Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
GM said to be better under Barra
Focus shifted to customers, profit, technology, analysts say
DETROIT — Mary Barra has been chairman and chief executive officer of General Motors for only 3½ years, but industry analysts say the company she leads today is vastly different from the one she inherited: more decisive, focused, responsive and responsible.
Barra and a team that combines GM lifers and carefully selected newcomers are creating a company that’s more sensitive to its customers and more focused on profit than ever before.
“We’ve never seen anybody run GM like this. She’s breaking all the rules,” KBB. com executive analyst Rebecca Lindland said.
GM has adopted phrases such as “customer first” and “good stewards of our owners’ money” that it touts as emblematic of its culture.
“GM used to be all about sales volume and market share,” Autotrader senior analyst Michelle Krebs said. “Now, if they don’t see a path to profitability and leadership, they get out. The goal is to sell fewer vehicles and make more money. It’s a new GM.”
Since Barra has taken the helm: ■ The company accepted responsibility, apologized and essentially wrote a blank check when a GM employee was accused of concealed faulty ignition switches that led to accidents and multiple deaths. ■ It has aggressively pursued new technologies and developing businesses, including ride-hailing, autonomous vehicles and mass-market electric cars.
■ It has shut down money-losing operations in Russia, Australia, India and South Africa. ■ It has sold its European operations to Peugeot SA, essentially exiting a huge but
unprofitable market.
■ It has put data from customers at the heart of its product development and manufacturing decisions.
The company also has made an effort to avoid letting problems fester.
“The easiest time to solve a problem is when it’s small,” Barra said in an interview. “We talk to everybody about that: Raise issues [early] so you can get the help to solve them.”
Barra previously served as GM’s global product development chief. Then, she was thrust into the global spotlight as the first female CEO of an automaker.
“My mom and dad raised me and my brother to believe we could do anything we set our minds to,” she said. “They were raised in the Depression, and they so believed in the American Dream.”
When Barra joined GM in 1985, a female chairman and CEO of GM was almost inconceivable. GM and all automakers were an old-economy boys club, very unlike the high-tech companies that the 21st century demands.
“I didn’t necessarily go, ‘I’m a woman in the working world,’” she said. “I was a person in the working world.
“I do sit here today because there were people 20 years ago who gave me career opportunities and gave me constructive feedback and allowed me to grow and took risks on me with the jobs they put me in.”
Paying that forward, she’s an avid supporter of New York-based Girls Who Code, a nonprofit group encouraging middle and high school girls to learn computer science. Barra helped introduce the program to metropolitan Detroit schools and has visited some of their meetings.
“I’m a huge fan of Mary Barra,” Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani said. “In some ways she’s the ultimate girl who codes.”
GM global product development and purchasing boss Mark Reuss worked alongside Barra for decades. They watched GM management kick problems down the road and make one money-losing decision after another. When the government-overseen bankruptcy gave GM a fresh start after the 2007-09 recession, the two executives promised themselves that they would not repeat those mistakes.
Bolstered by GM President Dan Ammann’s financial analysis, Barra set a new course, abandoning some longtime businesses that made little money, strengthening those
positioned to grow and committing GM to new areas including autonomous vehicles, car-sharing and alternative energy.
“One of the most important things leaders do is deploy capital,” Barra said. “You’ve got to set strategy and deploy capital. We have been systematically going through the business, region by region and segment by segment, asking, ‘Do we have a path to profitability, and is this the best place for us to allocate this capital?’”
While shedding old-line businesses with little profit potential, GM has also invested in technologies and partnerships that may not pay off for years, including autonomous vehicles and the Maven car-sharing service.
“General Motors is a different
company under Mary Barra,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple vice president of product marketing. “She realized the importance of technology and put an incredible team in place. Her approach is night and day from the previous GM.”
For decades, GM defined itself largely by the fact that it was the world’s largest automaker. Ending production in Europe took GM out of a three-way race with Toyota and Volkswagen for No. 1.
Barra’s comfortable with that: “Biggest doesn’t mean best. We don’t win until our customers say we win. They need to decide to buy our products.”