At previous job we did a lot of business with GE, this is back when Dr. Welch was getting ready to leave the company. The best way I could describe the GE people that we dealt with was that they were ruthless. Once they decided what they needed, they would go after it with everything. Six Sigma to them was a company-wide concern, and the attitude back then was you either "got" Six Sigma or they didn't want you around.

We built a lot of software for them, and they were extremely aggressive with their program/project management, from day one committed to squeeze as much as possible from every billable hour.

Funny story: whenever my GE customers were in town, we would take them to the nicest of the local restaurants we could find (we were lucky, our offices were smack in the middle of a really nice dining district, so nice doesn't necessarily mean expensive). Whenever I had to fly to GE corporate in Connecticut, we ate at their cafeteria, or they brought us sandwiches and made it a work lunch.

You just don't see that kind of drive or behavior coming from GM. Even if it is only to re-energize the company, GM could really use a strong leader like Dr. Welsh, somebody to raise a lot of hell and make it clear to everyone that either the company shapes up or the company dies. If the unions or the executives don't like it, then there may not be a GM to go to work to in 5 years or less.

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