Frases de Alfred P. Sloan

Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr. foi Investidor e executivo norte-americano.

Foi presidente da General Motors, de 1923 a 1937. Em 1967 foi incluído no Automotive Hall of Fame.

Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr, foi um famoso executivo da indústria automobilística americana. Filho de um mecânico, nasceu em 23 de maio de 1875, sendo o primeiro de cinco filhos. Desde cedo sempre demonstrou grande capacidade intelectual, destacando-se nas escolas públicas por onde estudou, assim como no Instituto Politécnico do Brooklyn. Em 1892 formou-se em engenharia elétrica no Instituto de Tecnologia de Massachusetts, como o mais novo membro de sua turma.

Alfred Sloan começou sua carreira como desenhista em uma pequena oficina mecânica, a Hyatt Roller Bearing. Em 1898, casou-se com Irene Jackson de Roxbury, Massachusetts. No ano seguinte, ele se tornou presidente da Hyatt, onde supervisionou todos os aspectos do negócio da empresa, fazendo com que ela crescesse rapidamente sob sua liderança. Em 1916, a Hyatt se fundiu com a United Motors Corporation, da qual Sloan também tornou-se presidente. Dois anos depois, a empresa foi comprada pela General Motors, sucedendo na nomeação de Alfred Sloan para vice-presidente de acessórios e membro do Comitê Executivo da GM.

Inventou a arte de administrar uma grande corporação. Quando entrou na empresa, na década de 20, a GM era o caos, um emaranhado de negócios dispersos e desordenados. Endividada e com a produção à beira do colapso, a General Motors quase foi à falência. Sloan assumiu a presidência em 1923 e criou as divisões corporativas. Sua missão: dar suporte à produção, prover recursos financeiros, organizar fábricas, suprir mão-de-obra. A organização, sob seu comando, passaria a ser controlada por orçamentos, sistemas de contratação, relatórios de vendas.

Sloan adotou a estratégia de um carro "para cada bolso e propósito". Sua linha ia do aristocrático Cadillac ao proletário Chevrolet. Resultado: em 1940, a GM alcançou o topo do mercado, com 47,5% das vendas, uma posição que seu concorrente não mais recuperaria. Wikipedia  

✵ 23. Maio 1875 – 17. Fevereiro 1966
Alfred P. Sloan photo
Alfred P. Sloan: 47   citações 0   Curtidas

Alfred P. Sloan: Frases em inglês

“There has to be this pioneer, the individual who has the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worth while, especially when it is new and different.”

Variante: There has to be this pioneer, the individual who has the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worth while, especially when it is new and different.
Fonte: Adventures of a White-Collar Man. 1941, p. 127

“Take my assets — but leave me my organization and in five years I'll have it all back.”

Alfred P. Sloan in the 1920s, cited in: Thomas S. Bateman, ‎Scott Snell (1999), Management: building competitive advantage. p. 276

“The business of business is business.”

Widely attributed to Milton Friedman, and sometimes cited as being in his work Capitalism and Freedom (1962) this is also attributed to Alfred P. Sloan, sometimes with citation of a statement of 1964, but sometimes with attestations to his use of it as a motto as early as 1923.
Disputed

“You of course appreciate that this industry of ours the automotive industry is today the greatest in the world. Three or four years ago it passed, in volume, steel and steel products, the next largest industry. This means, expressed otherwise, that upon its prosperity depends the prosperity of many millions of our citizens and the degree to which it has become stabilized in turn has a tremendous influence on the stabilization of industry as a whole, and therefore on the prosperity and happiness of still many more of our citizens. Directly and indirectly, this industry distributes hundreds of millions of dollars annually to those who are connected with it, in one way or another, as workers. It also distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in the aggregate to those who have invested in its securities. The purchasing power of this total aggregation, as you must appreciate, is tremendous.
I believe that if you questioned many of your readers as to the present position of the automotive industry, they would tell you that it is growing by leaps and bounds. I believe further you would sense uncertainty as to what is going to happen in the industry when the so-called state of saturation is reached. I do not know whether you appreciate it or not, but the industry has not grown very much during the past three or four years. It is practically stabilized at the present time.”

Fonte: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 331-2: Speech by President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., delivered to representatives of the automotive press at the Proving Ground on September 28, 1927.

“It was not, however, a matter of interest to me only with respect to my divisions, since as a member of the Executive Committee, I was a kind of general executive and so had begun to think from the corporate viewpoint. The important thing was that no one knew how much was being contributed — plus or minus — by each division to the common good of the corporation. And since, therefore, no one knew, or could prove, where the efficiencies and inefficiencies lay, there was no objective basis for the allocation of new investment. This was one of the difficulties with the expansion program of that time. It was natural for the divisions to compete for investment funds, but it was irrational for the general officers of the corporation not to know where to place the money to best advantage. In the absence of objectivity it was not surprising that there was a lack of real agreement among the general officers. Furthermore, some of them had no broad outlook, and used their membership on the Executive Committee mainly to advance the interests of their respective divisions.
The important thing was that no one knew how much was being contributed—plus or minus—by each division to the common good of the corporation. And since, therefore, no one knew, or could prove, where the efficiencies and inefficiencies lay, there was no objective basis for the allocation of new investment.”

Fonte: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 48-49

“The industry has not grown much during the past three or four years. It is practically stabilized at the present [1927]. What has taken place is a shift from one manufacturer to another.”

Fonte: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 210. Sloan in his Proving Ground address in 1927 to automobile editors, in discussing the so-called saturation point.

“In the spring of 1920, General Motors found itself, as it appeared at the moment, in a good position. On account of the limitation of automotive production during the war there was a great shortage of cars. Every car that could be produced was produced and could be sold at almost any price. So far as any one could see, there was no reason why that prosperity should not continue for a time at least. I liken our position then to a big ship in the ocean. We were sailing along at full speed, the sun was shining, and there was no cloud in the sky that would indicate an approaching storm. Many of you have, of course, crossed the ocean and you can visualize just that sort of a picture yet what happened? In September of that year, almost over night, values commenced to fall. The liquidation from the inflated prices resulting from the war had set in. Practically all schedules or a large part of them were cancelled. Inventory commenced to roll in, and, before it was realized what was happening, this great ship of ours was in the midst of a terrific storm. As a matter of fact, before control could be obtained General Motors found itself in a position of having to go to its bankers for loans aggregating $80,000,000 and although, as we look at things from today's standpoint, that isn't such a very large amount of money, yet when you must have $80,000,000 and haven't got it, it becomes an enormous sum of money, and if we had not had the confidence and support of the strongest banking interests our ship could never have weathered the storm.”

Fonte: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 185-6; Retrospective vein President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., addressing the automobile editors of American newspapers at the Proving Ground at Milford, Michigan in 1927.

“Having been connected with industry during my entire life, it seems eminently proper that I should turn back, in part, the proceeds of that activity with the hope of promoting a broader as well as a better understanding of the economic principles and national policies which have characterized American enterprise down through the years.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1936); Cited in: " OBITUARY : Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Dead at 90; G.M. Leader and Philanthropist http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0523.html," the New York Times, February 18, 1966. This article comments:
Toward the end of the year [1936] Mr. Sloan made a substantial foray into philanthropy by endowing the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation with $10-million.

“My father was in the wholesale tea, coffee, and cigar business, with a firm called Bennett-Sloan and Company. In 1885 he moved the business to New York City, on West Broadway, and from the age of ten I grew up in Brooklyn. I am told I still have the accent. My father's father was a schoolteacher. My mother's father was a Methodist minister. My parents had five children, of whom I am the oldest. There is my sister, Mrs. Katharine Sloan Pratt, now a widow. There are my three brothers — Clifford, who was in the advertising business; Harold, a college professor; and Raymond, the youngest, who is a professor, writer, and expert on hospital administration. I think we have all had in common a capability for being dedicated to our respective interests.
I came of age at almost exactly the time when the automobile business in the United States came into being. In 1895 the Duryeas, who had been experimenting with motor cars, started what I believe was the first gasoline-automobile manufacturing company in the United States. In the same year I left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a a BS. in electrical engineering, and went to work for the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company of Newark, later of Harrison, New Jersey. The Hyatt antifriction bearing was later to become a component of the automobile, and it was through this component that I came into the automotive industry. Except for one early and brief departure from it, I have spent my life in the industry.”

Fonte: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 37