The Detroit News: Barra Not Alone as New CEO to Deal with Crisis

By Bryce Hoffman for The Detroit News, March 27, 2014

While few CEOs have had to contend with major crises right out of the chute, there have been others.

In addition to Akio Toyoda, crisis-management expert Bill George points to Jeff Immelt, who had the misfortune of taking over another General — General Electric Co. — just four days before the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.

Those attacks cost GE’s insurance business $600 million and dealt a nearly fatal blow to its jet-engine business, as airlines around the world canceled orders for new planes.

“It had quite a devastating effect on their business,” said George, who teaches CEOs how to cope with crisis at Harvard Business School. “Jeff realized he had to do something about his consumer finance business and insurance business. Unfortunately, he was a little slow to do it. Mary Barra can’t be that slow. Mary has to face reality: How did this thing get hidden for 12 years?”

He gives Barra good marks to date.

“So far I like what I see. She’s being very forthright, very sincere and getting people around her to address the problem. But she’s got to get to the root core of how this happened and how it was allowed to go on for so long,” said the former CEO of Medtronic Inc.

“One rule I had at Medtronic was ‘You’ll never get fired for making a mistake, but you will get fired for covering one up,’ ” George said. “If I were advising her, I’d say that the most important thing is our customers. This company has to restore its trust with our customers. If we do that, we win. If we don’t do that, we lose. That’s the most important thing she has to do.”