LEADERS TO WATCH 2014
New GM boss an insider driven by reinvention
Mary Barra, 51, is driven to reinvent the largest of the Detroit Three automakers. There’s no ignoring the fact that the 33year General Motors Co. veteran is the first woman to head a global automaker. But the real story is that Barra is only the second engineer to head GM since the Second World War, after a long string of financial types who led the once-mighty GM into bankruptcy court. And insiders CEOs like Barra — as with the recent examples of Anne Mulcahy and her successor-protégé Ursula Burns at Xerox Corp. — typically outperform outsider turnaround CEOs who can’t manage the learning curve of what makes the turnaround candidate tick. (The late Nortel Networks Corp. is an example of that.)
As GM’s new-product chief, Barra, who began her GM career inspecting fender panels, has overseen development of the new bestselling vehicles powering GM’s return to robust profits.
That said, GM’s third-quarter profit plunged by roughly half as losses in Europe, while down sharply, continue. That market, which is larger than North America, is one GM simply has to master, and once did with its Germany-based Opel division.
Barra also inherits too many brands, even after GM was forced under bankruptcy provisions to shed Pontiac, Saab, Hummer and Saturn. GM still looks to Chevrolet for most of its 16-per-cent North American market share, and a truly daring Barra would shrink GM further to a new Chevrolet Motor Car Co., reducing further the distractions of marginal brands like Buick.
GM has never faced fiercer competition. Hyundai Motors Co. and its Kia arm have emerged as the world’s No. 4 automaker, for example. And traditional rivals, including crosstown Ford Motor Co. and Fiat SpA-owned Chrysler, are by necessity relentlessly reinvesting in ever more fuelefficient engine technology and state-ofthe-art assembly-plant productivity.
For now, Barra can take reassurance about her acumen. Her Chev Impala was the first Detroit sedan to win top honours in that category from Consumer Reports magazine. And no fewer than half of the six finalists in this month’s best-in-class car and truck competition at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit are GM products. (The Cadillac CTS, Corvette Stingray and Chevrolet Silverado pickup.)
But Barra can luxuriate in vindication for pushing those models through GM’s notorious bureaucracy for exactly the length of the awards photo-op before she must ratchet up the pressure on designing nextgeneration bestsellers.
GM doesn’t have a future until it starts thinking like a paranoid Silicon Valley company: the latest goods are obsolete by the time they hit the market, and it’s what’s on the drawing board that will determine what still has to be regarded as GM’s survivability, not prosperity. Of equal importance is fixing GM’s chronic weakness in astute marketing of its first-class vehicles, still stigmatized by GM’s rap as yesterday’s automaker.