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003. Chrysler

In 1980, Chrysler Corporation, the third largest US automobile producer, was on the verge of bankruptcy. Over the past three years it had lost $3.3 billion, a record in the industrial world at that time. It had borrowed billions of dollars from more than 400 banks, then received a bailout from the US Government. With all that support, the company got down to its last $10 million in cash to meet daily expenses that averaged $50 million-sufficient for just a few more hours of operations! Analysts, experts, newspapers, and investors unanimously declared the company's impending doom. There was not a single voice of hope.

When Lee Iacocca took over as Chairman on a million dollar salary package, he found he had joined a company in which workers refused to work, strikes were commonplace, gambling, murder, and prostitution were organized on the factory floor. He later said that he would never have signed the contract had he known the depth of the company's crisis. But he accepted the challenge and announced he would draw only $2 as annual salary till the company turned around. He asked the intransigent banks to wait, cut the salaries of rebellious workers, dismissed 34 out of 35 VPs, designed a new model K-car, offered an unprecedented money-back guarantee to new customers, and personally appeared on TV to sell cars. He worked so hard that he said he was literally "seeing double."

Over the next three years he earned a net profit of $3.3 billion. He was able to pay off creditors, discharged the 10-year government loan guarantee seven years early, and personally took home $20 million in pay, bonus, stocks, etc!

To accept a bleak situation with a sense of responsibility is spiritual. Courage, sacrifice, determination are equally spiritual. The Spirit of the ORGANISATION listens to the call and fulfils what only a few years ago appeared impossible. Iacocca invoked the Spirit physically through his work, while Tom Gooth did so spiritually.

To invoke the Spirit

  • Do not rely on or resort to the old methods
  • Rely totally on what is beyond and unseen
  • Seek an inner calm hitherto not reached.

Should a man have simple, pure, spiritual faith, the Spirit inside can be invoked as a blissful inspiration without seeing double, as did Iacocca.

Life is a field of success and failure. Unfailing success is the prerogative of the Spirit, which in ordinary parlance means Truth and Faith.



story | by Dr. Radut