Call Me Roger

by Albert Lee

A former General Motors executive speech-writer, Lee (Slumlord) presents a shocking view of the once-preeminent automaker's inner workings as Roger Bonham Smith, chairman since 1980, autocratically pursues a 10-year, "21st Century" technological master plan that has failed to avert GM's plunge to a third-place market share. Virtually identical vehicles for all brands from Chevrolet to Cadillac were served up for years, the author recalls, as the new Saturn line and other futuristic projects persistently lagged. To stimulate production, and at a price of $2.55 billion, Smith bought H. Ross Perot's Electronic Data Systems, meshing the two companies to the point of chaos (staff phone directories updated weekly and robots welding car doors shut), then paid $900 million more to buy out and oust Perot himself. Such actions caused the down-spiraling of morale and productivity of union workers, the need for whose cooperation and compensation Smith failed to graspchoosing instead to please economy-minded shareholders with employee layoffs and plant closings (accompanied by hefty top-management bonuses), according to Lee. As portrayed in this somewhat discursive but penetrating inside story, America's largest industrial hierarchy still has a lot to learn. 150,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; first serial to Playboy.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Genres: Business

90 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Multiple authors on Goodreads are named Albert Lee.

Reviews

[Jmlanier1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Albert Lee served as a speech writer for GM prior to writing this book. The book focuses on Roger Smith’s leadership during the 1980s. Before reading this, I attributed a huge amount of GM’s diminished market share at the end of the last century to Roger. I now spread some of the blame to Roger’s predecessors. Think of it this way…Roger was a master chef and when he took the helm, his predecessors had bought the groceries, mixed the ingredients, pre-heated the oven, and printed the menu. Roger was somewhat hamstrung when he started. He was an incredible visionary but took incredible risks. I will saddle him with the EDS/Ross Perot debacle. His election to buy Ross out at an inflated price was not a wise financial decision. On the other hand, Roger saw the future with computers, robots, electric cars, etc. Enjoyable Monday morning quarterbacking with this book!