Embrace Change - Don't Grab Hold of the Temporary

This post is about change in the business world, but it also about life and death. The collapse of a business is similar to transition in life and the need to accept that sometimes things and people pass on. We can find solace in the passing, take a break and then prepare for something new. Bad news is something that stops us for a while, but we eventually recover and move on. Hope, where the outcome is inevitable, is paralyzing. It prevents us from going forward.



The North American auto industry is taking its last gasps of breath. The reasons are legion and there is no reason to repeat them. Whatever life that is left is temporary and is a massive drain on resources that could be best to use elsewhere. There is hope, but the result is inevitable.



There are two ways to approach the death of the auto industry. One is to extend it a lifeline, in the form of billion dollar bailouts. That will work, just like putting a terminally ill 95-year-old cancer patient on life-support will work. There is always hope right! But it is temporary. Death is inevitable. The money should be spent elsewhere.



The Canadian government is spending $6 billion to bail out GM which now, as it turns out, produces only 15% of its cars in Canada. GM employees about 12,000 people in Canada.



The bailout works out to $500,000 per employee!!



As an alternative, perhaps every employee could get 3 years re-training paid for by the government (paid for with a loan), plus the first 2 years of the re-training, employees would be paid $50,000 each. That works out to $1.2 billion, a fraction of the bailout, which will be temporary and will be followed by the death of GM within a year anyway. In addition, $3.8 billion would be saved which could then be used elsewhere.

Everything in life is temporary. Eventually everything ends. Holding on to the temporary because of hope is not the right way to go. Faith in yourself to move on is the best approach.