Mary Barra celebrates her 10th year as the CEO of General Motors on Monday, marking a significant year for the Detroit automaker and her legacy.
Over a decade, Barra has been a dynamic leader, steering the company through notable challenges as the first female head of a major automaker, achieving record profits, cultural shifts, and significant accomplishments, including beating Wall Street earnings expectations in 34 out of the last 35 quarters, as reported by FactSet.
Vehicle Industry's Challenges
Barra is consistently listed among the most influential business leaders globally, praised by past and present executives as a visionary and inclusive leader who stays focused on her responsibilities. Throughout her GM's tenure, her primary goal has been to innovate and reshape the most significant U.S. automaker for lasting success. However, recent business plans, including hers, have not met internal and external expectations.
Electric and autonomous vehicles have faced challenges, with slower-than-anticipated rollout and demand, and the GM majority-owned Cruise is experiencing difficulties, which, along with new software initiatives, were crucial components of ambitious financial goals set for 2025 and 2030. GM claims it will double its 2030 revenue by changing its focus. However, specific plans to achieve this without relying on its previously identified growth drivers have not been provided.
Michelle Krebs, a Cox Automotive's executive analyst who has covered GM since the 1980s, believed the electric vehicle (EV) and autonomous vehicle (AV) strategies were overly ambitious, showing Wall Street they are more of a "tech company" than an auto company, trying to imitate Tesla too much.
Barra's Transformative Legacy
Barra became GM's CEO in January 2014, taking charge as the company was recovering from government ownership following a 2009 bankruptcy and years of mismanagement. Her role was to address GM's historical issues and lead the company towards a more sustainable future.
As CEO and chair since 2016, Barra has tackled problems directly and often emphasized the best time to solve a problem is as soon as it's identified, which has been proven effective in the past decade, making her the second-longest-serving CEO in the company's 115-year history, following its founder.
Barra managed a recall of about 30 million vehicles in 2014 due to an ignition switch defect that resulted in 120 deaths, prompting a complete restructuring of GM's safety operations.
Barra led the company through the 2014 parts crisis and implemented various global restructurings, including exiting unprofitable markets to prepare for anticipated disruptions from the tech and "mobility" industries like Lyft, Uber, Apple, and Google.
Barra successfully defended against two activist-shareholder campaigns, including one from David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital that sought seats on GM's board and proposed splitting GM's common stock into two classes to increase its share price. Einhorn's firm, Greenlight Capital, exited GM in 2020 and declined to comment on those efforts, Barra, or GM through a spokesperson.
Stronger Year Ahead
The recent issues with Cruise, electric vehicle uncertainty, and changing priorities align with Barra's strengths of being discerning in times of crisis and quick to make necessary adjustments.
According to a former GM executive, Gary Cowger, a mentor of Barra's who died last year, Barra is a strong leader and an attentive listener. However, she is also strict when making challenging decisions for the shareholders. As challenges increase and confidence wavers on Wall Street, 2024 could be a high point in Barra's career or an unexpected setback in her record.
In December, when questioned about her time as CEO and legacy, Barra mentioned that she focuses on the present challenges, stating, "I'm humbled and it's a privilege to lead General Motors at this point in time. We're in the midst of this really once-in-a-generation transformation and there's so much that can be done."
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