Word: sloan
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Selling Ideas. Sloan was a man of almost cadaverous appearance (6 ft., 130 Ibs.) and unfailing courtesy. "I never give orders," he once said. "I sell my ideas to my associates if I can." He generally could, and many of his ideas still stand as guiding principles for G.M. In the auto industry's infancy, Henry Ford produced economical, unchanging, sober-styled Model Ts for a mass market. It was Sloan who first sensed that Americans wanted something more than mere wheels and a combustion engine. "Mr. Ford," he later recalled, "failed to realize that it was necessary...
...Under Sloan's pioneering presidency, G.M. emphasized the closed body instead of the open touring car, pushed used-car trade-ins, installment buying, annual model changes, and built a six-car price range from Chevrolet to Cadillac that encouraged buyers to trade up. Sloan had definite ideas about styling, and he did not always like what he saw, even at G.M. In 1957 he was particularly distressed at one industry trend. "They're not making cars any more," he complained. "They're making fins...
...Should Be President." Sloan originally came to G.M. through a rear door. He was born in New Haven, Conn., and early in life showed a natural mechanical ability. He earned an engineering degree from M.I.T. in a whirlwind three years, then went to work for the near-bankrupt Hyatt Roller Bearing Co. of Harrison, N.J. Convinced that Hyatt had possibilities, Sloan persuaded his father, a well-to-do wholesale grocer and tea importer, to buy a controlling interest in Hyatt-and let Junior run the company. Within six months, Hyatt began to show profits. Within 17 years, profits had mounted...
...best of all Sloan's bearing customers was William Crapo Durant, who was trying to assemble a motley collection of auto companies into a corporation he called General Motors. Durant was also tying his suppliers together as United Motors Corp., bought Hyatt for $13.5 million as part of United. Durant had taken such a fancy to Sloan that he hired him to become United's president. United was eventually merged into General Motors and Durant was ousted by the Du Pont family, already large G.M. stockholders. New President Pierre S. Du Pont asked Sloan to stay as operations...
When Pierre Du Pont retired from G.M.'s presidency, Sloan was his natural successor. He took over a sprawling infant that made five nonintegrated car lines, ran such supply companies as Fisher Body and United Motors with little thought of inventory control, cached its cash wherever division man agers wanted to keep it. Sloan set up a seemingly contradictory system: a committee management in which operations were decentralized, finances and policy centralized. Above it all was "Mr. Sloan," as he was always called...