How GM Went Global
Written by William Pelfrey.
Today’s General Motors has grown to include manufacturing operations in 34 countries, nearly 24,000 dealerships in more than a hundred countries, and 284,000 employees worldwide. It is a global company and a global team by any definition.
Here's how it started.
The company first looked beyond its home market in the U.S. with the creation of an export office in New York City in 1911, with a staff of just three people.
In the 1920s, the first manufacturing operations were established outside North America. By the 1930s, this network included China, India, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Africa, and the Middle East as well as Europe.
While all these operations were under the GM umbrella, each country operated largely on its own, with little coordination among the various units and little direction from the home office in Detroit. The key communication link was a quarterly in-house magazine called GM World, which reported on the various countries’ sales and operations and included human interest stories on the comings and goings of employees.
The units continued to operate largely on their own until the 1980s, when the creation of GM Europe integrated all European operations.
By the 1990s, however, with competition intensifying and new markets emerging, the need for even further global integration was clear. Speed and nimbleness were crucial, and the old culture of going-it-alone was inhibiting both.
In 1998, not only all operations but all functions, including engineering, design, and product development, were put under a single global organizational structure.
The transformation to one company and one team around the world has been a learning experience for all, and the process continues. GM today is a far more creative, agile, and effective enterprise than anyone imagined when it all started with three people in a New York City office back in 1911.