CHAPTER 1

THE OUTSIDER'SPERSPECTIVE

A seafaring career was not Dave's destiny, which he discoveredtoward the end of his three-year tour in the Coast Guard. He hadheld the title of "plank owner" for serving on the Eastwind longerthan any other officer and had outlasted three captains. He hadexperienced many missions aboard the icebreaker, with its crew oftwo hundred and its storied history, which included capturing aGerman ship off the coast of Greenland in World War II. DuringDave's time aboard her, the Eastwind had made three trips to theArctic and one to the Antarctic, once getting frozen in the ice fortwo weeks. Dave had made the acquaintance of Admiral RichardE. Byrd when the famed explorer traveled on the ship on its wayto McMurdo Sound. One mission was memorialized for Dave ina picture of him on the frozen deck with two-inch icicles hangingoff the ship's rails. But with six months left in his tour, and theEastwind about to depart on another long Antarctic expedition, hewas transferred to a buoy tender in Boston Harbor. These shipsmaintain navigational buoys and perform other duties to aid navigationin America's waterways.

On board, Dave spoke to other officers about his next move.He could reenlist, which was the decision his superiors preferred.He was set on more education, though, and talked about pursuingan engineering degree. He had no specific goals, but he knew hedid not want to end up teaching, a career for many with a liberal artsdegree like his. The other officers steered him away from moreundergraduate studies. "They said, 'You should be looking at anMBA degree,'" Dave says. "I had to ask them, 'What's an MBA?'"

He looked into it and decided to apply. True to his methodicalnature, he researched the top schools and applied to six of them.The first to respond was the Wharton School of Business at theUniversity of Pennsylvania. The dean wrote informally, encouragingDave's application, because, he said, they needed liberal artsstudents as well as those with a business background. "So I immediatelysigned up with Wharton," Dave recalls. He later learned hehad been accepted to three other schools.

He spent two years studying business and finance. It was a farcry from his studies at Holy Cross, where he had completed hisliberal arts education by submitting a senior thesis on the philosophyof Don Quixote, the fictional character created by Miguel deCervantes who "tilted at windmills," attempting to joust againstimaginary giants. That iconic scene has come to symbolize fruitlesseffort, something a successful business leader can ill afford.But Dave's thesis took another approach to the famous joustingscene: he saw it as an idiom about Quixote's foolishness of stickingwith the outmoded culture of a knight-errant while the worldchanged around him. This was a theme that would resurfaceregularly in Dave Power's later work with a seemingly immovableobject: the U.S. auto industry. The industrial juggernaut clung tolegacy product and manufacturing methods while informed consumerswere beginning to demand something different.

Studying the Rambler

Toward the end of his MBA studies, Dave had his first professionalinvolvement with the industry he was to serve. He was ona team of students responsible for analyzing American MotorsCompany (AMC) and what the automaker needed to do to makeits Rambler a viable competitor in a U.S. car market dominatedby the Big Three (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler). AMC wasformed in 1954 from the merger of Nash-Kelvinator and the HudsonMotor Car Company. Manufactured in Kenosha, Wisconsin,the Rambler—a legacy from Nash—was redesigned in 1956 in abid to distinguish the model from those of the large automakers.AMC President George Romney was staking much on the redesign,which gave the car a lower look and bigger engine but stillpositioned it as a smaller, more fuel-efficient car. This was thesituation that Dave's team analyzed.

"It was my first rigorous exposure to the automobile industry,and I was fascinated," he recalls. He and his teammates wouldhave long conversations about the Rambler and the auto industryin general. The team analyzed the Rambler business model, evaluatedsales trends, and duly delivered a paper that was skepticalof the Rambler's prospects. For the first time, Dave was thinkingabout a profession, and the idea of a career in the auto industryproved an attractive one. "I learned that one out of seven jobs inthe U.S. was somehow connected to the automobile industry," hesays. "It seemed to me the automobile industry was the place tobe." Intrigued, he carefully inspected the list of companies recruitingat the Wharton placement office and made it a point to interviewwith every car company. Of course, he also felt it importantto consider the merits of other industries and he eventually interviewedwith management consultant firm McKinsey & Company,an insurance company, and a number of government agencies.

Dave was particularly excited to meet the recruiter from GeneralMotors, by far the biggest automaker and, at that time, oneof the largest companies in the world. Furthermore, it was acompany at which Dave had family—an uncle was high on themanagement team. But his excitement was soon replaced by disappointmentat the New York-based recruiter's approach. "He displayeda superior attitude," Dave recalls. "He started the interviewby asking me, 'What makes you think you can do anything forGeneral Motors?'" It was as if GM knew it all and there was nothingDave, or any student, could offer. Some weeks later Dave wasin...