Anybody who is exposed to any media knows that US automakers are on life-support, while Japanese companies are only hurting.

There are many reasons for this, but the lethal combination of low-to-no innovation, stifling bureaucracy and atrocious management/leadership is a primary factor.

Wally Bock has a great post comparing the suggestion systems at GM to that of Toyota.

“The GM employees share less than one suggestion per year each. The company uses a quarter of them. By contrast, Toyota workers make 17.9 suggestions per person per year. Eighty percent are implemented.”

The bottom line is pretty obvious.

“Toyota thinks people are valuable and have brains. GM thinks that the people with brains are the ones somewhere further up the org chart.”

There are many companies who assume that brains start at a certain level and I’ve always found that mindset hilariously stupid.

Hilarious because all of the people with brains worked most of their careers at the levels without brains; stupid because of the talent, skill and creativity completely wasted.

Image credit: MJCdetroit on Wikipedia Commons

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