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Susan Docherty, a life-long career woman at GM, suddenly wants to stay at home with her husband and 13 year old son, or so GM wants us to believe. According to Selim Bingol's troops, Docherty "announced her intention to leave General Motors to spend time with her family, effective September 30." Docherty is 49, that's no retirement age. Three years ago, Ed Niedermeyer and TTAC was "looking forward to her departure from General Motors." Now his wish is fulfilled. In the tradition of Farago's death watches, things always take a little longer than expected at GM, but eventually, they happen. Usually, they happen too late. Docherty's career was in trouble when it reached new heights. After Bob Lutz retired (sort of), Ed Whitacre merged GM's Sales, Marketing, and Service into one job and to everybody's bafflement, Susan got the job, and the kiss of death. That job would have been too big for bona-fide superstars, with Docherty, it was the Peter Principle in instant action. Just three months later, she had to give half her job, and with sales the most important part, to Mark Reuss. A few month after that, Joel Ewanick took the other half – which soon proved too big a pair of shoes even for certified miracle maker Ewanick. He may have been able to walk on water – but parting a sea of shit was beyond even his abilities. In her wake, Docherty left a flotsam of ditzy memories. Her "Volt Dance" became Internet luz-material . Her Fastlane live chat performance turned into an embarrassment. She was unable to face reality in regards to GM's incentive levels, and her Chevy tagline "Excellence For Everyone" was an instant flop. Docherty was shipped far, far away, to China as VP of sales, marketing and after sales of GMIO. What ostensibly was a lateral move, was a demotion. Being the marketing chief for disparate regions and cultures, all the way from China to Africa, is a tough job when you can't understand either headline or copy, and when the agency keeps saying ", sorry, Sir, errr, Miss, that's impossible to translate, but it is very witty in Mongolian." Or when you make a suggestion, and the local viceroys tell you "super idea, but I would be stoned for it back in Burkina Faso." In the best of cases, everybody agrees on a strategy, then they go home and do whatever they please. As long as sales go up, nobody will notice. If they don't …. A little more than a year later, Docherty was out in Shanghai and on her way to Zurich, where she led GM's punishment battalion on a suicide mission: She was put in charge of Chevrolet and Cadillac Europe. The European automotive industry, Saudi Arabia, and Switzerland are the last holdouts of male chauvinism, and Susan was in two out of three. As if that wasn't enough, Cadillac will be a mild success in Europe when Elvis returns in a pink one, but not earlier. Chevrolet, for all intents and purposes a new brand nobody in Europe has been waiting for, is dipping its toes into a market where the auto trade resembles a pool of starving piranhas. Good luck with that pedicure. It's probably not her fault, but on Docherty's watch, EU Chevrolet sales dropped more than 30 percent in the first five months of this year. Hit squads dispatched from the RenCen to find the guilty rounded up Docherty and were done with it. Where to send her now? North Korea? Let's send her home. from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com | |||
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