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American Turnaround: Reinventing AT&T And GM And The Way We Do Business In The USA (2013)

by Ed Whitacre(Favorite Author)

3.72 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1455513016 (ISBN13: 9781455513017)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Business Plus

review 1: When I was in the 4th or 5th grade, my teacher had each student to pick a company to follow, just to get a feel of business in the US. I picked GM. I got very interested in them and have followed them since. Since then, I have read books on Willie Durant, Alfred Sloan and many others at GM. I have found them all fascinating and Ed Whitacre is no exception.GM had become so inbred and so full of blockages to success that it just seemed that there was no hope. Hurray for Big Ed. It is amazing what one person can sometimes do. Excellent book for anyone but I would especially recommend it to any young manager who wants to know how to get promoted.
review 2: I am a recent retiree who worked at the company during Ed Whitacre's entire tenure as CEO of Southweste... morern Bell/SBC/AT&T. As such, I was mostly interested in reading Mr. Whitacre's description of how he "reinvented" AT&T before moving to GM.I was sorely disappointed that there was very little in this book about the decisions Ed made during his time at AT&T. Other than a couple of anecdotes from his early career at Southwestern Bell and a discussion of the move to San Antonio, Mr. Whitacre didn't write a thing about his strategy while at AT&T. For example, nothing was written about the decisions to buy Pacific Telesis, SNET, Ameritech, and BellSouth. While he did mention that he decided to purchase AT&T despite the opposition of all of his other senior managers, Ed didn't explain why everyone else was opposed to his move. In addition, Mr. Whitacre didn't discuss the major initiatives during his tenure (e.g., U-Verse, Project Pronto) or some of the failed acquisitions (e.g., West Midlands Cable Communications, Hauser Communications). In short, I honestly don't know how Mr. Whitacre reinvented AT&T even after reading this book.As for Mr. Whitacre's tenure at GM, it appears the process used to reinvent GM consisted of setting up an organization chart, firing the interim CEO, making Ed the new CEO, eating at the cafeteria with other GM employees, making unannounced visits to various GM sites, and promoting a couple of senior managers to executive positions. Nothing was written about other important topics such as changes to union work rules or improvements to car quality/styling. In short, this book was lacking in both details and insight. less

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