‘Car gal’ works to fix the GM boys’ mess
The first woman to helm a Big Three automaker grapples with the recall of 10 million vehicles
Maybe it’s asking too much.
Maybe it’s unfair to wish that Mary Barra had appeared a little more aggrieved, a little more pained, as she walked Congress through her daunting first months as chief executive officer of General Motors Corp.
Maybe we are meant to give her full marks for exhibiting such a calm demeanour in the face of adversity.
Still, even a flash of anger directed at her own company and its deeply dysfunctional operations would have been welcome from the executive who was unknown outside the Big Three automaker prior to this year.
Last December, just days after GM announced that Barra would become CEO, she was informed there was an “issue” with the Chevrolet Cobalt. On Jan. 31, two weeks after being installed in the top job, the “issue” was revealed to be a faulty ignition switch and the first car recall was confirmed.
A point on which to pause: no mention of fatalities was made during that Jan. 31 meeting. Yet others in the company knew that 13 deaths could be attributed to a defect that some in the company had known about for more than a decade.
The devastating flaw: the ignition key could move out of the “run” position to the “accessory” position if the driver happened to jostle it — imagine the driver’s knee knocking a key fob — or if the car encountered rough road conditions.
Imagine the air bags failing to deploy as aresult. Imagine the disabling of the power steering and anti-lock breaks. Consider that the engineer who designed the switch dubbed it “the switch from hell.”
By March of this year, what had been an initial recall of 800,000 vehicles had ballooned to 2.6 million across an array of models, including the Saturn Ion and Pontiac G5. In December, the updated recall figure for North America and exports for ignition defects (“unintended ignition key rotation” and “key fob can bump ignition” are two) exceeded 10 million vehicles. On Dec. 12, the administrator in charge of claims resolution placed the death toll as a direct result of the faulty ignition at 42 and injuries at 58. The deadline for claims submission has been extended to the end of January 2015.
Having ascended to the top job, Barra, the first woman to helm a Big Three automaker, became instantly recognizable as the face of a crisis. It was Barra who shared one of the most notable insights into GM’s corporate culture with Anton Valukas, the U.S. attorney hired by GM to conduct an internal probe into how and why it took so long to recall the Cobalt.
Barra described the “GM nod” in which, quoting from the Valukas report, “everyone nods in agreement to a proposed plan of action, but then leaves the room with no intention to follow through, and the nod is an empty gesture.”
Valukas probed a company where “no single person owned any decision” and where “determining the identity of any actual decision-maker was impenetrable.” The scope of corporate incompetence was breathtaking.
Little wonder the operational style at the corporation was known so well to Barra: a GM lifer, she worked at the Pontiac Division as a co-op student when she was just 18 (her father spent 39 years as a GM die maker), earned a bachelor of science in electrical engineering and later an MBA from Stanford. She eventually took on the powerful role of executive vicepresident in charge of global product development. It was Barra who bore responsibility for design, engineering, quality.
Two key considerations stand in Barra’s favour.
The first is that the siloed environment within the company kept crucial information isolated — or at least that’s what we know thus far.
The second is that the old notion of the CEO taking the fall for a tragedy that unfolds on his or her watch doesn’t apply in this instance.
Or does it? Barra’s predecessor, Dan Akerson, announced that he was speeding up his planned retirement for personal reasons and even hinted, before his replacement was announced, that the car company might be run by a “car gal.”
Thus Barra found herself immediately on the precipice, leading to speculation that she had been intentionally placed on the so-called “glass cliff.” In a recent interview with New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, Barra said she was amused by the thought. “I don’t know if any company is that good — that they could select somebody knowing they would have a crisis.”
Barra’s job is to set herself apart, despite her deep roots in the company. In the second of her two appearances before Congress she portrayed herself as a culture buster. “I’ve never accepted the GM nod,” she said in July. “I’ve called people out on it.”
The new CEO, 53, insists that the crisis has been contained. In axing more than a dozen employees Barra tried to convince lawmakers that those responsible had been dealt with. (Some in Congress cried “buck-passing” in response.) A newly structured safety decision-making process has been adopted, as well as a “Speak Up For Safety” program, encouraging employees to raise concerns without fear of reprisal.
The turning-around-the-Titanic message: such a catastrophe could not have happened at the “New GM.” That’s the internal story. Externally, the crisis is far from over. Lawsuits are ongoing. The death toll remains unknown.
At an employee town hall in June, Barra garnered a considerable amount of press play for this comment: “I never want to put this behind us. I want to keep this painful experience permanently in our collective memories.”
As prepared remarks go, it was a neatly expressed sentiment.
What Barra has not put on display is her passion for the task ahead, and her outrage for a tragedy that should not have happened.
“I never want to put this behind us. I want to keep this painful experience permanently in our collective memories.” MARY BARRA GM CEO