As the first female CEO in the history of GM, a century-old car company, Marie Bora has shown outstanding leadership in the unprecedented transformation of GM, and is thus regarded as the "Super Mary" who saved GM. She broke the "career ceiling" of the male-dominated auto industry with strength and firmly believed that "there is nothing that women cannot start trying."
Tian Shanshan | wen
In 1975, the women's liberation movement rose in the United States, and more and more women entered the workplace and became an important role in business management. At that time, a US media outlet asked GM, which was deeply involved in an employment discrimination case, "Will GM produce a female CEO?" "At that time, GM was at its peak and was the world's largest automotive giant.
After 47 years, the answer finally appeared.
In January 2014, Mary Barra was named CEO by General Motors. She is the first female CEO of GM in more than 100 years since its founding, and the first female head of the global car giants.
Although GM in 2014 came out of the shadow of bankruptcy in 2009, its global market share has been declining and has long ceased to be prosperous. Mary Bora's appointment was pinned on high hopes, "no one can get the pulse of GM better than her."
Mary Bora has indeed lived up to expectations, and over the past 8 years, she has earned a new title: "Super Mary" who saved GM. It can be seen that her leadership has been recognized.
Why did Mary Bora have high hopes as soon as she took office? Known as "Super Mary", what changes has she brought to GM? As the first female CEO of GM in the 100-year company, what career growth experience is worth sharing?
1
From workshop intern to CEO, she spent 36 years
Mary Bora is a native of General Motors, born in Detroit to a GM worker. She grew up loving subjects like math and science, and she also loved to study cars with her father.
In 1980, at the age of 18, Mary entered the General Motors Academy for college and went to the General Motors factory as a workshop intern as a trainee. After graduation, she stayed directly at GM.
Before becoming CEO of GM, Mary went through decades of training at GM, and her career advancement was closely related to some of the most critical inflection points in GM's history.
For example, in the late 1980s, GM launched the General Motors Scholarship Program to fund internal talent to study at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Mary successfully applied for a scholarship to pursue an MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business. This made her one of the few GM talents with both engineering and management backgrounds, laying the foundation for her subsequent promotion.
In the early 1990s, GM put forward the strategic task of "reducing costs and improving efficiency" due to declining market share and huge losses of up to $23.5 billion. Mary, who was now the manufacturing planning manager, took the initiative to take on this task.
Drawing on Toyota's lean manufacturing, she designed a standardized process for GM to improve efficiency and reduce costs, and worked with other senior managers to replicate the process throughout the plant. For this outstanding contribution, Mary was promoted to EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE CEO in 1997.
In 1998, GM suffered its biggest strike in more than 60 years, and Mary was assigned to communicate between workers and management. She found that the reason for the inefficiency of workers ignoring managers' arrangements and warnings was that workers did not understand that the company was on the verge of bankruptcy and had to reduce costs and increase efficiency, but that the company was deliberately making concessions to them.
In order to solve this problem, Mary specially designed a set of communication mechanisms that can evaluate the effectiveness of communication SPQRCE (representing safety, people, quality, relativity, cost and link, respectively), in that era when e-mail, mobile communications and smart phones are not widespread, through electronic kanban boards to timely publish the output of the production line and various indicators, so that workers and managers in each factory are more concerned about the company's performance and their own contribution to performance, to avoid misunderstandings and affect production. This communication mechanism designed by Mary has been in use until 2018.
In 2004, when GM was popularizing a "cost culture," Mary, as head of manufacturing engineering, created a lean review approach to review and control the cost of building cars in each production department based on the production methods she had implemented at GM ten years ago, and changed the processes in which designers and engineers within GM went their separate ways, optimizing the car manufacturing process.
In 2009, after GM filed for bankruptcy protection, Mary became vice president of human resources, completing the task of retaining potential talent in the midst of large-scale layoffs. She also negotiated with representatives of the U.S. Treasury Department, GM's largest shareholder at the time, to secure fair compensation for GM's senior management team. These efforts have preserved the team base for the transformation of GM in the storm.
From electrical engineer, CEO administrative assistant, head of manufacturing engineering to vice president of global product development and vice president of global human resources, Marie Bora has become the first CEO in GM's history to grow from the grassroots step by step.
Former GM CEO Dan Axon said of her, "She has a wealth of experience in management, technology, relationships, and understanding the company's internal mechanisms. She's one of the most talented managers I've ever met. ”
Compared with the previous two CEOs who parachuted in and left briefly, with a non-automotive background, Mary understands GM's complex business, cultural ills, and high welfare drawbacks, and is more aware of the different demands from workers, managers to the senior management team, and is more determined and patient to help GM transform. That's why her appointment has won a warm welcome internally, as they've finally ushered in an "authentic" "GM man."
2
Saving GM's "Super Marie"
In early 2014, GM was exposed to the ignition switch scandal: the Kobao car series, which has been on the market for ten years, has an ignition switch failure, resulting in dozens of deaths. As a leader in her first month in office, Mary stepped forward in the midst of the crisis and demonstrated how to deal with it at the textbook level:
Holding press conferences, issuing apologies, visiting victims' families and developing compensation plans;
Initiating a process change of "Speaking for Safety", requiring employees to report to their managers if they have any concerns about car safety, and if they do not receive a satisfactory answer, they can contact her directly;
The slogan "No More Bad Cars" was put forward, and the position of the first "global safety chief" in the history of General Motors was set up, requiring the whole company to dig deep into the unresolved safety problems, and the car must be recalled as soon as any safety problems occur.
By the end of 2014, GM had recalled a total of 32 million vehicles, more than the company had sold in the previous three years and breaking the recall record for a single automaker.
Although these rapidly launched initiatives did not satisfy all of GM's consumers, Mary won the trust of some consumers, as well as the admiration of internal employees, the U.S. Treasury Department and other people in the industry, believing that she had the courage to take responsibility and showed the courage to completely transform GM. After that, Mary Bora was hailed as the "goddess" who could save GM.
However, the ignition switch quality door incident caused immeasurable damage to GM. At this time, GM was already a terminally ill giant: internally it was a culture of bureaucracy, short-term interests, and no one was willing to take responsibility; external performance was the declining global market share, and it was powerless in the face of Toyota and Volkswagen.
Mary spent more than 40 years at GM and witnessed GM's glory from 50% market share to the dilemma when it finally went bankrupt; witnessed the performance of the executive team when GM was still self-absorbed and self-contained; and witnessed the moment when GM missed the network development and the wave of electric vehicles. She understands the "cause" of GM's comfort zone and understands that companies need to transform completely, and they need to transform into the future.
Thanks to advances in technology, the auto market will change more in the next 10 years than in the past 50 years combined, she said. Therefore, it is very critical to seize the development opportunities in the next 10 years.
As the automotive industry moved from the internal combustion engine to the direction of electrification and intelligence, she began to pay more attention to new energy vehicles and Internet cars, especially when Tesla and Google became the leaders in the direction of new energy vehicles and autonomous driving technology respectively, she realized that GM's competitors were far from limited to competitors in the traditional automotive industry.
As a leader, Mary Bora turned difficulties and challenges into catalysts for change, leading GM on a difficult transition.
3
Change and transformation
(1) Smaller scale, but more profitable
Marie Bora believes that GM's huge business and strategy to expand market share will deplete existing funds and resources, which is not conducive to the transition to electrification and intelligence as soon as possible. She chose to be smaller, but more profitable. She stressed to the company that improving the profitability and return of invested capital should be prioritized over expanding market share.
To this end, she on the one hand drastically closed factories that do not conform to future electrification and autonomous driving trends. From the end of 2018 to 2019, GM closed eight production plants (including five in the North American market) and laid off more than 14,000 employees. While the result was another general strike at GM's North American plants, the closure of those plants provided about $6 billion in funding for GM's transformation.
On the other hand, she resolutely withdrew from unintended and unprofitable markets, such as Russia, Indonesia, India, Australia and other markets, and resold her business in the European market to the French Peugeot Citroen Group, focusing only on the development of China and the United States, the two largest auto sales markets.
After a "slimming exercise", GM has only 5 car brands left: Cadillac, Buick, Chevrolet, and SAIC-GM's Wuling and Baojun. There are fewer brands, but GM's profitability has increased. In 2021, GM's net profit exceeded $10 billion, a record high since bankruptcy.
However, it is a pity that GM has not made much progress in the field of electric vehicles, and its electric vehicle sales not only lag behind emerging companies such as Tesla, but also lag behind the old rival Ford. In fact, General Motors is one of the first traditional car companies to embrace electrification, as early as 1996 launched a market-oriented electric vehicle, Mary was also designated as one of the hydrogen fuel cell light hybrid trucks in charge, but under the influence of various factors, the opportunity was ultimately missed.
Perhaps mary is destined to be the one who leads GM to electrification and intelligent development.
(2) Transformation with the vision of "zero emissions, zero accidents, and zero congestion"
Marie Bora knows that corporate mission vision is a very important intrinsic driver. She appreciates Apple's mission vision. In fact, as early as when stanford was studying for an MBA, she had heard Jobs's speech and was deeply impressed by it. So, as soon as she took office, she updated GM's vision into 3 words: "zero emissions, zero accidents, zero congestion." To realize this vision, she embarked on a transformational approach in two directions.
The first direction is that GM accelerates its own transformation. In 2015, with her support, GM launched 4G cars, and all 30 models launched that year were equipped with 4G LTE networks, making it easy for owners to connect their smartphones to their cars. In addition, she has driven the transformation by investing in or acquiring a number of startups in the electric vehicle space, such as Lyft, a U.S. provider of shared-mode mobility services, in 2016 and Strobe, a self-driving technology company, in 2017.
The second direction is to promote its own transformation by investing heavily in research and development. In 2019, GM just closed nine factories, and the COVID-19 outbreak began in 2020. In this context, Marie Bora still publicly stated that she will invest $20 billion to transform into electrification and intelligent driving in 2020-2025, launching 30 electric vehicles in an effort to achieve the vision of "zero emissions, zero accidents, zero congestion". In 2021, she increased the amount of investment to $35 billion, which shows the strength of her determination.
At present, GM's transformation is not yet complete, and its electric vehicle sales in 2021 are only 6% in the US market, while Tesla is 70%. However, Mary will not easily concede defeat. In early 2022, she issued a "military order": GM will produce 1 million electric vehicles by 2025. If successfully achieved, it will be a major milestone on GM's road to transformation.
The success of the change strategy also depends on the correct corporate culture. As Drucker said, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." While Mary was boldly implementing reform measures, she also began to change GM's rigid corporate culture with actions, which she called "GM-style nods."
(3) Change the culture of "GM-style nod" with actions
At GM, in the past, everyone would agree on a certain course of action in meetings, but after the meeting, no one really implemented the consensus reached at the meeting. This "General Motors-style nodding" corporate culture is the root cause of the ignition switch failure that has not been detected and solved for a decade. Mary never approved of "GM nods," and she had long called on everyone to change this idea and behavior.
It also reflects how hard it is for GM's corporate culture to change. Mary's previous CEOs have said that they want to change the "silo" phenomenon of GM's rigidity and poor information exchange between departments, but the results have not been realized. But Mary did.
She doesn't like meetings to "discuss" the company culture, but instead takes direct action to make changes, "where we can make changes right away."
One of the most obvious indicators of whether a CEO can shake up the company's culture is whether she is willing to replace the "old heroes" who have been in the company for a long time. It was a daunting task for a native of Mary,GM, who grew up working with a number of senior executives.
She quickly replaced most of her top managers in less than a year in office: 13 of the 18 executives were new or newly transferred; in the past, GM's executive team was mostly white men in their 50s, while Mary's team included non-Americans, ethnic minorities and female members of different backgrounds, mostly in their forties. She hopes to build a more inclusive executive team that can think diversely.
In addition to making GM more inclusive, Mary also planted the seeds of "fairer", changed GM's previous rigid and cold image, and became one of the few companies in the automotive industry to achieve equal pay for men and women.
(4) The only multinational enterprise in the United States that implements equal pay for men and women for equal work
Mary doesn't like the "female CEO" label that the media has repeatedly mentioned. She says she's not limited to thinking about women. This is also her advice to other women in the workplace, "Don't put everything you encounter down to the 'you're a woman.'" Life is not absolutely fair, try to overcome difficulties. ”
While Marie Bora doesn't like the media to overemphasize the "female" label, it's a fact that male employees and managers predominate in the automotive industry. Therefore, she also uses her influence to actively support female employees to obtain fairer and more equitable development opportunities at GM.
As early as 1997, when she was the assistant CEO, Mary led the establishment of the "GM Women" organization within GM to provide career assistance such as job guidance and training for female employees, and also promoted the improvement of GM's recruitment system in the United States to allow more potential female graduates to enter GM's recruitment system.
In 2016, Mary was named chairman of General Motors. In 2018, GM's board of directors rose from 33 percent to 50 percent, with men and women almost equally divided; GM was named the world's most committed multinational company to gender equality and the only multinational company in the United States to implement equal pay for men and women for equal work.
For working women who want to pursue career peaks as bravely as she is, Mary gives 3 suggestions: "There is nothing you can't start trying as a woman", "work well", "grasp what you can control and invest your energy".
Apparently, that's what she did. In her career, she has never asked for a raise or complained about her job, even if she's doing something she doesn't like. She feels that it is enough to do a good job, and other things will give you a good answer in the end.
4
8 workplace experiences of "Super Mary"
(1) Do what you have passion for. Your career is long. If you have a passion for your work, then it's easier for you to get good results.
(2) Get the job done well. Even if you don't like your current job, get it done well. If you work harder than everyone else, you'll get more opportunities.
(3) Grasp the things that you can control and invest your energy.
(4) Find your own work-life balance. Find ways to achieve the integration of personal and professional life. Learn to make trade-offs, and then, figure out how to make trade-offs.
(5) Be honest. You will be tested in the future, and in the present you will do the right thing, even if it is difficult. Because if you don't do it now, you won't have a chance to regret it later.
(6) Responsible for their own career development. Doing some research on the job you want to do and talking to people in the profession will help you understand what the profession is like. Let your boss know your ambitions so they give you the opportunity to promote employees.
(7) I have never had any five- or ten-year plans for the goal of "becoming a leader in a company." I always insist on doing my job well. No matter what position I work in, I see it as my lifelong goal. As long as this is done, gold will always shine.
(8) (Advice for young working women) Don't prematurely deny your diversity and possibilities. Whether it's workplace or life, women say, "I know I want a family or a rich personal life," and they pull out of their current careers. In fact, everything is unknown until you start (a new job) and you don't have to get out too soon.
Resources
[1] "Growing Upwards: A Biography of GM CEO Mary Borah on Women, Patterns, and Leadership"
[2] GM's net profit in 2021 reached a record high of $10 billion
[3] GM's fiscal 2021 profits reached a new high, and Mary Bora's leadership was beginning to emerge
[4] Earnings report a new high GM's transformation and upgrading