The Critical Path: Inventing an Automobile and Reinventing a Corporation

Brock Yates

This book details the management principles followed by the Chrysler team and gives insight into how cars are designed and manufactured. The auto companies have been around for a long time, and for the most part their management structure is unchanged from the turn of the century. Some inovative groups, however, have managed to change the ways cars are designed. This book is about one such experience.

Two important lessons I took away from this book. First, Detroit is clueless when it comes to what people want in a car. They actually debated about whether or not to add a fourth door to the new minivans. Get real! Once someone thought that up, that should have been a no-brainer. As is pointed out in the book, have you ever seen a three-door sedan? Why a three-door minivan?

Now, if they can figure out how to make it so the headlights just shut off when you shut the key off, they'd pretty much have the remaining bugs out of automobile design.

The second interesting lesson was the comparison between the "car guys" and the "bean counters." Chrysler is currently run by "car guys." They came up through engineering into management. They understand how to make great products. The constant tension is with the "bean counters" -- the accountants who see the company as not being about great cars, but being about great profits.

When the bean counters dominate, the company (and therefore the shareholders) lose. It's kind of ironic: The harder you try to make money the harder it is to do.

In any company, the most important way to guarantee a great bottom line is to keep doing what you're all about. When I was at Parsons Technology -- and specifically speaking of the Church Software Division -- we were all about great software. The minute corporate leadership stopped turning out great products and took aim at turning out great profits, we were doomed.

The problem with the bean counter approach is that you get your eyes off something you can achieve and onto something that is supposed to be a side-effect of achievement. It's like pushing on a rope. You're successful when you create a product that people need and want. You can have a richer bottom line by creating that needed product in a cost-effective way -- no argument about that -- but if you try to create products that increase the bottom line... well, there's no way to do that.

Imagine sitting down with a room full of programmers and saying "I want a product that will generate sales of two million dollars and net profits of two hundred thousand." The programmers would just look at you. But tell them you want a church membership database package, or a Bible study program, or an electronic atlas and you'll get exactly what you asked for. And if they do it right, you'll get your bottom line wants fulfilled too.

If you're into business paradigms, cars, or teamwork, this is a great book.