Google's new structure has roots in GM management innovations - Minneapolis Star Tribune
We know GM as a crushing bureaucracy, but when Sloan stepped down as chairman in the mid-1950s his GM stood atop the brand-new Fortune 500 ranking by such a margin that there was really no comparing it with the oil company in second place. It wasn’t America’s most successful car company. It was America’s most successful company. Had magazines like Fast Company existed in that era, it seems safe to assume that Buick Motor Co. would’ve been as celebrated as Google, so flat and nimble in its management that it didn’t even need an organization chart. It sure didn’t for GM. By the time Sloan became an officer at the end of World War I, GM had turned itself into a loose confederation of car companies that competed with each other, spent money like sailors on shore leave and pretty much ignored... Sloan wrote that he wasn’t much of a book reader, but there wouldn’t have been anything to read on modern management in 1920 had he gone looking for it. What he and colleagues did to build a rock solid organization they did with their own thinking. He noted that much of it must look pretty basic to managers trained in business schools. com welcomes and encourages readers to comment and engage in substantive, mutually respectful exchanges over news topics. Comments that violate the above will be removed. Repeat violators may lose their commenting privileges on StarTribune. Source: www.startribune.com
