通用汽車隕落CEO的背運生涯
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????最近，罷黜首席執行官在通用汽車公司（General Motors）已成為一樁司空見慣的事。過去兩年間，已有兩位在任者被替換下臺。 ????但是1992年當董事會收到鮑伯?斯坦普爾的辭呈時，他卻成為自1921年公司創始人比利?杜蘭特被撤職以來首位丟掉飯碗的通用汽車公司老板。 ????他算是在錯誤的時間、錯誤的地點出現的錯誤的人選。 ????作為一個頗有成就的工程師和受人歡迎的領導者，斯坦普爾是通用公司一度需要的首席執行官。但是，他有點生不逢時。他應該在20世紀60年代坐上這個位置。那時候，公司的管理大權被移交到一群個性平庸的會計師和官僚主義者手中。他們對成功習以為常，因此讓汽車業務變成官僚機構和固步自封狀態的附庸，這最終導致公司在2009年一蹶不振。 ????而作為一個徹頭徹尾的汽車人，斯坦普爾本來有可能避免公司落到這一下場。他熱愛機械類的東西，特別喜歡通用汽車首批前輪驅動的汽車之一——Olds Toronado。 ????然而，他被迫轉型為金融工程師。1990年，斯坦普爾登上了首席執行官的寶座。此前，他的前任羅杰?史密斯已在一系列有欠考慮的業務上大筆投入公司資金，這些業務包括大批工廠機器人、無用的裝配工廠以及為土星（Saturn）這一品牌建立的全新汽車分公司。 ????在通常情況下，考慮到通用汽車公司的種種競爭弱點，斯坦普爾的日子不會好過。在史密斯治下，公司的市場份額急劇下跌，從43.5%跌至33.5%，而公司卻沒有及時削減產能以彌補損失。 ????史密斯曾決定將北美運營部門分拆為兩個獨立核算的集團，這一決定為害無窮。但作為忠貞不貳的人，斯坦普爾拒絕撤消這一決定，結果使實際上讓這家巨型公司得以運轉的非正式聯絡網毀于一旦。 ????而且，他還不愿對汽車工人聯合會（United Auto Workers）采取強硬立場，允許工會建立其惡名遠揚的工作銀行。這一銀行保證了下崗工人也能獲得其全額工薪的近95%。 ????斯坦普爾明確地將這一合約視為“雙贏”，而實際上它創造的是“贏-輸”的格局。 ????斯坦普爾的命運在他走進辦公室的第二天就板上釘釘了。那時伊拉克正好入侵科威特，挑起了第一次海灣戰爭，迫使油價飛漲，將經濟拖入泥潭。 ????斯特普爾的工程師背景讓他在應對這種千頭萬緒的危機時一籌莫展。當時壓力巨大，他無法有效應對。作為一個深思熟慮，也許還有點步調拖沓的決策者，他不愿意迅速做出改變，而是無論環境如何變化，寧可堅持自己的計劃。同時，作為一個有血有肉的人，他無法忍心解雇與自己共事數年的人。 ????公司高管在危機中的延宕促使董事會奮起行動。寶潔公司（Procter & Gamble）前首席執行官約翰?斯梅爾被派遣來調查事實真相，結果揭露了公司核心潰爛的現實。 ????當斯梅爾3月向董事會匯報時，他沒帶來什么好消息。在今年春季耶魯大學出版社（Yale University Press）出版的平裝新作《60到0》（Sixty to Zero）中，我回顧了這一場景。成本高企，產品質量低劣，工廠產能開工嚴重不足，通用汽車對市場反應遲鈍，一次脫胎換骨的重組勢在必行。 ????面對這些情況，斯坦普爾的反應可謂遲緩，甚至可說是固執己見。他無視董事會讓他支走兩位高管的指令，在董事會提出要求時，他也無法讓自己解雇一位密友。他只是對其做了降職處理。他留任公司總裁和首席執行官，但實際上已被投了不信任票。 ????新的架構毫不奏效。斯坦普爾則一如既往地頑抗到底，他不理會迅速變革亟需實施的信號，而是繼續按照自己明確可知的方式一意孤行。當公司的現金開始大量損失時，董事們決定，斯塔普爾必須走人了。1992年10月23日，他正式下臺。 ????作為一個自負的人，斯坦普爾還是留在了底特律。有一段時間，他曾致信記者們——這是他作為首席執行官絕不會干的事——糾正他們就通用汽車公司歷史發表的一些觀點。隨后他去了一家電池研究公司工作，歷經數年，直到創始人將他提拔為首席執行官。這后一段經歷是夠艱苦的，但從未聽到斯坦普爾對此有所怨言。 ????在大好年景中，擁有斯坦普爾是通用汽車公司的幸事。而在時運不濟的年頭，他也始終是一位力圖挽救公司命運的忠誠戰士。但不幸的是，對他本人及公司來說，他擔當了很不合適的職責。 ????譯者：清遠 |
????Pushing out CEOs at General Motors has become routine lately, with two incumbents having been displaced in the past two ears. ????But when the board of directors got Bob Stempel's resignation in 1992, he became the first GM (GM, Fortune 500) boss to lose his job since company founder Billy Durant was removed in 1921. ????He was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong. ????Stempel, an accomplished engineer and popular leader, was the kind of CEO GM had once needed, but his timing was bad. Stempel should have risen up in the 1960s when the automaker was being turned over to a faceless succession of accountants and bureaucrats. So accustomed were they to success that they allowed the car business to become secondary to the bureaucracy and insularity that would bring the company down in 2009. ????Stempel, a car guy's car guy, might have prevented that. He loved working on things mechanical and was especially fond of the Olds Toronado, one of GM's first front-wheel drive cars. ????Instead, he was forced to become a financial engineer. Stempel got his shot at the top job in 1990, after his predecessor Roger Smith spent the company's treasure on ill-considered ventures like armies of factory robots, unneeded assembly plants, and a whole new car division in Saturn. ????Under ordinary circumstances, Stempel would have had a difficult time, given GM's competitive shortcomings. Market share had declined precipitously under Smith, falling from 43.5% to 33.5% and the company belatedly was cutting capacity to compensate. ????Ever the loyalist, Stempel refused to undo Smith's disastrous decision to divide North American operations into two autonomous groups, thereby destroying the informal networks that actually allowed the giant company to function. ????And he wouldn't get tough with the United Auto Workers, allowing the union to establish its notorious job banks that guaranteed laid-off workers nearly 95% of their full pay. ????Stempel memorably referred to the contract as a "win-win" when it actually was a "win-lose." ????Stempel's fate was sealed on his second day in office. That was when Iraq invaded Kuwait, setting off the first Gulf War, driving oil prices sky-high and sending the economy into recession. ????Nothing in Stempel's engineering background had prepared him for this kind of multi-pronged crisis. The pressure was enormous and he didn't handle it well. A deliberate, perhaps plodding, decision-maker, he hated to be rushed into making changes and preferred to stick to his plan regardless of circumstances. And as a human being, he couldn't face the idea of laying off people he had worked with for years. ????Procrastination at the top during a crisis antagonized the board of directors. Former Procter & Gamble (PG, Fortune 500) CEO John Smale was dispatched on a fact-finding mission that revealed a rot at the heart of the company. ????When Smale reported back to the board in March, he didn't bring good news, as I recounted in Sixty to Zero, published this spring in soft-cover by Yale University Press. Costs were high, product quality was low, factories were running well below capacity, GM was slow to market, and a sweeping reorganization was needed. ????Stempel reacted slowly, almost stubbornly, to the news. He ignored the board's direction to move two executives aside, and couldn't bring himself to dismiss a close friend, as the board wanted. Instead, he demoted him. Stempel remained in place as chairman and CEO, but had effectively been given a vote of no confidence. ????The new setup didn't work. Reluctant as ever, Stempel didn't take the hints that rapid change was required and continued to proceed in his predictable manner. With the company hemorrhaging cash, the directors decided Stempel had to go, and on October 23, 1992, he did. ????A proud man, Stempel stayed around Detroit. For a time, he penned notes to journalists -- something he would never have done as CEO -- correcting them on points of GM history. Then he went to work for a battery research company and waited years before the founder promoted him to CEO. Second acts are tough there, but Stempel was never heard to complain. ????GM was lucky to have him in its good years. And Stempel was a loyal enough soldier to try to save it during its bad years. Unfortunately for him, and the company, he was badly miscast. |
