Customer Reviews

Irreconcilable Differences (Signet)

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This book was a pretty good account of GM's problems in the 1980's. Anyone who's read "Comeback" has heard this before: a slow, stubborn, unresponsive company does everything it can except learn how to make better cars.

A problem that I had with the book was the first section which was a brief overview of Ross Perot's life. I like Ross Perot, but the hero worship in the first section even got to me. Based on the first section and other parts of the book, this is obviously Perot's side of the story.

Overall it was interesting to read about GM's incompetence during this time. It was also instructive to read how Roger Smith had some good ideas but couldn't implement any of them, and so was ultimately seen as incompetent himself. History has largely ruled on this subject: Perot and EDS were right and GM was wrong.

Finally, I was disappointed that there weren't more good "zingers" from Perot in the book. I'd rather have had less about the contractual negotiations and more accounts of Perot's comments regarding GM and their board.

I worked for EDS for 20 years and this book helped explain many things that we heard rumblings about but went forever unexplained - for example, when Ken Reidlinger was let go. I agree that this book is probably slanted more towards Perot's side of the story but I think it is made clear that Perot made himself much more accessible for his side of the story than the GM'ers did, so obviously that is going to be reflected in writing. As an insider, it was great to finally be able to piece together the disastrous events leading up to GM getting it's hands on EDS.

The story of Ross Perot and GM is almost twenty years old, but it highlights much of what is wrong with GM today - a cultural simultaneously resistant to change, and a top management attempting to infuse automation from above - first in the plants, and second via Perot's EDS. The quagmire that results - organizational and process related as much as strategy and technology - is similar to the problems of GM today. Read and learn!