Smith tossed the pieces of organizations around so much that he disturbed the structure of the company. What he did not realize was that the giant 15 level organization chart of GM meant little or nothing relative to getting cars out. People knew each other over time. They knew people at Design Staff or Cadillac or Fisher Body who would help or do things out of the organization chart. Smith's constant and dramatic organization changes moved people around so much that they lost track of each other and could not respond quickly enough to make a difference.

Also, GM could no longer manage very good segments of its business, which were small by GM standards. GM got rid of GM Robotics and then found that they needed robotics. They got rid of Detroit Diesel and others, which were profitable under different and new management (Penske, Fanuc etc). They also got rid of the great cash cow, GM Parts Division, but kept the pension and the health care obligation!

Have you ever played that game where you whisper something in someone's ear and they pass it on? What happens after it gets passed on fifteen times? The fifteenth person has no clue as to what was originally said.

Shortly after I left GM, many companies began to realize that these levels reduced competitiveness and prevented senior management from understanding what was going on in the company. Much too late, GM started eliminating levels of middle management with no regard for who really understood the business - resulting in a series of disastrous losses in money and market share. No wonder Asia makes most of our stuff.

Had GM senior management understood its engineering, manufacturing, distribution and information systems, it could have successfully downsized and restructured. Once many management layers are eliminated, who looks after employees? The answer is -- Employees are self-directed.

Unlike me, young people should learn to follow and lead in a bureaucracy since civilization is built on them. This is why the Liberal Education as defined in the next reflection is so important; every college graduate should have a foundation to become an effective leader or follower.

In his Nobel Prize winning book, "The Glass Bead Game," Herman Hesse describes a monastic order of intellectuals that run a boarding school for boys and nurture and play the Glass Bead Game. After 30 years, a distinguished member of the order resigns because he comes to the conclusion that organizations maintain themselves by rewarding obedience with privilege. The organizational bureaucracy "had been infected by the characteristic disease of elitehood -- hubris, conceit, class arrogance, self-righteousness, exploitiveness."