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Extractive summaries and key takeaways from the articles carefully curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Since 2017 | Week 369 | October 4-10, 2024 | Archive
GM CEO Mary Barra has spent a decade determined not to be disrupted. How she’s transforming the auto giant for the EV future
By Michal Lev-Ram | Fortune Magazine | October/November 2024 Issue
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Barra, a General Motors lifer, took the helm at GM in January 2014. Just a few weeks into the gig, she found herself navigating a catastrophic recall of millions of GM-made cars due to faulty ignition switches, some of which had caused fatal accidents. Barra spent much of her debut year on Capitol Hill, testifying in front of lawmakers who grilled her about why the defects had gone unfixed for so long.
It was the kind of experience that might make you want to quit before year two—but this January, Barra celebrated year 10. Leading the company through the recall crisis gave her momentum to reform GM’s culture and reorganize it to prepare for an electric-vehicle revolution; it also helped her earn the No. 1 position on Fortune Most Powerful Women list from 2015 through 2017. Since then, she’s led GM to its strongest financial position since its 2009 bankruptcy, when the government was compelled to provide the automaker a financial lifeline. And this year, she reclaims our top spot.
Along the way, Barra joined an elite group. Hitting the decade mark is a rarity for any public company CEO, and even more so for female leaders: The average tenure of a Fortune 500 CEO is 7.2 years for men and just 4.5 years for women. Among the 55 women who currently lead Fortune 500 companies, Barra is one of only nine who have been CEO for a decade or more.
To earn longevity, of course, you have to deliver results. GM brought in $171.8 billion last year, a nearly 10% increase year over year, and its best performance in 17 years. Late last year it reached an agreement with the United Auto Workers that ended contentious contract negotiations and a costly, historic strike. Even with the strike’s drag on productivity, GM raked in profits of $10.1 billion, and its stock is up nearly 35% so far in 2024—a testament to Barra’s leadership.
That said, Barra’s biggest mark on the company remains, well, a question mark. The CEO has committed GM to the ambitious goal of going all-electric by 2035—and its efforts have sputtered a bit of late. (The company recently backed away from a previous target of having the capacity to produce 1 million EVs in North America by 2025; it delivered only 38,355 EVs in the region in the first half of 2024.) GM has also run into challenges in autonomous vehicle development, another priority of Barra’s.
But as Barra says herself, transformation is not a straight line. The CEO remains committed to her stated goal of zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion. It just might take a while to get there. Fortune caught up with Barra—interviewing her while she was in a car, naturally—to ask about the last 10 years, today’s challenges, and the road ahead.
What’s the secret to your longevity? Part of it is having a great team. But also it’s being agile and continuing to understand how the environment is changing, not waiting and letting things happen to you, but being proactive.
You came into the CEO role at a tough time in the company’s trajectory. How did that first year inform your leadership? [The crisis] was an opportunity to demonstrate that we’re going to do the right thing for our customers, be transparent, and do everything in our power to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We lived the values. We put policies in place saying we want people to speak up—if you see an issue, you need to say something. I always say to employees that the best time to solve a problem is the minute you know you have one. Because problems don’t usually get smaller, they get bigger.
Your first year is pretty easy to define: You had to focus on righting the ship. How do you think about your subsequent years as CEO, going into this current era? As a leadership team, together with our board, we decided we’re not going to wait to be disrupted. We’re going to transform. Then every year we just continue to adjust the strategy and look at: How do we go through this transformation?
3 key takeaways from the article
- Barra, a General Motors lifer, took the helm at GM in January 2014. Just a few weeks into the gig, she found herself navigating a catastrophic recall of millions of GM-made cars due to faulty ignition switches, some of which had caused fatal accidents.
- It was the kind of experience that might make you want to quit before year two—but this January, Barra celebrated year 10. Leading the company through the recall crisis gave her momentum to reform GM’s culture and reorganize it to prepare for an electric-vehicle revolution. Since then, she’s led GM to its strongest financial position.
- The CEO remains committed to her stated goal of zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion. The others which helped her: a great team; being agile and continuing to understand how the environment is changing, not waiting and letting things happen to you, but being proactive; using crisis as an opportunity; living with the values; and putting policies in place saying we want people to speak up.
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Topics: Strategy, Business Model, Auto Industry, General Motors, Electric Vehicles, Culture