GM and Ford cite 'People' - Volkwagon cites discipline - True?

[Marc]

I was reading the following. I noticed only GM and Ford cited 'People'. Volkwagon - discipline.

Your thoughts?

Auto execs shed game faces to answer 3 tough questions

DETROIT — Auto chieftains use the annual North American International Auto Show here every January to put on their game faces for the coming year. At the show, which ends its run today, USA TODAY reporters James R. Healey, David Kiley and Earle Eldridge posed three questions to executives of the biggest U.S., Japanese and German automakers doing business in the USA to see what's going on behind the smiles and optimistic pronouncements.

CEO
General Motors
CEO Rick Wagoner
What keeps you up at night? Health care costs. People.
What's the biggest hole in your lineup? Probably another Hummer product.
What competitor gets most of your attention? Toyota is hard to ignore, but we watch all of them for different things.

Ford
CEO Bill Ford
What keeps you up at night? People issues. Motivating and focusing people.
What's the biggest hole in your lineup? We need an entry-level car below the Focus.
What competitor gets most of your attention? I don't get mesmerized by any one company. We have to study all of them all the time.

Chrysler
CEO Dieter Zetsche
What keeps you up at night? How do we, as quickly as possible, close the gap between where we were (in vehicle quality), in people's minds, and where we actually are today. It's a perception gap.
What's the biggest hole in your lineup? An entry-level vehicle with some passion, starting at about $10,000.
What competitor gets most of your attention? Honda.
Toyota Motor
U.S. COO Jim Press
What keeps you up at night? How I could have done what we just finished better.
What's the biggest hole in your lineup? We need more derivatives of the products we have — different engine offerings of the vehicles we have and performance versions.
What competitor gets most of your attention? Always Honda, but GM is steaming back in a hurry.

Honda Motor
CEO Takeo Fukui
What keeps you up at night? The environment. We have to put more emphasis on it as we go.
What's the biggest hole in your lineup? Another truck product beyond the SUT (sport-utility truck) we showed (in Detroit).
What competitor gets most of your attention? I respect every manufacturer. I do.

Nissan Motor
CEO Carlos Ghosn
What keeps you up at night? The temptation of complacency. There still are people in the company who are used to mediocre perform ance. . . . That would be the beginning of the end.
What's the biggest hole in your lineup? An entry-level car below the Sentra, a top-of-the-line luxury car and a luxury truck.
What competitor gets most of your attention? Honda for return on invested capital. VW for brand management. Renault for purchasing costs.

Volkswagen
Chairman Bernd
Pischetsrieder
What keeps you up at night? Discipline and consequence. Properly channeling creativity. If you can't channel it right, you get chaos.
What's the biggest hole in your lineup? A $27,000 SUV for North America.
What competitor gets most of your attention? Toyota.

BMW
Chairman Helmut Panke
What keeps you up at night? The battle against complacency when you are doing well.
What's the biggest hole in your lineup? A new (high-performance) M5 off the new 5-Series (sedan).
What competitor gets most of your attention? Mercedes is the company most like us. But we look at Lexus, too, in North America.

[Randy]

Amazing that you've mentioned this.

I was impressed by what the CEO of Honda said about the environment, it just verifies what I tell folks in my courses about the Japanese. Of course you can contrast the Honda CEO's statement (what keeps him up at night) to what the COO of Toyota USA said (if you can understand it)

[Mike S.]

It doesn't bother me too much that in such a short "interview" that only 2 mentioned people. I am a very people focused person when it comes to business, but I'm not sure I would have said "people" if asked at any given time what was keeping me up at night. Ssometimes I might, sometimes I might not. What would mean more to me as an employee or stockholder is how he/she views and actually treats people in his everyday work life. Words are cheap. How many of us have heard HR people and other Managers and Top Dogs say stuff like "people are our most important asset" but their actions show this to be far from the truth. JMO.

[Randy]

People can't be an asset because expenditures to improve assets would be an investment and training/employee development is always an overhead.

[Marc]

Originally Posted by Randy

I was impressed by what the CEO of Honda said about the environment...

I liked all his answers.

[Claes Gefvenberg]

Originally Posted by Marc

I was reading the following. I noticed only GM and Ford cited 'People'. Volkwagon - discipline.

Couldn't one interpret also the answers from Nissan Volkswagen & BMW as "people related"?

/Claes

[WALLACE]

Yaeh,
I've got to laugh at Bill Ford's people answer.
Wallace

[The Taz!]

Interesting how the gang runs the gamut from worrying about people (Not for the people's sake) to keeping up with the Joneses. . .to one-upmanship.

Seems to me that Nissan and BMW are concerned with waste elimination. . .afterall, complacency is a classic form of waste. Viva Deming!