Lou Gerstner on the U.S. Auto Industry

Former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner was interviewed by the WSJ.  The interview included an excerpt about the auto industry.  I thought his comments on turnarounds was pretty interesting.  He mentioned that when you're trying to turnaround a company you have to move quickly.  You can't take a decade to slowly turn an organization around - you have to move with speed.  He also comments on how important it is to deal with the culture change necessary to make that turnaround strategy really work (which is probably the most difficult thing to change in a company).  The easy part is coming up with the strategy and knowing what to do.  Getting it done and changing behavior is the hard part.


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