From business site MidasNation
What do you call a person with a provincial worldview; who is likely stuck in 1978, when command-and-control reigned supreme; who believes the world still revolves around America; and who will not change their position on anything regardless of the facts? Answer: a typical 60-year old white American male.
Here’s how OWM view the world differently, and why this leads to disaster in business
Past as Predicate
The Star versus the Crowd
Command-and-Control Style
A Gaussian View
America as the Center of the World
Another business site The Phoenix Principle expands on MidasNation using the disaster that is GM as an example of how their OWM management was are clueless, stuck in the past, and drove the company into the ground.
Telling the story about how GM management drove the profits out of suppliers while bankrupting the company, he contrasted GM’s behavior with the Japanese run firms in America who partnered with suppliers to make a better product customers more highly valued. We know who ended up with the profitable approach.
Remember, these criticisms of corporate America are coming from mainstream business websites, not the leftie fringe.
So, explain the recent Toyota Motor Company edict to drive 30% cost savings from suppliers. Toyota is becoming the new General Motors? What’s the world view of the typical 60 year old Japanese male executive?
It’s far more complicated than that. Toyota is now up against a new version of the world economic issues that hit the US decades ago. Executives everywhere look at the short term and the easy answer (for immediate results). There is no long term thinking, at least not longer than the average term of the CEO.
The Japanese coupled with their suppliers as long as the economics worked for them. The economics in Japan and even the economics for the US transplants are changing. Toyota executives are responding relatively the same as their competitors in Detroit did years ago.
Change Sucks. Especially if you aren’t the beneficiary.