Please write minimum four pages regarding the Following : (Please no plagiarism)

What is the role of a leader in change management and in changing the culture of a green company? GM case

What is the leadership and management style of Barra?

What are the personal characteristics and traits of Barra that contributed to her success?

Discuss and debate what leadership approach Barra should adopt to lead GM to the next league in front of electric vehicles?

CASE STUDY :

Abstract

In 2015, Mary Barra (Barra), CEO of American multinational corporation General Motors (GM), headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, was placed ninth in Fortunes list of The Worlds 50 Greatest Leaders. The case study is about Barra and her leadership at GM. Barras career at GM spanned more than three decades. In January 2014, Barra became the CEO of GM, the first woman ever to head a Big 8 automaker. The case describes how Barra rose through a series of manufacturing, engineering, and senior staff positions during her stint at GM. It also discusses in detail Barraa leadership and management style.

The case also looks at how Barra drove culture change at GM in her capacity as Vice President of Global Human Resource (HR) and Executive VP of global product development and later after she became the CEO of GM. The case goes on to discuss the challenges that Barra could face in the near future.

INTRODUCTION

In 2015, Mary Barra (Barra), CEO of American multinational corporation General Motors, headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, was placed ninth in Fortunes list of The Worlds 50 Greatest Leaders. Barras career at GM spanned more than three decades (33 years).During her stint at GM, she had risen through a series of manufacturing, engineering, and senior staff positions.

Barra had spent her entire career at GM and had overcome every new challenge presented to her. Her experience in a variety of engineering and administrative positions, her management record, her understanding of GMs operations, and her interpersonal skills were repeatedly mentioned as her key strengths, and she was also credited with having brought order to chaos in the global product development process at the company. Analysts felt that as CEO, her challenge would be to restore confidence in the company after a string of deaths due to faulty ignition switches led to a recall of over 39 million GM vehicles in 2014.

GOING UP THE CORPORATE LADDER

Born as Mary Makela, Barra was brought up in Waterford Township, Michigan, a middle-class suburb north of Detroit. As a kid,she excelled in math and science, and after completing high school in 1979, she joined the General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) in Flint, Michigan, in 1980.

One of her first assignments as a student in General Motors Institute was to work at a Pontiac metal-stamping facility. The facility was used for smashing flat sheets of steel into car parts. It was the kind of environment that could frighten off a lot of people, including men, saidTroy Clarke, a former GM executive who also worked there early in his career. However, Barra reportedly liked the experience and developed a partiality for manufacturing.

DRIVING CULTURE CHANGE AT GM

In 2009, when Barra was appointed Vice President of Global Human Resource (HR), GM was in the process of recovering from bankruptcy. Barras management style focused on delegating power to managers so as to make GM a lean organization. She felt GM was caught in a bureaucratic tradition.

At that time, the HR team was required to develop a dress code covering the needs of a variety of workers including engineers and managers as well as salespeople. The extensive dress code prepared by the team included specific instructions like, You cant wear T-shirts that have words on them that could be misinterpreted. Barra changed that long instruction on dress code and made it simply, Dress appropriately. .

LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT STYLE

Analysts opined that Barra embodied all the traits of an inclusive leader. She emphasized collaboration. Barra was known for her interpersonal skills and focus on the customer. She relied on team-building and held hall meetings to solicit advice on project direction. Describing Barras leadership style, John Calabrese, GMs vice president of global vehicle engineering, who had worked with her in different capacities for 12 years, said, Mary is trying to bring order to the business. Shes very methodical, very logical, very fair. She challenges the status quo pretty well. Shes provocative. . . . Shes an outstanding listener. And I guess she kind of has a consensus approach, but when its not coming together, she gets concise and shes pretty decisive....

THE IGNITION SWITCH RECALL ISSUE

In February 2014, GM issued recalls for several of its models suspected of having a faulty ignition switch that automatically turned the engine off and prevented the deploying of air bags while the car was in motion. While on July 29, 2005, a 16-year-old Maryland resident had died due to this defect while driving her 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt, GM took almost a decade to announce its first recall related to the ignition switch default. As of March 2014, more than 2.6 million cars had been recalled. The recalls raised many questions about GMs handling of the situation, such as how long the company had known about the problem, why the company had not informed federal safety officials, and why GM had not issued safety recalls sooner...

CHALLENGES

Analysts were of the opinion that Barras tenure as CEO was marked by both disappointment and opportunity. The disappointment came from the recall of 39 million vehicles due to faulty ignitions which led to at least 21 deaths just weeks after Barra took over as CEO of GM; the opportunity came in terms of recreating GM with a renewed focus on safety. In 2014, GM sold 9.92 million cars worldwide despite the recalls which also affected the automaker financially as it had to pay out nearly US$2 billion for the recalls and for compensation to the victims in 2014...

THE WAY AHEAD

Barras future challenge would lie in steering GM through a long list of federal investigations and lawsuits from consumers. The company was facing an investigation by the regulators and the US Justice Department over why it had waited till February 2014, about 11 years after first recognizing the ignition-switch problem, to start recalling about 2.6 million cars. The company could face a fine like the US$1.2 billion settlement Toyota Motors had to pay in March 2014 for its history of overdue recalls .