Review: My Years with General Motors

My Years with General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan Jr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read “My Years at General Motors” when I was in college, roughly 32 years ago. My interest at the time was in reading a piece of business history, and I find I still recall a number of topics covered in the book. I can’t say that for many books I read so many decades back. I think that what struck me was that Sloan and his managers really changed how things worked, and organized the automotive industry in a way I see many companies trying to organize their industries today. As I think about it, I realize that what made this book resonate with me all those years ago was that I recognized so many of the business and technical innovations that Sloan described, innovations that really created the world I lived in by being embedded in every organization I interacted with, from schools and colleges to Kmart to the Boy Scouts. I learned of customer segmentation from Sloan’s division of cars by class of the customer they aimed at, Chevy for the masses and Caddy for the upper class, with Olds, Buick, etc. falling in the middle, and with defined target customers. That business move lasted decades and drove changes, usually replication, across the industry. I also remember learning about technical innovation – the good and the bad. Sloan described some of the innovations that GM came up with, including, if I recall correctly, leaded gasoline. Some innovation is right for the times but wrong for other times. Other innovations included allowing car buyers to buy on credit, and building a massive organizational structure with staff departments and hierarchy and span of control optimized to the company’s needs. I also learned of Detroit, and of Dayton, GM hotbed of research. This book made me think highly of Dayton, and when I visited there for a job interview soon after I read Sloan’s book I felt I understood the city a bit better.

I’ve read other reviews that point out that Sloan’s book could be quite dry, with long company memos recorded. Thankfully, the years have allowed me to forget those kinds of difficulties in reading. While I do remember this was a challenge to read through, my interest was kept high by reading of the growth of modern big business from an early master. Impactful.


View all my reviews