Partner Selection Over Capital

“The dominant mind-set in Detroit, Gibbs discovered, was completely orientated toward high-volume manufacturing and intense specialisation. If you weren’t making 100,000 units of something, nobody was interested. And it was impossible to find anyone who had designed a car, only people who had spent their entire careers designing door handles, fuel pumps, window wipers or other such small pieces of the jigsaw. When they tried to find someone to design the electrical harness — the vehicle’s wiring — the best they could manage in Detroit was a subcontractor who offered to put together a team of 10 people to do the job. That didn’t suit a small start-up company. Gibbs wanted one person who could take responsibility for design and manufacture. Jenkins had to travel to Chicago to find someone, and he came from the whiteware industry.”

“*What made them such an incredibly powerful business duo was that you had two highly competent individuals, not a Batman and Robin set-up where one was junior. Trevor was one of the very best chief executives I’ve seen in my life, while Alan was, without question, the best corporate finance exponent. And Alan wasn’t just a brilliant corporate financier; he could harness strategy alongside it. So to put the two together created an unbelievably good combination, particularly as they kept out of each other’s space. Alan would say, ‘How many people do we employ?’ ‘Aw, about 2500 to 3000,’ Trevor would reply. ‘Thank God you’re there, Trev, I can’t even manage Jacquie.’*[33](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477309-807254973-33)”