William J. Holstein

BusinessWeek Review by David Kiley--And My Response--
April 5, 2009

A Rose-Colored Look Under GM's Hood
Ex-CEO Wagoner may not be to blame for all the automaker's troubles, but William J. Holstein's new book, Why GM Matters, pulls too many punches
By David Kiley

In Why GM Matters: Inside the Race to Transform an American Icon, William J. Holstein walks a precarious line between providing a legitimate and objective explanation of how GM arrived at the government welfare line last year and defending Wagoner as a victim of circumstance rather than a principal architect of a failed business model. However, Holstein, a seasoned business reporter for such publications as BusinessWeek, Fortune, and U.S. News & World Report, has great timing. Indeed, his account might be best as an e-book that gets updated weekly.

Click here for full article


My response: I appreciate the fact that David Kiley reviewed the book for Business Week and spelled my name right. That always helps. And I can see that he struck a balanced position by acknowledging that I had some interesting insights.

But he took two key points out of context. The first is the quote from George Fisher, the lead director, saying that Rick Wagoner was a wonderful human being. Kiley presents this quote without acknowledging that in my book, I warn the reader that it's dangerous to talk to directors about a CEO because they don't always have the most balanced view. And I was trying to explain that the board, led by Fisher, had supported Wagoner over the years because of this bond between the two men. I did not present that quote in isolation; I put it in a much more analytical context than Kiley acknowledged.

The second key quote that Kiley twisted was the one from Wagoner saying he didn't think GM was "ready" for the next step in a management restructuring. I then proceed to quote Alex Taylor of Fortune magazine as raising the possibility that Wagoner was too much of a Southern gentleman and too decent a person to make tough decisions. I don't agree with that interpretation, but I at least acknowledged the possibility.

Overall, Kiley, like others in the media, seem to have a need to blame someone for what went wrong at GM. It is popular to blame Wagoner. That sells magazines and newspapers, I guess. But they are ignoring what Wagoner did inside the organization and they are ignoring the fact that Wagoner was leading GM in the right direction, to overcome decades of management acquiesence to the UAW, lousy manufacturing, bad design, etc. Is it "rose colored" of me to have allowed Wagoner to explain what he was trying to achieve at GM? I obviously disagree with that characterization. I was simply being fair. I remain convinced that Wagoner got a bum's rush from the media and from the Obama administration who did not even attempt to understand Wagoner's role.