The tools and techniques used at Sears, Roebuck might have been right, sometimes even spectacular. And the managers who ran the GM programs might have been the best and the brightest. Certainly the best and the brightest people traditionally have been attracted to the biggest and the best companies, like GM and IBM. But the programs themselves were based on assumptions that were flawed. John Kenneth Galbraith, when asked what he believed was America’s perception of the country’s giant corporations, said that we feared corporate power. Today, we fear corporate incompetence! All companies are in trouble
