CEO Mary Barra - Distinctive take over to run GM
In Detroit: Only just known before 2 years ago, Mary Barra who turns 52 on Christmas Eve, the new CEO
of General Motors Co was little know to the outside world. However her rapid
rise during her 33 year stint with GM which included a promotion to Senior VP
by 2011 within the company had been signaled more than a decade ago.
Barra, was marked
for future success in the company's "Progression and Succession"
reviews, annual surveys intended to spot young high-potential employees, former
GM executives said.
"She was
always at the top of that list" in the late 1990s, said Don Hackworth, who
retired as head of GM's North American Car Group in 2001.
Barra's early recognition
as a "high-pot" executive led to a job in the corporate suite, as
Vice Chairman Harry Pearce's assistant, when she was still in her 30s. "It
was a great opportunity to get an overview of how the corporation works,"
said Michael Losh, GM's former chief financial officer.
Barra's extensive
tenure at GM - A Michigan native, she started as an 18-year-old engineering
intern at Pontiac, where her father was a die-maker for nearly four decades -
might have raised doubts that she was too much a part of the old regime, which
was forced to seek bankruptcy protection and a U.S. government bailout in 2009.
But "she wasn't part of the established order that destroyed the
company," said a Wall Street investment banker who has worked with GM for
decades. "She's the best of the 'old GM' and she's a pretty modern thinker
in terms of how to compete in today's world."
Former GM executive Lynn Myers,
one of the first women in Detroit to run a car division before her 2004
retirement, said: "This is not business as usual at GM. It's not like the
past. Mary is not afraid to shake the bushes."
Executives cite Barra's
"radical" reorganization over the past two years of GM's extensive
and often dysfunctional global product development organization.
"She does what she thinks
is necessary to take action if something needs fixing," said Gary Cowger,
GM's former group vice president who retired in 2010.
Barra, who is the mother of a
teenage son and daughter, is described by those who know her as friendly, composed
and comprehensive.
"She can be under huge
pressure and she just never loses her calmness," said a person close to
Barra. "She thinks things through. When she speaks, I listen."
People close to Barra often
describe how she skillfully handled the complicated and potentially traumatic
overhaul of GM's engineering and development groups.
"She talks a lot about how
important winning the hearts and minds of employees is. I see her as a very
motivational leader."
Barra's gender, is mentioned repeatedly,
but usually dismissed as the deciding factor in her promotion in a century-old
industry that has been dominated by men.
"These 'firsts' of women
CEOs are no longer newsworthy," said Bonnie Baha, portfolio manager at
DoubleLine Capital. "The focus should be on her qualifications, which
appear to be uniquely suited to running GM."
Steven Rattner, the former head of
President Barack Obama's task force who helped steer GM's 2009 bailout, said:
"I have absolutely no doubt they picked (Barra) because she was the best
person ... This company has been through so much that the idea that they would
just do something to make history is unimaginable.
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