Billy Alfred And General Motors

This book is the tale not just of the two extraordinary men of its title but also of the formative decades of twentieth-century America, through two world wars and changes in business, industry, politics, and culture. You couldn’t find two more different men. Billy Durant was the consummate salesman, a brilliant wheeler-dealer with grand plans, unflappable energy, and a fondness for the high life. Alfred Sloan was the intellectual, an expert in business strategy and management, master of all things organizational. Together, this odd couple built perhaps the most successful enterprise in U.S. history, General Motors, and with it an industry that has come to define modern life throughout the world. In Billy, Alfred, and General Motors, business leaders and history buffs alike will discover: timeless lessons, cautionary tales, and motivational inspiration. The book includes vivid, warts-and-all portraits of the legends of the golden age of the automobile, from Henry Ford, Ransom Olds, and Charles Nash to the brilliant but uncredited David Dunbar Buick and Cadillac founder Henry Leland. The impact of Durant and Sloan on their contemporaries and their industry is matched only by the powerful legacy of their improbable and incredible partnership. Characters, events, and context -- all are brought skillfully and passionately to life in this meticulously researched and supremely readable book.

A new edition of the classic book on the flamboyant genius who helped lead America into the automobile age

Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. led the General Motors Corporation to international business success by virtue of his brilliant managerial practices and his insights into the new consumer economy he and General Motors helped to produce. Sloan's business biography, My Years With General Motors, was an instant best seller when it was first published in 1964 and is still considered indispensable reading by modern business giants.

Alfred P. Sloan Jr. became the president of General Motors in 1923 and stepped down as its CEO in 1946. During this time, he led GM past the Ford Motor Company and on to international business triumph by virtue of his brilliant managerial practices and his insights into the new consumer economy he and GM helped to produce. Bill Gates has said that Sloan's 1964 management tome, My Years with General Motors, "is probably the best book to read if you want to read only one book about business." And if you want to read only one book about Sloan, that book should be historian David Farber's Sloan Rules. Here, for the first time, is a study of both the difficult man and the pathbreaking executive. Sloan Rules reveals the GM genius as not only a driven manager of men, machines, money, and markets but also a passionate and not always wise participant in the great events of his day. Sloan, for example, reviled Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal; he firmly believed that politicians, government bureaucrats, and union leaders knew next to nothing about the workings of the new consumer economy, and he did his best to stop them from intervening in the private enterprise system. He was instrumental in transforming GM from the country's largest producer of cars into the mainstay of America's "Arsenal of Democracy" during World War II; after the war, he bet GM's future on renewed American prosperity and helped lead the country into a period of economic abundance. Through his business genius, his sometimes myopic social vision, and his vast fortune, Sloan was an architect of the corporate-dominated global society we live in today. David Farber's story of America's first corporate genius is biography of the highest order, a portrait of an extraordinarily compelling and skillful man who shaped his era and ours.

“Billy Durant (1861-1947) put together General Motors, model by model, and twice lost it — to the bankers and the engineers, and to ego. It’s a big, meaty, broadly suggestive story that Bernard Weisberger tells — properly qualified and documented — to rescue Durant from the ‘oblivion which is the price of failure in America.’ Durant’s fate, it appears, was in his stars. His energy and drive came from maternal grandfather Henry Howland Crapo, midwest magna-merchant, first citizen of Flint, and twice Michigan’s governor. The failure — dreaded and repeatedly — was that of his wastrel father. Leaving school young, he quickly ‘unveiled his true, shining gift, which was salesmanship’ — but not of the conventional, glad-handing sort; rather, he conveyed his own faith in the product, opening new vistas for the customer. The problem, to find a worthy product — or to make one — was solved with the appearance of a simple cart, mounted on ingenious springs, that didn’t jounce. Within hours Durant had bought out the cart ‘factory,’ raised the necessary money, and acquired a partner — the first of the exceptionally able associates (Nash, Champion, Kettering, Chrysler, Sloan) whom he fired with his dreams. The crucial jump into auto production — ‘a whole new physical and economic landscape’ — came with the foundering Buick; and it was then that Durant discovered, critically, the ability to raise money in the stock market from the sale of nebulous assets. As Durant goes on by this means to incorporate GM, to add a parts division, to diversify (‘Frigidaire’ was his name and baby too), Weisberger returns intermittently to his dual nature — the empire-builder impatient of routine and detail. But it was also pride that he’d proven himself not his father’s son that brought Durant down — for he lost GM the second time by trying single-handedly, in 1929, to prop up the tottering market for its stocks; and this madness the Morgans and Du Ponts could not excuse. Nothing, however, becomes Durant more than his failure to admit defeat; after the collapse of another auto company, launched under his name, he returned to Flint to set up, foresightedly, a respectable bowling alley. His ‘pathetic dignity and courage’ cap a memorable personal portrait far above the business-biography norm.” — Kirkus “Billy Durant deserved a good biography, and he got one... Weisberger has... collect[ed] every scrap of information that could be found and [put] it together in a complete picture of Durant and his work. It gives the first comprehensive account of his family background and private life... A variety of interesting figures appear, some well-known, others now forgotten — Alfred P. Sloan, Pierre Du Pont, John J. Raskob, Charles W. Nash, Walter Chrysler, Louis Chevrolet, David D. Buick. Each has a biographical sketch. Durant himself is appraised remarkably dispassionately, good points and bad, from his ability to see the great opportunities in the automobile industry to speculative mania that ultimately destroyed him... [Durant] emerges in this book very much like the protagonist in a Greek tragedy. He rose high and fell far because his great talents were offset be equally great flaws... Billy Durant could make dreams. He just could not make them come true.” — The Washington Post “[A] monumental work... Weisberger, ha[s]... painstakingly explored and researched America’s greatest success story.” — The Lantern (Columbus, Ohio)

The roller-coaster life of the flamboyant creator of General Motors William C. Durant did big things the big way: he overreached, but, until his final failure, he picked up the pieces time after time to confound his competitors. From a turbulent childhood in the small town of Flint, Michigan, to his phenomenal success in creating General Motors, Durant's meteoric career easily rivals the success stories of modern legends like Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, and Bill Gates. With his trademark smile and personal charisma, Durant assembled General Motors in a few short years, buying companies at the rate of one every thirty days. Durant's deal-making artistry even tempted Henry Ford, and had Durant upped his acquisition price Ford would be a division of GM today. Durant's story illuminates the conflict between innovation and control of innovation -of the uneasy alliances struck again and again between inventors and their sources of capital. His years of heady success building General Motors were marked by epic struggles with bankers. But he depended on only a few sources of big money to finance his exploding business, and pitted himself against forces he underestimated or refused to consider. Gambling on a run on GM stock, he was finally forced into a buyout that ousted him from his role in the GM empire. Into the dramatic tale of this early twentieth-century mogul come the fascinating automotive pioneers -Henry Ford, David Buick, Charles Nash, Albert Champion, Louis Chevrolet, and Alfred P. Sloan. On Wall Street, J. P. Morgan turned down Durant's request for a loan while Pierre du Pont invested in Durant's expansion. Tracing the fortunes of a man and his era, The Deal Maker is a fast-paced, rousing tale of Durant's dizzying success and ultimate failure.

The roller-coaster life of the flamboyant creator of General Motors William C. Durant did big things the big way: he overreached, but, until his final failure, he picked up the pieces time after time to confound his competitors. From a turbulent childhood in the small town of Flint, Michigan, to his phenomenal success in creating General Motors, Durant's meteoric career easily rivals the success stories of modern legends like Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, and Bill Gates. With his trademark smile and personal charisma, Durant assembled General Motors in a few short years, buying companies at the rate of one every thirty days. Durant's deal-making artistry even tempted Henry Ford, and had Durant upped his acquisition price Ford would be a division of GM today. Durant's story illuminates the conflict between innovation and control of innovation -of the uneasy alliances struck again and again between inventors and their sources of capital. His years of heady success building General Motors were marked by epic struggles with bankers. But he depended on only a few sources of big money to finance his exploding business, and pitted himself against forces he underestimated or refused to consider. Gambling on a run on GM stock, he was finally forced into a buyout that ousted him from his role in the GM empire. Into the dramatic tale of this early twentieth-century mogul come the fascinating automotive pioneers -Henry Ford, David Buick, Charles Nash, Albert Champion, Louis Chevrolet, and Alfred P. Sloan. On Wall Street, J. P. Morgan turned down Durant's request for a loan while Pierre du Pont invested in Durant's expansion. Tracing the fortunes of a man and his era, The Deal Maker is a fast-paced, rousing tale of Durant's dizzying success and ultimate failure.

From the New York Times bestselling author of My Share of the Task and Leaders, a manual for leaders looking to make their teams more adaptable, agile, and unified in the midst of change. When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2004, he quickly realized that conventional military tactics were failing. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a decentralized network that could move quickly, strike ruthlessly, then seemingly vanish into the local population. The allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment, and training—but none of that seemed to matter. To defeat Al Qaeda, they would have to combine the power of the world’s mightiest military with the agility of the world’s most fearsome terrorist network. They would have to become a "team of teams"—faster, flatter, and more flexible than ever. In Team of Teams, McChrystal and his colleagues show how the challenges they faced in Iraq can be rel­evant to countless businesses, nonprofits, and or­ganizations today. In periods of unprecedented crisis, leaders need practical management practices that can scale to thousands of people—and fast. By giving small groups the freedom to experiment and share what they learn across the entire organiza­tion, teams can respond more quickly, communicate more freely, and make better and faster decisions. Drawing on compelling examples—from NASA to hospital emergency rooms—Team of Teams makes the case for merging the power of a large corporation with the agility of a small team to transform any organization.