Brian Gongol
So...how about that 100-year plan, Chrysler?
Businesses ought to have long-term business plans...and by long term, that means planning for the next 100 years. Many people will dismiss such a notion out of hand, positing that "Nobody can tell what will happen over the next 100 years." Au contraire. True, we never know exactly what will happen in 100 years. But we also don't know exactly what will happen in 100 seconds. Planning for any period of time -- 100 seconds, 100 days, or 100 years alike -- means assessing the likely conditions and situations and preparing a response with a knowledge of the likelihoods to emerge, not carving an agenda in stone. Chrysler is now emerging (in a sense) from a messy and deeply political bankruptcy brought on by years of bad decisions. Yet even in 1958, Chrysler officials knew that the future would require them to build new and different cars, including electric-powered vehicles. They had 50 years to get the situation right, but didn't. What's amazing today is how so many people are willing to take extraordinary and perhaps even outlandish steps in the name of preventing global warming, but yet they look right past the obvious disasters in our immediate future -- like the fiscal implosion of the Medicare program. The debt crisis is right in front of our eyes, but it's treated as though it's 200 years away.
