3 Blind Mice (What is business and the Big 3) or Lost in Space

Do you remember that nursery rhyme growing up?

Have you considered how can the blind lead the blind. If the leader has no idea where they are going then what? 

Remember the Hyundai assurance plan – loose you job they will pay for 6 months?

• Now GM is saying they will do 8
• Form is saying they will do 12
• I have to wonder what Chrysler will say 

On one level I appreciate what they are doing and yet on another I have to ask myself is this not more enabling behavior?

• Is this designed to help people or is it a race to the bottom?
• Is this the altruistic auto maker helping the consumer or another copy cat marketing plan to exploit the consumer and more cars? 

How about this for a brilliant idea – manufacture cars people want instead of making a car and convincing the consumer to by. I drive a Ford and yet many in my family on both sides were diehard GM people. Why, because of our experiences with the respective brands – I have driven GM and was not impressed with their design aesthetics back them – very clumsy.  As a business owner I remember talking with a few of my friends, fellow Dartmouth Exec Business Alum and peers joking about the fact that given a chance we could turn these companies around and yet we know they would not retain us to do so because what we would require and the changes we would make would be deemed to radical on an institutional level and radical organizational level.  Any yet I know that neither I nor my friends will get a call or an email requesting our services. 

Here is the lie that has been taught for years – the purpose of business is to make money – talk about ego and entitlement issues – WRONG!!!!!!!!!!  Want to know the purpose of business – to provide a quality good or service to the end user what enhances the value and quality of their life in such a way they are willing to pay you for it! In my prime I had almost 10 people full and part time working for me and have at times like this had to contract down to me yet never was it about what the client/customer could do for me – rather what they needed. Bottom line is this simple truth of which we lost sight – a business exists to provide a needed good or service to solve a real consumer problem. 

• With all of this is mind and looking at the current financial problems in society – what is the answer?
• Also, with the advent of the digital age and the eminent demise of the industrial age how had the business model changed?