Chevrolet brand manager Brent Dewar has become the latest victim of Ed Whitacre’s purge of GM’s management, reports Automotive News [sub]. Dewar will be replaced by James Campbell, who had been in charge of GM’s Fleet and Commercial Operations. According to a GM release:
Dewar has elected to retire effective April 1, 2010 to dedicate more time to his family and to pursue personal interests. Until then, Dewar will work closely with Campbell to ensure a smooth transition at Chevrolet and also will be on a special assignment supporting Mark Reuss, GM president North America, in his new role.
Though this seems to be a continuation of Ed Whitacre’s purge of GM “lifers,” it also continues his trend of promoting other apparent lifers to replace them. Dewar’s replacement Campbell has been with GM since 1988, and as the official release states:
Before running GM’s Fleet and Commercial Operations, Campbell held various positions in field sales, retail incentives, marketing and customer relationship management. He has played important roles in many product launches including the Chevrolet Impala, Monte Carlo, Colorado and Corvette.
So the new head of Chevy is no outsider, but Dewar’s firing seems more performance-based than a means to culture change per se. If GM is going to turn around, the bowtie brand will need to reverse the steady slide in sales illustrated below. And what of the fact that DeWar only had five months to turn Chevy around? When Ed Whitacre was asked, how long managers had to show improvement before getting sacked, Whitacre simply typed “Not long :-)” The emoticon reign of terror continues…
Nice profile of Dewar.
So they fire Dewar and promote Docherty, who performed miserably at everything they asked her to do in her long career?? No wonder why GM continues to be in its bankrupt Doghouse…I wonder who makes these appointments and firings. Could it be some PC police, now that it is Government Motors?
I hear you, but it won’t happen. An articulate, nice looking blond woman with all of, uh, you know, the other stuff, in a sea of old white men, she’s golden.
“Before running GM’s Fleet and Commercial Operations, Campbell held various positions in field sales, retail incentives, marketing and customer relationship management. He has played important roles in many product launches including the Chevrolet Impala, Monte Carlo, Colorado and Corvette.”
Great, they’re promoting the warranty call center manager. That will turn out well…
Actually they are promoting the “Pile it high, watch them fly!!!” dude.
With his skill as fleet manager, he should have everything back in rat fur upholstry in no time, saving General Motors hundreds of billions of dollars monthly (according to the PowerPoints).
<em> Dewar will be replaced by James Campbell, who had been in charge of GM’s Fleet and Commercial Operations.</em>
Fleet sales? I feel like there is humor to be mined there.
This will be interesting – will we see 10 year / 100k warrantys or substantial sales increase without any language as to what was retail? IIRC most of GM’s sales losses they heavily blamed on “reduction in fleet sales”. Of which when they were offloading excess inventory into fleets at high numbers – GM would claim they were America’s favorite car company.
Yesterday I thought “Dewar’s on the rocks” and then I woke up to this. And a headache.
I’ve had the displeasure of working with Upper management who think leading through intimidation works. Rampant firings only shows they are doing something but usually not the right thing. This is in desperation when the real solutions escape them, due to the true lack of skill, problem solving and real motivational knowledge. Managers never like to hear that from me.
How often was the upper management fired? They aren’t firing some line workers who didn’t screw in a bolt to the proper spec. Heads at the top are rolling. Business as usual will not be accepted anymore.
A former boss once (correctly, I think) told me that company culture was just an intellectually lazy way to look at the collective behaviors of individual people within an organization.
If Ed W thinks the same way then from his perspective it’s not a matter of changing out lifers for non-lifers, rather changing the old guard for the new (new being his picks). The premise being that by having managers focused on what Ed want’s – and not what Fritz or Rick W wanted or allowed to occur – he will have changed the culture.
An added benefit is that by trying to reorganize with existing people, you don’t unnecessarily terrorize everyone in the company with more then 20 years experience as people no longer feel that company experience is a liability.
The risk to this type of plan is that the new boss is in fact, just like the old boss – leopards can’t change their spots and Ed has to go through 3 or 4 rounds of senior management blood letting to find the ones that will/can do what he wants. If that were to happen then things are really going to get ugly over at the Ren Center.
Off with their heads! The Malibu sold what, 11 or 12,000 unit last month? While the Camry sold over 30,000? That alone is reason for dismissal. The Malibu is a competitive product that should be selling triple what it did last month.
The Camry has been a good car for decades. The Malibu has been a good car for a year or two.
There are still Malibu’s on the road with Dex-cool & broken AC knobs that you have to turn to 3 to get the air to turn on.
Vanilla sedans are all about the safe bet. A Chevy Malibu is not a safe bet. That ain’t Dewar’s fault.
The new Malibu is way behind a Camry and Accord, it’s just horrible. It’s competetive if it’s priced 5K below the competition.
The Mailbu is #9 and #13 (hybrid) on the Consumer Reports list for that class. At the very least there are eight vehicles better than it to pick from. Only in the mind of General Motors would this be considered “competitive.”
And another thing…the Cobalt sold only 5,000 units last month. Only 5,000! vs. Corolla/Matrix at over 22,000! I realize the Cobalt is long-in-the-tooth, but come on. That’s just a pathetic performance.
Docherty is the next one that needs to be history. I don’t know what Whitacre saw in her GM background to merit her current position.
Probably her tits.
Normally I would agree that management by intimidation is wrong. Deming got it right when he said, “Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company”.
In GM’s case, they have been so bad for so long that the status quo just won’t cut it. Most of these people being terminated were a significant part of GM’s problem. GM is running out of time, so rightly or wrongly, Big Ed seems to be giving them a shot at proving they know what they are doing. If they don’t, they’re gone. At this rate, Big Ed will weed out the deadwood in just a few months.
I’ve had the displeasure of working with Upper management who think leading through intimidation works.
Generally, they’re right, though. Intimidation works very well, especially when it’s coupled with “You have x days to achieve y.” deadlines that flat didn’t happen at the old GM.
It works especially well when you fire the person above or beside you for failing to meet those goals because it shows you’re serious. What middle-manager would have taken performance goals, were they given, from the pre-Whitacre upper management team given that there were exactly zero strings attached
Rampant firings only shows they are doing something but usually not the right thing. This is in desperation when the real solutions escape them, due to the true lack of skill, problem solving and real motivational knowledge.
I’ll agree that it’s always better to inspire than to intimidate, but inspiration only works where there’s a fertile bed of motivated talent to inspire. GM is not that kind of company: they’re full of people who’s mantra was, for a long time,”Don’t Rock The Boat.” Whatever talent pool exists at GM needs to be shown that it’s no longer beholden to Yes-Men, and that said Yes-Men are themselves accountable for their performance.
Generally, they’re right, though. Intimidation works very well, especially when it’s coupled with “You have x days to achieve y.” deadlines that flat didn’t happen at the old GM.
Exactly. Yes, when you achieve the status of ‘well oiled machine’ then there’s flowers, and unicorns and happy puppies. But mgmt/business 101 is that there have to be consequences for actions, or lack therof. The only consequence you ever faced at the OldGM was figuring out how to blame the customer for not buying your POS.
Now I’m just guessing, but having been around people of Whitacre’s ilk here and there, I would proffer that he doesn’t expect actual, tangible results in 9 days. What he’s looking for is someone to walk in, man up, and actually start DOING one of these jobs. And that, you can determine in 9 days. Actually, I’d bet he knew it, but is giving people the rope to hang themselves. Politically better to the plebes who don’t understand management.
> He has played important roles in many product launches including the Chevrolet Impala, Monte Carlo, Colorado and Corvette.”
So he’s 1 for 4?
Good luck Buddy, you’re gonna need it.
“Dewar has elected to retire effective April 1, 2010 to dedicate more time to his family and to pursue personal interests.”
Typical corporate weasel words, what other interests, his family’s Scotch business?
Betcha a case of scotch Mr. Dewar isn’t going to be working “closely with Campbell to ensure a smooth transition”…..he probably couldn’t get into the RenCen today if he wanted to…..his ID badge was likely de-activated before Whiteacre called him down the hall…..
I was thinking that exact same thing when I saw the April 2010 date. I’d say Campbell can watch Dewar’s tail lights fade starting about now.
Compare this to Mullaley at Ford. He kicked a few asses, took a few names…..let it clearly be known that there was a new sherriff in town….WITHOUT staging a bloody purge, unless I am failing to recall correctly. Of course, perhaps this is because Big M had more time to work with and develop talent in place.
This ought to be interesting, from a management case study standpoint. This purge of W’s may result in lots of outsiders; new talent, not experienced in “classical” auto company methods, coming in and taking over key roles. If successful, it might disprove the old thinking that functional managers at OEM’s must come from a background in the company where they “learned the business” from the bottom up, due to the massive amount of detail in the industry. If unsuccessful, it’ll either be because he ran out of time, or that he purged too much “tribal knowledge” from the company….
why can’t they simply say that the fool was fired? he is a pompous, isolated, know nothing buffoon who never should have risen beyond lower level management, a perfect example of an incompetent failure only retained by paternalism in spite of his worthless existence. this firing shows me a lot about Whitcare. don’t care what anybody says, he knows a snake and how to kill it. thanks Ed!
“Hummer” Docherty and her minions will soon have a constant ‘look over my shoulder’ mindset about them.