Turning Around the Big Three

I have turned around a business (computer) for the Bankruptcy Court, and I do not want to lose the Big Three, either. Chapter 11 is only “restructuring” – not Chapter 7 selloff and complete layoff. Chapter 11 does mean payment of outstanding debt at some lesser %, renegotiation of labor contracts, reduction of frills, lowering of salaries and possibly some layoffs – but not necessarily closing plants or general layoffs.   

When I spoke to the staff, I said, “There will be layoffs and pain. This is a lifeboat, and some must perish that the others may live. I don’t look at it as firing some, but as saving the remainder. We will save far more than we sacrifice.”

(I was turning around the company in the morning, and a 50,000 member non-profit association in the afternoon. Both turnarounds were successful.)

Bureaucracies (corporate and governmental) all purchase “extras”, and hire extra when they can, just to make life easier – but in some bad times they must reduce the load and go back to the bare bones they lived under as they grew. Identifying the extras is not difficult.

I don’t even disparage corporate jets, because this is a world-wide business and time is money – but probably a look at the books will show that the initial rules for needing a corporate jet were “relaxed” for the fourth, fifth and sixth ones: Simply because they were flush with cash, and they could…  now they can’t. The corporations paid people not to work, because they could…now they can’t.

I don’t want to bury the Big Three, I want them around for competition.