The New Motor City Madman: Bob Lutz, Blogs, GM and Customer Responsiveness.

I was reading the Financial Times and it mentioned that Bob Lutz, the vice chairman of GM, has a blog. Even though I have an f* the car attitude for two reasons (cars are city-livability destroying, not to mention that they are too easy to rely upon, with lots of potential negative effects) I am from Michigan and do feel an obligation to be knowledgeable about the automobile industry (ranging from arcane facts like Joy Road is named after the general manager of the Packard Automobile Company, which moved its plant to Michigan and built it on what became Joy Road [the plant is still around, unused pretty much since 1956, and is featured in the Fabulous Ruins of Detroit website here] or that the Dort Highway in Flint is named after Dallas Dort, who built carriages with William Durant, the guy who founded GM), to the work on lean production, the Toyota Production System, pokemoke, etc.

Bob Lutz' blog is interesting because it is direct and honest, just like he is. It shows the importance of not just listening to customers, but responding. Hearing isn't hearing if you don't do anything in response.

Now, sometimes ideas aren't always that great. E.g., in a restaurant a customer said "Your kid's grilled cheese sandwich is so good, you should put it on the menu for adults." The response, direct, was "why should we highlight a menu item that we only make a dollar from?" But usually, customers are focused, business-oriented, and the product leaders and champions, which the software industry has known for a long time (beta testers of software products are customer-users, who test new products and versions for free for a variety of intrinsic reasons).

The article "Motor City Marketing" discusses GM and blogs and it discusses why GM's blog "campaign" is successful. It's open, there is leadership at all levels, it builds community, and the entries accept (and respond to) criticism. (n.b., a great book about the decline of large American corporations, about GM, is On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors, which is by John DeLorean with a Business Week writer).

If GM, the prototype of the modern, distant, bureaucratic organization, can take this step forward on customer responsiveness, certainly other large and small organizations can take similar baby steps?

(More about Ted Nugent, the "original" Motor City Madman.)