One other point about the government investigation to both Microsoft and GM. When you face an “existential” threat you pay attention to it so that you can not focus on core problems or issues. That “threat” diverted both management teams attention from internal issues and strategy implementation. After all there is only so much time in a day. I saw and tangentially worked on this issue during part of my career. You can’t believe how much time you get sucked into. I easily put in 60 hours in an 80 hour week on this and the people I worked for even more time. It just saps you.

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