Tom Morris - If Aristotle Ran General Motors: The New Soul of Business

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CONTENTS

PREFACE

Reinventing Corporate Spirit

If Aristotle ran General Motors, what would he do? How would one of the greatest thinkers and wisest of people in all of human history, the student of Plato and the teacher of Alexander the Great, create lasting excellence and long-term success in the business world of today? What would he focus on? How would he shake things up? If you could magically connect with this great philosopher and seek some personal advice about your business, or about your life, what would he suggest that you pay attention to? What would he advise you to do?

Many of us seem to live stretches of our lives and do our work much of the time as if we think we have to make it all up from scratch as we go along. Or, at best, as if we can only borrow ideas and strategies of action from those people who happen to live and work around us in our own time. We appear to forget that extraordinarily wise people have gone before us, have grappled with many of the same basic issues that we face today, and have bequeathed to us great ideas that we can use.

The philosophers of the centuries, from Plato and Aristotle to the present day, have left us the equivalent of a huge bank account of wisdom that we can draw on for a wealth of insight applicable to both business and the rest of life. We can invest this intellectual capital in our own careers and experiences and reap tremendous returns of new wisdom as a result. If we let the great philosophers guide our thinking, and if we then begin to become philosophers ourselves, we put ourselves in the very best position to move toward genuine excellence, true prosperity, and deeply satisfying success in our businesses, our families, and our lives. Why should we settle for anything less?

It may be argued that peoples for whom philosophers legislate are always prosperous.

ARISTOTLE

In this book I will present some very good news for everyone who cares about the attainment of long-term business excellence and the experience of personal happiness at work amid the turbulent and challenging times we face. This is not a book specifically about General Motors, as distinct from any other contemporary business concerned with basic issues of productivity, competitiveness, and success. I use the name of this famous, paradigmatic American organization in my title as emblematic of any group of people working together. And I wont draw on just the ideas of Aristotle for wisdom, although he will often be my leading light. His name is also to some extent symbolic, representative of all the great thinkers whose insights can shed light on the problems we now face, in business and in life.

But my title also has another deep resonance that I should explain. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1952, the year of my birth, Charles Erwin Wilson, former president of General Motors and later to be Dwight D. Eisenhowers secretary of defense, made one of the most notorious statements of the twentieth century when he proclaimed,

What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and whats good for General Motors is good for the country.

Critics at the time purported to be stunned by this pronouncement, and commentators ever since have characterized it as a shameless expression of the ultimate in corporate hubris. It seemed to indicate a perverse transvaluation of civic values and betray the radically bloated self-importance not merely of a single company but, more broadly, of industry, commerce, and economics. But when this statement is understood in the most fundamental way possible, I think that its absolutely right. In this book I will show why.

I believe there are some basic truths, discernible by philosophical reflection, which undergird any sort of human excellence or flourishing, whether in a company like General Motors or in the country at large. In our families, friendships, neighborhoods, communities, civic organizations, and business relationships, four profound but simple foundationsuniversally accessible, pervasively applicable, and incredibly effectiveunderlie the attainment and sustaining of the very best results. It is these four foundations, and the path of wisdom they make possible, that we will explore in this book. Well see that, at bottom, whats good for the country is indeed good for General Motors, and that whats good for General Motors is very good for all the rest of us as well. Regardless of the context, however small or large, whenever people live or work together, the same basic principles must be used to take us to the highest possible level of excellence and keep us there.

I believe that a few simple but powerful ideas drawn from Aristotle as well as from many other great philosophers of the past can help us reenergize our ways of doing business, reinvigorate our workplaces, and reinvent corporate spirit for our time. Ultimately, greatness is rooted in simplicity, if we make consistent use of the most fundamental, simple concepts and truths about excellence as foundations for everything we do.

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

By examining the four simple foundations for all sustainable business and personal excellence, well in the end come to see what I think the philosopher Aristotle would focus on if he ran General Motors, if he gave you advice, or even if he helped lead our nation into the future.

Inner Foundations for Excellence

I was recently at a golf resort in Florida with a group of insurance executives. On the first day there, a foursome decided to get in an early round before the formal meetings began. Stepping up to the first tee and making all his normal preparations, the first up of this group took his swing and completely missed the ball. His colleagues, who had played with him many times before, were quite surprised. Without any hesitation, he turned, looked at them with an expression of shock, and said, Tough course.

The quick-witted golfer revealed with this remark one of the deepest human tendencies. Many of us seem to have an inborn inclination to blame our problems on external circumstances, on forces outside our control. We deflect attention away from ourselves and our own inner states, and focus on something else. Nowhere is this more evident than in modern business. So often we hear about global competition, technological change, the unpredictable economy, organizational restructuring, shareholder demands, or skyrocketing expectations. Tough course.

I suggest that the single most important factor for dealing with all the problems we now face in our business lives is our ability to look within and examine the inner foundations of our own business practices and business relationships. Together we will see how four foundations of human excellence should govern all that we do, both inside our organizations and with all our customers and suppliers.

The key to sustainable success in the world today, Ive come to believe, is provided by some of our most ancient wisdom about the human spirit, in the context of our individual lives and our corporate endeavors. Throughout this book well focus on the life of business as our springboard for reflection, but well find ourselves most often drawing conclusions that apply more broadly to the whole business of life as well.