DETROIT — Late last month, the top executives of General Motors convened for an emergency conference call. The topic: How to respond to a federal investigation of G.M.’s pride and joy, the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid.þþþG.M.’s chief executive, Daniel F. Akerson, led the discussion from his home in Virginia, where his family had gathered for Thanksgiving. This was his first big crisis in 15 months as leader of the nation’s largest automaker, and Mr. Akerson wanted to act quickly.þþ“This could be a defining moment for us,” he said, according to one participant on the call.þþAfter debating their options, the executives decided to publicly defend the Volt’s safety, and take the unusual step of offering free loaner cars to owners during the government’s inquiry into possible postcrash fires in the Volt’s lithium-ion battery.þþIt was an aggressive — and potentially risky — strategy for any car company in the midst of a safety inquiry. “It was very much out of the box,” said one analyst, Joseph Phillippi of the firm Auto Trends.þþThe inbred car culture of Detroit has been shaken up quite a bit in recent years. Alan Mulally left the aircraft maker Boeing to instill fresh thinking at Ford, and Sergio Marchionne, the Italian-Canadian head of Fiat, has brought a newfound discipline to Chrysler.þþBut neither is having as much impact as Mr. Akerson is at G.M., where senior executives for generations adhered to a strict code of conformity and predictability. A 63-year-old former private equity executive, Mr. Akerson is bent on defining himself as anything but a traditional auto executive.þþ“He is a very impatient guy,” said David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research and the son of a former G.M. president. “But I think he’s learning that there is a balance between doing things quickly and understanding how complex this industry is.”þþThe problems with the Volt are a case in point. A few days after the conference call, Mr. Akerson went well beyond the discussion that day and told The Associated Press during a visit to New York that G.M. was willing to buy back Volts from concerned owners. Back in Detroit, company officials scrambled to explain the offer as a gesture of good will to its customers, denying that Mr. Akerson was setting policy on the fly.þþMr. Akerson has been unavailable to the media since his comments on the Volt. But in a recent interview, he made no apologies for his outspoken style and unconventional approach to managing G.M.þþ“I guess being new is both an advantage and a disadvantage because I kind of look at things a little bit differently than everybody else,” he said. “I don’t have the history.”þþMr. Akerson is aware that G.M. still carries a stigma of being slow and unresponsive. To accelerate decisions, he has eliminated about 30 internal boards and committees. And he is characteristically blunt in describing how G.M. was run before it was bailed out by the federal government.þþ“This place lacked a lot of vision,” he said in his 39th-floor office at G.M. headquarters. “They were all over the map. Where was the vision? Where do you want to take this company?”þþSince taking the top job in September 2010, Mr. Akerson has led G.M. through its public stock offering and guided this summer’s successful labor talks with the United Automobile Workers.þþBut he faces many challenges ahead, from finding a fix for the Volt’s battery problems to cementing G.M.’s fragile comeback since emerging from its government-financed bankruptcy two years ago.þþDespite improving sales and seven straight profitable quarters, G.M.’s stock price is languishing around $20 after going public at $33. And because American taxpayers still own a 26 percent stake in G.M., the company is finding it tough to shed its distasteful image as “Government Motors.”þþAnalysts say that investors are still skittish about G.M. because its decades-long decline is still fresh in their minds. “People are very sensitive for early warning signs that the ‘old G.M.’ is still there,” said Brian Johnson of Barclays Capital.þþMr. Akerson is something of an accidental C.E.O. A senior official with the Carlyle Group investment firm, he was named to G.M.’s board by President Obama’s auto task force after the company exited Chapter 11. A few months later, the board forced out G.M.’s holdover chief executive, Fritz Henderson, and replaced him with its chairman, Edward E. Whitacre.þþMr. Whitacre departed when he could not make the long-term job commitment needed to pitch investors on G.M.’s stock offering. That opened the door for Mr. Akerson, a virtual unknown in Detroit, to step in as both chairman and chief executive.þþHe leads a revamped management team composed of younger executives promoted to senior positions, like the global products senior vice president, Mary Barra; the North American president, Mark Reuss; and other outsiders like Daniel Ammann, the chief financial officer recruited from the Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley.þþThe bankruptcy and federal rescue left G.M. with a strong balance sheet, about $30 billion in cash, and the opportunity to improve its products without constantly worrying about financial pressures.þþ“We had a lot of disruption and distraction, and now the focus is on how do we run the company better,” said Mr. Ammann.þþMr. Akerson is pushing hard to improve G.M.’s brands, notably by expanding the Cadillac lineup and increasing its international sales. He has also taken a personal interest in the Volt, challenging engineers to cut $10,000 in costs from the $40,000 car, and bolstering production from 15,000 vehicles this year to 60,000 in 2012.þþIt’s an ambitious goal given that the Volt will fall short this year of its target of 10,000 sales in the United States. But Mr. Akerson is undaunted by the lukewarm reception in the marketplace for cars powered primarily by batteries. He predicts that by 2020, 10 percent of G.M.’s vehicles “will have electric as a major part of their propulsion.”þþInside G.M., Mr. Akerson’s decisive personality has taken some getting used to.þþProduct planners were initially stunned by his demands to reduce G.M.’s range of vehicle platforms and engines, and some employees were angered when he criticized people for leaving work too early. His methods were often contrasted to those of Rick Wagoner, G.M.’s longtime chief executive, who was forced out by the Obama administration in 2009.þþ“He’s a lot tougher than Wagoner,” said one executive, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly.þþMr. Akerson responded: “I was the big unknown, and there was a degree of defensiveness. I think we’re all past that.”þþHe acknowledged that he had a steep learning curve about the industry, particularly how fast G.M. could develop new vehicles. He also is adjusting to the glare of the public spotlight, something he avoided entirely in the cloistered world of private equity.þþHe made headlines when he called Toyota’s Prius hybrid a “geekmobile” and disparaged Ford’s Lincoln brand in an interview. Asked at a speech in Detroit about G.M.’s flagging stock price, Mr. Akerson said it had performed better than other auto stocks, and then startled the crowd with an analogy. “I guess,” he said, “it’s like saying, who’s the tallest midget?”þþBut as his recent comments on the Volt illustrate, Mr. Akerson is not going to stop speaking his mind.þþ“I’d been in private equity for eight years, and my attitude was I don’t talk to the press if I don’t want to,” he said. “I was very much bothered by what was written. But if you don’t talk to them, they’ll define you.”
Source: NY Times
