#121 Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan (General Motors)

They were oil and water in all respects. Billy Durant, the high school dropout, was a flamboyant dreamer and gambler. Focus on personal relationships and risk. Alfred Sloane, the MIT engineer, was the stern organizer and manager. Focus on data, logic, and profit.

Billy managed to create General Motors in bold defiance of the industrial and financial powers of his day. Alfred went on to transform it into the largest and most successful enterprise the world has ever seen. Today, executives and employees all over the globe in all kinds of businesses are dealing with the effects of precedents set in motion by what these two men wrought in the first half of the twentieth century. Their business legacies, like their lives. Are studies in contrast?

Billy was done in by his own wizardry and expanding his empire through financial manipulation and speculation. Alfred mastered both the art of corporate vision and the science of nuts and bolts management. Yet his tragic failure to understand the changing nature of the relationships between employees, company, and government. Left a legacy of resentment and mistrust. that remains unresolved today.

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