Mary Barra

Role: CEO of General Motors

Quote: If we win the hearts and minds of employees, we're going to have better business
success.
Birthplace: Waterford, Michigan
Degree: M.B.A. Stanford University
Age: 54

Ursula Burns
Role: Chairman & CEO of Xerox
Quote: The best way to change it is to do it. After a while you become it, and it's easy.
Birthplace: New York, New York
Degree: M.S. Columbia University
Age: 57

Mary Barra

1. Interviews with staff

2. Survey results
3. Board or organisation reports
4. Press articles/website extracts
5. Organisation reports and <IR> extracts
6. Emails
7. Memos
8. Spreadsheets
9. Picture
10. Figures
Career
She started her career with GM as co-op student 1980. Served as
11. Vice President of Global Manufacturing Engineering
12. Vice President of Global Human Resources
13. Executive Vice President of Global Product Development- Reduced the no of automobile
platforms
14. Vice President Global purchasing and supply.
15. CEO

Major Work and Decisions

1. Worked to reduce the automobile platforms for GM
2. Fill the technology space by developing driverless cars
3. Acquisition of Strobe
4. Develop chevy Bolt beating TESLA. First electric car with 200 miles of range.
5. Change in culture by introducing customer first and good stewards of our owners’
money.
 6. New concept of ridesharing, autonomous vehicles and mass-market electric cars
7. shut down money-losing operations in Russia, Australia, India and South Africa.
8. sold its massive European operations to Peugeot SA, essentially exiting a huge, but
unprofitable, market
9. It has put data from customers at the heart of its product development and
manufacturing decisions
10. Ending production in Europe took GM out of a three-way race with Toyota and
Volkswagen for No. 1.

Failure of GM
GM has a culture in which people try hard not to bring bad news to higher-
ups. General Motors filed for a government-assisted Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June
1, 2009, with a plan to re-emerge as a less debt-burdened organization.

nonrealistic about market share and revenue expectations, excess products

and brands, not selling or closing business units that weren't making money

giving rebate on their products

Not filling the bankruptcy sooner
Killing the EV1 electric program which gave grounds Toyota to introduce
Prius.
Selling control of GMAC which were profit making unit
Overreacting to the truck (SUV) boom

Statement about Mary Barra

Robert Iger, the CEO of Disney

“Beyond being an incredibly respected leader of a major U.S. company, Mary is recognized as an
agent of change with a relentless focus on quality, safety and, most importantly, consumers. Her
ability to adapt to a changing technological and consumer-focused landscape makes her uniquely
suited for the Disney board”

Analyst Rebecca Lindland said

“We’ve never seen anybody run GM like this. She’s breaking all the rules,”

Greg Joswiak (Apple vice president of product marketing)

“General Motors is a different company under Mary Barra. She realized the importance of
technology and put an incredible team in place. Her approach is night and day from the previous
GM.”
Barra says. “Anytime you want to drive change, you have to have a catalyst for
change, and it did provide that. I will also tell you it’s made me more
impatient.”

Here are 4 lessons from GM’s era of Barra so far.

1. Activists need not be appeased. At a time when many other high-profile CEOs are walking on
eggshells around activist shareholders and even kowtowing to them, Barra has been running over
them. Earlier this month, 91% of shareholder votes at the GM annual meeting were cast backing her,
and against a plan by activist shareholder Greenlight Capital. Greenlight’s alternative slate of three
directors also was voted down at the meeting.

Greenlight’s billionaire president David Einhorn wanted to split GM shares into two classes, one of
which would be a growth-oriented entity.

GM’s stock price has languished in the six years since its initial public offering took the company off
the taxpayer dole, and he sought to “help fix GM’s inefficient capital structure and unlock significant
value for all shareholders,” as he put it.

But Barra has moved decisively to streamline the company and to stay ahead of concerns such as a
leveling off of the U.S. market and capital-thirsty demands for a strategic transformation for the
coming age of self-driving cars.

2. Any culture is malleable. Unluckily, Barra ran into the buzzsaw of the GM ignition-switch recall
problem right away in her tenure. She salted away her first major victory by handling all aspects of
the challenge—from the legal to the operational to the financial to the political—with aplomb.

But maybe more importantly for the company over the long haul, Barra also attacked the underlying,
pass-the-buck cultural rot that had allowed such a disaster to occur in the first place, creating an
inestimable toll in human suffering and corporate waste. Insiders attest that GM is steadily becoming
a different, and better, place because of Barra’s determination to attack the decades-old legacy of
irresponsibility that had led to the ignition-switch debacle.
3. Size doesn’t always matter. GM’s traditional position in the automotive world was to participate
in nearly every global market as part of its self-appointed mission of competing continually for the
title of world’s largest carmaker. But among other problems, GM lost its way in the European
market.

So Barra recently made what to some was the unthinkable decision to pull out of Europe— except for
some minor operations, like Cadillac’s—to focus on higher-margin operations in North America and
China. GM may never again hope to lay claim to world’s largest automaker, but Barra’s bet is that it
could vie for a title that she decided would be more important for the long haul: world’s most
profitable carmaker.

4. The future waits for no leader. As she dealt with immediate challenges such as safety recalls and
activist shareholders, Barra has had the presence of mind to invest GM heavily into a future that
looms with a heavy emphasis on vehicle electrification and mobility services such as ride-sharing
and self-driving cars.

She pushed GM to get out of the mainstream-priced, long-range Chevrolet Bolt all-electric vehicle
this year, months if not a year ahead of Tesla’s more-ballyhooed, upcoming Model 3 for the same
segment. And from the start, she pushed the company into some pricey and inventive forays into the
new technological era, including investing in the Lyft ride-sharing service and starting GM’s own
car-sharing service, Maven. As a result, pundits give GM as good a chance as any company of
succeeding in what remains a foggy future for the car industry.

An interview with the CEO and Fortune’s Most Powerful Woman in

Business.
Not that long ago, mere survival was the goal for General
Motors GM 0.47% . But since Mary Barra took over as CEO in
January 2014, the 108-year-old, $152-billion-in-sales behemoth has
accelerated out of bankruptcy and recalls and shifted into overdrive
with record profits. Now she’s navigating the future as she brings GM
into ride sharing and autonomous driving. That performance has
earned Barra the No. 1 place in Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in
Business list for the second year in a row. She talks to editor-at-
large Jennifer Reingold about what has changed at GM—and what’s
next.
Fortune: Your first year as CEO was a whirlwind. Days after
you started, the company announced it would recall what
eventually became 2.6 million vehicles because of a defective
ignition switch that was linked to over 100 deaths. It was
insanity. What was the focus of your second year?
Mary Barra: While we were clearly dealing with the issues associated
with the ignition-switch recall, we were also doing things to strengthen
the company by working both on the core business and on the
technologies that are going to be important from a personal mobility
perspective. We’ve made some really tough decisions in places around
the world [like the 2015 decision to exit Russia], deploying capital in a
way that is going to generate the right return.
At the same time, we’re investing. When we are thinking of the
technologies that are going to disrupt our business, there is
connectivity, different propulsion systems, autonomous, and sharing.
When you look at connectivity, GM has 20 years of experience with
OnStar. We’ve had over 1.3 billion interactions with customers, and by
the end of the year we will have 12 million OnStar vehicles connected
across the globe. That’s a huge advantage and a huge foundation to
build on.

We’re really excited about launching the Bolt electric vehicle at the end
of this year, with a range of 200-plus miles. I’m really proud of how
hard the team has worked to have an all-electric vehicle that takes
away range anxiety for most people. And I’m most excited about
people getting inside the vehicle. It’s a vehicle that hasn’t
compromised; when you look at it from a technology platform, it will
surprise a lot of people.

Talk about automation.

There’s the work the company has been doing for over a decade, and
then we are marrying that with the [March 2016] acquisition of [San
Francisco–based self-driving-car startup] Cruise Automation. It’s a
company we’d been following for two years. There are many things
that need to come together to do autonomous driving. You need to
know precisely where you are, exactly what is going on around you,
and then based on those things, you pick your path. And that’s really
what Cruise is working on.
How are you integrating a Silicon Valley startup into big old
GM?
With Cruise, we created an autonomous technology organization led
by Doug Parks, Vehicle Line Executive of the Volt, with an incredible
team of people who have been trailblazers within GM. These are
people who understand how the organization works and can get things
done but really have a vision for speed and innovation.

It’s still early days. I occasionally sit in on Doug’s weekly call that
brings the whole team together. I really feel good about the way the
two teams are working together. Cruise now has this incredible
resource to pull what they need and do it quickly. They have access to
data they never would have had. Within weeks after [the deal closed]
we had Bolt electric vehicles on the road in San Francisco and
Scottsdale collecting miles and developing the autonomous
technology.

When do you think you’ll have a self-driving product?

We’re not putting a specific date on it, but I think we have a very
aggressive timetable. One of the things we will be gated by is safety.

There have been a lot of rumors Lyft tried to sell itself to

you. Did you bid?
There’s constantly speculation about General Motors. We are
extremely pleased with the alliance we have. I can’t speculate on what
might happen down the road, but right now I would say it is
accomplishing everything we need it to.

“The auto industry is cyclical. But this

company is fundamentally different
than it was in the last recession.”
Mary, you have had tremendous financial success in your
tenure. Profits are at an all-time high. Why hasn’t the stock
responded?
We do believe that General Motors stock is undervalued. We think the
most important thing we can do is just keep putting results on the
board, quarter after quarter, year after year, while demonstrating that
we have a strong future with the technologies that everyone
understands are transforming this industry. I think a lot of the issue is
industry-based. Everyone is very concerned, wondering, “What is
peak?” “Are we at a plateau?” The auto industry is cyclical. But this
company is fundamentally different than it was in the last recession.
We have a stronger balance sheet, we are more disciplined, we are a
much leaner organization. We may just have to prove that we can
continue to generate the results.

Isn’t it frustrating, though?

At times, because I know how hard everyone is working. But I spend a
lot of time talking to investors and analysts. All we can do is
demonstrate that we are balanced and that we are prepared and that
we do understand that we are cyclical.

You have said openly that changing the culture at GM means

changing behaviors. Can you give some examples of what
has changed?
Twice a year we get the top 300 leaders across the globe together. We
meet and we drive cars—because that’s what we do. Two years ago we
asked a simple question before everybody came to the meeting: If you
could change one behavior across the organization, what would it be?
We came up with about five or six things we all wanted to improve—
including driving accountability, owning each other’s problems, a
relentless desire to win, and having candor and transparency. People
were able to walk out the door and start to behave that way.

I think a great example is how the whole org came together most
recently during the earthquakes in Japan [in April] that disrupted the
supply chain. Very quickly, the cross-functional team came together,
took steps, and worked with the supply base. We had to make
tradeoffs in the early days, but we did what was best for the enterprise.

One of the other keys is to be customer focused. My predecessor

always said we don’t win until the customer says we do. And when you
are in a meeting where they are making tradeoffs on a new vehicle and
someone will say, “But wait a minute, will the customer care about
this?”—when you hear that question regularly occurring—that is
something that’s extremely significant.
And then lastly, even though we had a very strong first half, there were
challenges outside of our control when you look at the macroeconomic
situation in South America, the [Japan]earthquake, and the pricing
pressure in China. The team is saying, “I understand this happened,
but where are the opportunities that I can seize, because I’m
accountable to do what I said I was going to do.”

We have more work to do. We’ve got to get to every single employee.
We do this external survey with Aon Hewitt so that we can benchmark
ourselves to other industries, and we’ve seen tremendous
improvement in the engagement of our employees. This time we were
able to include our global hourly workforce. All 214,000 employees
had the chance to participate.