For example, General Motors announced in August 1999 that it will launch eGM , a new division to gather together its extranets, online ordering for consumers and businesses, and dashboard computers. If GM is serious, it is likely to provide one of the most visible case studies of how collapsing supply chains and providing direct customer access into the manufacturing, distribution, and lifetime marketing processes will work. If GM is not serious, eventually someone else will be and GM will play catch up. Meanwhile, with the exceptions of the GMs and the some brand-new Internet companies, our organizations operate more or less as they always have. We have networked our computers, but we ask the same staff do the same things in the same way.
Most organizations have yet to rearrange their machines and re-design their work flows.
To get GM's employees to think differently about information will take many years and cause many employees to find employment elsewhere. To the extent that GM is successful, their organizational chart will flatten. Upper management especially will feel betrayed, that the rules they played by have changed. It won't be pretty. This course anticipates that you will spend most of your working life in schools making a transition similar to GM's.