GM Retirees Association

A lot of questions remain unanswered by incoming top exec

By Daniel Howes; The Detroit News ~ Aug 31, 2010

On Wednesday, Daniel Akerson officially will become General Motors Co.'s fourth CEO in 17 months.

That's remarkable on multiple levels, starting with the fact that GM's postwar pace of leadership change roughly paralleled succession planning atop the former Soviet Union -- a plodding and gray insider begat another plodding and gray insider, all in the service of inexorable decline.

Not anymore, thanks to GM getting more than $50 billion from U.S. taxpayers, a quick run through bankruptcy, some well-deserved props for its product lineup and a new cadre of hard-charging outside directors, Akerson included, appointed by a proxy for the president of the United States.

Now it's all speed all the time in the name of a continuing cultural exorcism that Akerson, by several accounts, is determined to continue at GM. This veteran of the U.S. Navy, corporate America and the go-go world of private equity apparently sees his new assignment in terms of duty, a mission to rescue a cornerstone of American manufacturing from industrial collapse.

Not that we've heard as much publicly from the new guy running the most visible soon-to-be-public company the American auto industry has ever seen. If there's a corporate icon this side of AIG that America owns, in every sense of that word, it's GM, which is what makes the under-the-radar public profile of GM's recent CEOs mildly offensive.

It matters to be as connected in powerful business and political circles as Akerson and his predecessor, Ed Whitacre, obviously are. It matters that Akerson's resume boasts the kind of financial acumen that should be crucial to selling investors on GM's initial public offering.

But it would be helpful if the home team and its hometown knew the new guy's game plan and his vision for what GM could (or should) become, even if he doesn't yet know all the details. If there are two common elements missing in GM's arc of leadership -- from Rick Wagoner to Whitacre and, it appears, Akerson -- it's an overarching vision of what GM will be on the other end of its workout and a passionate voice to lead it there.

Will Akerson's GM be about winning or just staying in the game? Will success be measured in constantly tinkering with marketing programs at the expense of nut-and-bolts product programs (the same ones that are producing better vehicles now than arguably anytime in GM's modern history)?

After one year as an outside director, does Akerson see top-shelf talent already inside GM? Or should folks from the managing executive committee on down brace for another round of blood-letting in the name of cultural change?

Will Akerson (unlike Whitacre or even Fritz Henderson before him) show an interest in becoming part of Detroit's civic culture, a role played by GM CEOs going back decades? Or will he become, as I suspect, based on discussions with insiders, another short-timer from the jump who leaves the small things of community to others?

Is the new boss the same as the old boss, a retired, 60-something telecomm CEO dragooned into the job because circumstances left GM's directors and their paymasters at Treasury with few options? Or is running GM at a seminal moment in its tortured history an opportunity he couldn't pass up?

Answers, a vision, a clear plan (for Exhibit No. 1, see Alan Mulally's "One Ford" cards) and a credible stump speech would help coalesce employees and a community bone-tired of the losing, the turmoil and the uncertainty.

This town, this state, even this nation, needs a winner at GM's Renaissance Center. Not because success would vindicate a White House gambit to rescue Detroit (which it would), but because the alleged rotting hulk given up for dead has the makings of a new life with implications for an American manufacturing renewal.

Comb business news closely enough these days and you'll find stories describing Germany's surprising resilience amid a global economic slowdown. Underpinning the foundation? A nation whose manufacturers still produce goods people want.

If Akerson's tenure atop GM loosens or cuts the government's ties to the automaker and culminates in GM becoming a sustainable competitor, this tale of inevitable industrial decline will have a surprise ending.

[email protected]">dchowes@detnews.com (313) 222-2106 Daniel Howes' column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.