Planning Case

1. What does the Chevy Volt case tell you about the nature of strategic decision making at a large complex organization like GM?

The Chevy Volt case indicated that a large complex organization needs to have the same strategic mind set in all of its departments/divisions in order to have the same strategic goal. The Chevy Volt project was created by two top managements while others disagreed. However, if the importance of this project was not communicated throughout the organization, it would have had a better support from every departments and might have launched sooner or have a better product.

2. What trends in the external environment favored the pursuit of Chevy Volt project?

The trends in external environment that favored the pursuit of Chevy Volt project were as following:

1) The rising oil price that people concerned of the most and they tend to consider buying the energy saving car.

2) The growing global warming problem and the carbon emission regulation and growing the trend of green energy.

3) The lithium ion batteries were becoming more powerful hence less manufacturing cost.

4) The success of Toyota Prius hybrid car indicated the demand for fuel-efficient car.

5) The buyers' tax credit of a battery-powered technology car results in less cost for customers.

3. What impediments to pursuing this project do you think existed within GM?

The impediment of this project was doubt. This project was a big change for GM, it had to switch from the fuel cell which company had already invested billions in developing to lithium ion battery its performance was still in doubt. Moreover, the company already had one failure with an electric car of EV1. Lead change is always a hard job, the top managements need to give a clear direction and set strategic goal for all employees to follow in order to success with this project. Once the employee have no doubt and ready to go all in, the project is most likely to success.

4. The plan for the Chevy Volt seems to be based partly on the assumption that oil prices would remain high, and yet in late 2008, oil process collapsed in the wake of a sharp global economic slowdown.

a. What does this tell you about the nature of strategic plans?

When planning a strategic plan, the company needs to assess and analysis the internal and external factors which have effect to the success of the business. However, internal and external can be changed at any time and when they do change, the company needs to adapt or revise the plan accordingly in order to achieve the goal.