Strategic! Thinking?

“Any forecast calling for a ‘permanent’ shift in auto tastes based on a quantum as volatile as the price of gasoline is nuts.

“GM's leaders are not nuts, and yet to pour hundreds of millions into a race to launch an electric car, the Chevy Volt, guaranteed to lose money on every unit sold, begins to seem a peculiar strategy for a company in dire liquidity straits.

“With each hectic advance in the development process, the expected sticker price to consumers has gone up... At last leakage, GM is saying now the Volt may need a sticker price of $45,000.

“At best, the Volt will be an affluent family's third car. It will have to be plugged in for six hours a day... It won't be a car for a city dweller who parks on the street or in a public lot. It will travel 40 miles on a six-hour charge. After that, a small gas motor will kick in to recharge the battery while you drive. Some reports claim the Volt will get 50 mpg in this mode, but that's hallucinatory: If using a gasoline engine to power an electric motor were so efficient, the streets would be full of such vehicles...

“Customers value flexibility in their vehicles. For a car with the Volt's narrow usability to sell would require an unlikely revolution in consumer behavior...

“And for those who think the Volt's justification is greenhouse emissions, notice that electric cars play Three Card Monte with energy inputs: It all depends on where the electricity is coming from…

“GM executives are not nuts. They justify the costs and risks of the Volt as a way of changing GM's image in the minds of consumers and politicians. To commit a pun, the Volt is GM's vehicle for making a bailout of GM politically acceptable...

“CEO Rick Wagoner last week laid out the case to Barack Obama personally for turning GM into a ward of the state, by way of direct and indirect subsidies… Shareholders should note that a big part of the company's turnaround gamble consists also of eliciting favor once again from Washington.”

(“Business World: What Is GM Thinking?” Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.. Wall Street Journal: July 2, 2008. pg. A.11)

PERCEPTIONS AND PERSPECTIVES get managed first. Interpretations come next. All hinge on values, beliefs and assumptions.

Now we get to work, working to drive the way we are seen, and seeing as we need to so we can do what we want to do.