But not in GM’s supposed “culture of excellence,” where management had to improve on every detail, no matter how trivial.

Throughout the entire story Lutz has some pretty harsh words. But it’s easy to understand where he is coming from, this is a man that has seen it all in the auto industry. You can read the entire piece here.

Now we want to know what you think, do you agree with Lutz comments? Let us know what you think by commenting below.