Younger girls and women have someone to look up to in Mary Barra. She worked her way up to the position of General Motors CEO after joining the company as an engineer, which is normally a male-dominated position to begin with.
Barra encouraged fellow women and girls to follow her lead and study for STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) degrees or accept positions that may not normally be occupied by very many women during a recent conference in New York. She said women should “seize the opportunity” to go outside their comfort zone in the working world, telling them they will “learn so much,” according to Automotive News.
The 54-year old mother of two started off at GM as an intern at a Pontiac plant while earning her electrical engineering degree. The company then sent her to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business where she earned her MBA before joining the automaker for good, holding numerous positions in its manufacturing, product development and human resources sectors.
Barra’s statements echo the message in the recently released book about her career, ‘Road to Power: How GM’s Mary Barra Shattered the Glass Ceiling’ by author Laura Colby. According to Colby, the book aims “to illuminate the steps Barra took in her career and, in so doing, to provide ideas for others to follow, whether they are aspiring engineers or accountants, parents of girls, teachers, or human resources executives at companies that want to stop shortchanging half of the population – and half of their potential customers.”
Comments
She is a marvelous CEO but I think her task will take years to influence this bloated company . So many tenured senior management people spread out over 4 divisions , all protecting their turf , and those above them….kind of like a line of elephants strolling along , each holding the tail of the other with their trunks , in my opinion . It often appears to me that each division markets one or more models that share common platforms and much of the designs and components ,,, all competing for the same customers . Competing with other manufacturers takes second place , or so it seems ! Frankly , I think it will take years of strong focus/determination to refine this corporate jungle , hope she is in this for the very long haul !
Well she has things going in the right direction and has done so even under some of the most difficult of times.
The fact is you do not fix a company like GM in a year. It will take years to fix not just models but the culture. But change is going on and progress is being made.
Things like dealers. Vender relationships, unions and other issues will remain some of the greatest challenges ahead yet.
The fact is we have a management team in place that is willing to make the changes that other decades of management have kicked down the road.
But as the Change happens each year we will see progress from better products to the way they sell them and how they build them. Less waste more honesty and less bureaucracy.
Just look at the present GM and how they have empowered people to finally do their jobs with out having to be told from above to fix something or make something better. That alone accounts for a great deal of change at GM.
While it will take a good while to fix it all and be a continuing deal to fix things as with any company. GM will have a good handle on most pressing things in the next 5 years.