It’s popular to blame Detroit’s decline on lazy, obstructive middle managers and lazy, greedy factory workers. In her latest entry at AutoObserver.com, Michelle Krebs tells GM what to do about the former, one of which she recently encountered lazing away the day at a high school sporting event: Get rid of them! 

Problem is, these groups aren’t the problem.

For my Ph.D. thesis (executive summary here) I spent a year and a half inside GM observing how its product development organization operated. And I did see a number of mid-level managers who didn’t appear to produce much. But, unlike Ms. Krebs, I also observed why they didn’t produce much. The way GM was organized and operated made it very difficult for anyone, even someone near the top, to get things done. Anyone with an idea and a strong motivation to make it happen was prone to frustration and eventually burn-out. I went so far as to describe the predominant mood within the organization as frustration. Many of these people were bright, and they often had great ideas. They just had no way to execute them. Over time, those most interested in getting things done are also the most likely to leave. And if they didn’t leave, they were likely to simply give up and go through the motions.

I didn’t spend any time within factories. But Detroit has a history of taking as little input as possible from workers on the line. They told these people that they just wanted their bodies, not their minds. Back in the 1950s, the deal struck between management and labor was that, in return for having no say in how the business was operated, labor would receive generous pay and benefits. Meanwhile, Toyota developed a whole system around applying suggestions from its factory workers.

In both cases, senior management created the situation. They got the middle managers and factory workers they deserved.