Thank God for Entrpreneurs
Reading in the New York Times yesterday that the Ford Motor Company reported the worst financial loss in 14 years made me so angry. A loss of $5.8 billion dollars which is likely to get worse. Worse?
What I found incredulous is that the executives of the Ford Motor Company just stayed the course. No out of the box thinking. They didn’t look at every other countries emission standards. Every other country is expecting the cars to get a gas mileage at the minimum of 50 miles per hour or more. Other countries are concerned about the shortage of fuel and the pollution we are putting into our environment. Instead, the Ford Motor Company decided to continue to feed the US economy with large over sized gas guzzling vehicles because the US Government has no problems with that. Let’s just ride that tide until is dies. Well, it is starting to die. The consumers are telling Ford that they don’t want to stay the course. Actually, that is one of the things that make America great. The people can’t give a company tax breaks but they can send a signal by what they purhase.
Did Ford Executives ever look into the future? Did they ever think about being a innovative forward thinking company? No, they went with what was easy and didn’t consider that we are living in a flat world where consumers outside our own borders effect decisions made in US companies.
Shame shame on Ford. They deserve the losses that they have incurred. Unfortunately they are also bringing down life long employees that have counted on their vision and leadership.
Thank god for the Entrepreneurs in our country who are creating new businesses that will be linked to the rest of the world, changing the focus of how we do business and are not so concerned with getting tax benefits from the US Government so they can just stay the course.
I only wish there were more people thought like Entrepreneurs for some of the largest companies in the world, like Ford and take shared ownership in the products they are building for the future.
Comments (Archived):
Shame on us for wanting, wanting and wanting but never looking in the mirror. In 10 years TAta Motors will be the dominant auto manufacturer, not because of Ford or GM execs in the 90s or 200 but because the cost of just benefits in each US manufactured car exceeds the cost of ALL labor expenses in the manufacture of their autos.
Peter:
That would make those benefits not just. Simply put, people don’t have some sort of right to a standard of living just because they put in 40 hours a week – that work has to create value. Right now, Ford and GM are not creating value for customers.
As far as the article goes, Ford and GM simply are not capable of engineering cars that bring value to the table for their price. They have to keep on manufacturing trucks/SUVs because that’s the only place where they have the margins to stay alive. Too bad for them, the unions are dragging them into the grave.