THE AUTOEXTREMIST

June 8, 2011

"Lt. Dan" dons his war paint and comes out swinging. Welcome to life during wartime in the Motor City.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 6/6 7:00 p.m.) Detroit. As you read this GM Public Relations is mounting an all-out charm offensive on behalf of CEO Dan Akerson, so over the next several weeks and months you will be seeing interviews and one-on-ones in the media with GM’s latest leader du jour. The goal? To make Dan Akerson sound like America’s NGBL (Next Great Business Leader) in the hopes of silencing and marginalizing industry commentators like myself while giving all of you out there in Consumer Nation an up close and personal glimpse into the imaginative mind of GM’s Commander-in-Chief, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate (just ask him) with a degree in engineering (long since dormant, I might add, even though that’s painfully obvious).

First up is The Detroit News, which was granted a two-hour audience with GM’s Maximum Leader last week so that he could unleash gems like:

"This is modern man's version of war.  We must win. You can't go home at 5 and check out. And that was the culture here."

Really, Mr. Akerson? And here I thought the modern man’s ‘version’ of war is unfortunately being fought in real time and with real casualties by our American men and women in uniform all over the world right now. The auto biz is an intense, vicious, global competition, but the only casualties here are the loss of jobs from serial incompetence and the precarious, seesawing bottom lines from the cruel vagaries of trying to make a buck in an uproarious business climate.

And as for the “go home at 5 and check out culture” at GM? First of all, there hasn’t been a “culture” at GM since the high-flying late 50s and 60s, but then again like most modern American business leaders Akerson deems historical context irrelevant and a giant “whatever.” Which is admittedly unusual for a guy who wears his Navy background on his sleeve, but then again you know what they say about people who choose to ignore history. As for the “go home at 5…” comment, Akerson has proceeded to yet again insult the True Believers who fought and scraped and clawed and battled to keep GM in the game over the last decade, the people who are directly responsible for the credible product lineup GM has today. Nicely done.

He went on to tell The News, "There are a couple milestones in my tenure I want to accomplish. I want to earn $10 billion a year profit. I want to get the U.S. pension fund to fully funded — and we're making real progress there. I want to make Europe profitable on a sustainable basis."

Uh-huh. That’s all well and good but I’ve got news for you, Mr. Akerson, if GM’s U.S. pension obligation is fully funded it will have everything to do with the fact that the company got an outrageous tax break – a unique post-bailout gift from the U.S. government – that allows the company to apply previously accumulated tax losses against future profits, saving GM around $13 billion with a “B” in future taxes.

And as for those yearly profits, the bankruptcy allowed you to step into a company with radically reduced financial obligations so you damn well better be able to deliver eye-popping profits in your sleep. But then again, there are savvy competitors out there with a lot smarter CEOs “gunning” for you (seeing as you’re so enamored with the military lingo) and they will be coming after you like a pack of wild dogs, so the above is far from automatic.

And making Europe profitable on a sustaining basis? That’s a monumental waste of time and money. There has been a long line of executives far savvier and more experienced than you who have tried to make something for GM out of not much in Europe and failed miserably. It’s a sinkhole for GM and it always will be, no matter what level of so-called brilliance you bring to the table. Just a little hard-nosed reality for the self-styled, “take no prisoners, tough-talking executive” that you fancy yourself to be.

But Akerson wasn’t done, oh no. The expansive interview conducted by David Shepardson and Christina Rogers of The News yielded some other gems as the CEO expounded on how GM got it all wrong B.A. (Before Akerson) with its ill-fated foray into P&G-style brand management, and how that hastened the company’s plunge into bankruptcy…

"The beginning of the end, brand equity was destroyed, brand attributes were diffused; it was just absolutely the wrong thing to do."

Not exactly a revelation, to be sure, but thankfully Akerson has it all figured out now because he’s going to position Cadillac and Chevrolet as GM’s only global brands, suggesting that Chevy "is going to be a killer brand," for the global market but cautioning that Cadillac "isn't ready" for that role yet, and is unlikely to be for 12 to 24 months. "You've got to come up with a premium brand that's got to be global — that's Cadillac," Akerson told The News.

Cadillac a global player? Please. The brand simply doesn’t have the product portfolio or international credibility to pull that off and they won’t have it for a decade at least. Yes, you read that correctly, a decade at least. Akerson’s braggadocio here is misguided and misplaced per usual, but I would hope you’re getting the idea now that this is the guy’s “M.O.” If it sounds tedious in this column that's because it is and I can only imagine what it’s like to be around this kind of bluster 24 hours a day.

And remember, Akerson is the guy who’s going to “oversee” GM’s next wave of new products, a project he’s wreaking havoc on right now as you read this. He’s already moved up the next Malibu to the end of the year, telling The News – after receiving push back from his product development troops – "My point is this is war; if we don't get our fighter up, we're going to have a hard time here."

See what I mean about tedious?

And he has also killed a hot engine for the next-generation Corvette, as if he’s got the first clue as to what he’s doing or why. This is Dan Akerson live and in living color, folks, bringing his remarkable arrogance and nuanced cluelessness to bear on key product decisions that will affect GM’s competitive stance for years to come. And trust me, it’s going to get u-g-l-y.

But thinking it would be a good time for Akerson to stop right there, or for GM’s PR honcho Selim Bingol to cut the interview short and physically remove the reporters from the room (probably an impossible task, as Bingol’s job is akin to being Sarah Palin’s PR operative), Akerson dialed up his blunderbuss act even further by dismissing Ford’s re-launch of Lincoln…

"They are trying like hell to resurrect Lincoln. Well, I might as well tell you, you might as well sprinkle holy water. It's over."

Make no mistake, this is the guy who’s running GM right now. This juvenile sounding dude is the CEO who has made a sport of publicly dumping on GM’s competitors at the drop of a hat even though he’s devoid of even a shred of credibility in this business whatsoever. After all, when someone like Bob Lutz comments on the state of this business it’s one thing, because Bob has forgotten more knowledge than will likely be accrued by most of the up-and-coming execs in this biz over the life of their careers. But Dan Akerson? A guy’s whose claim to fame revolves around a couple of mediocre stints in corporate America at Nextel and MCI, followed by a stint as a managing director in private equity? Please.

But then again it’s really no surprise as Dan Akerson is, remarkably enough, the same guy who – the story can be told now – rebuffed a personal, friendly welcome from a scion of America’s first automotive family when he was first handed the GM job with a perfunctory dismissal of the overture because the gentleman extending a hand of welcome was “a competitor.”

Classy move.

Let’s set aside for a moment that Akerson has gone on record readily touting the fact that he gave up almost $200 million after being a managing director at The Carlyle Group, and that he considers running GM as performing a noble service for his country, and let’s really get to the nitty-gritty of what’s going on here.

This guy who fancies himself as being some sort of altruistic task master who’s going to save GM from itself is exactly like every other so-called corporate “messiah” who has come before him and who has been plopped down into the auto business with no credentials, no clue and no sense of perspective whatsoever (please refer to the Bob Nardelli Cerberus-Chrysler fiasco if you need a refresher course).

Akerson is yet another in a long line of these “quick studies” who dismiss everything that has gone on before they got there as being inconsequential (because people just weren’t smart enough to know any better), take credit for everything going on right now (even thought they’ve had exactly zero to do with any of it), and who are now going to “fix” things with their visionary brilliance and phenomenal insight overnight. (In Akerson’s case just three or four short years from now, as he insists.)

What part of any of this sounds like a good thing? What part of Akerson’s ill-qualified, tough-talking, neighborhood bully act constitutes a visionary direction for a company that so desperately needs it? I’ll answer that for you: None of it. Not one piece of it resonates and not one iota of it makes a lick of sense.

And lest you think I’m being too tough on the guy, let’s allow Akerson to have one final word:

"Whoever comes after me — it's going to be a more important appointment than mine because he or she will have to carry on a cultural revolution here. It's just like the Communist party in China in the 1960s: There has to be a cultural revolution here."

That about sums up Dan Akerson perfectly, doesn’t it? In his mind everything that happened before him doesn’t matter, and everything that happens under his watch and after will not only determine the fate of GM for the rest of its corporate life but it will reinvent the automobile business once and for all. Oh, Akerson’s reign will determine GM’s fate alright, but I’ve seen this particular movie before and trust me, it never ends well.

I’m all for a leader with confidence, heaven knows you need it in this business, but when it’s grounded in clueless, knee-jerk pronouncements and wild-ass posturing about getting “our fighter up,” it gets old – and tediously annoying – real quick.

I’ve been lobbied and cajoled, pilloried and trashed, and finally dismissed as being an “asshole” (wow, now that's original) by GM’s, ahem, “esteemed” PR leadership for not cozying up to Akerson and for not buying what he’s selling. And most recently I’ve been asked through an illustrious emissary to back off and give Dan Akerson a break, that “if I’d just get to know the guy you’d see what a talented, engaged and capable leader he really is. He’s a quick study and he gets it.”

And for a fleeting moment in time I actually did consider giving the GM CEO the benefit of the doubt. But then the guy I have forever coined as “Lt. Dan” proceeds to open his mouth again and suddenly my need for charitable compassion disappeared into the burgeoning summer haze.

Suffice to say I’m officially done with the apologists and the emissaries and the PR operatives pleading with me to give this guy a break. Quite simply Dan Akerson is the wrong guy, at the wrong time, at the wrong car company, and the only thing he (along with the pathetic sycophants on the GM board) deserves (see more in this week’s “On The Table” – Ed.) is a tactical drone strike (figuratively speaking, of course) that removes him from his lofty perch so that GM can be led by someone who actually has a frickin’ clue as to what this business is really all about and who understands what GM actually needs to succeed in it going forward.

After all this is war, right?

And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.

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