Former CEO Dan Ackerson Blames Management And Corporate Culture For GM Decline

Six months after stepping aside as General Motors Co.’s fourth CEO in five years and leaving his successor with a searing recall crisis, Dan Akerson tells The Detroit News “we all ... didn’t fully realize how deeply some of the problems ran.”

That’s not the half of it, as his hand-picked replacement, Mary Barra, is learning.

The most insidious aspects of GM's corporate culture — blame-shifting, lack of accountability, a callous disregard for customers — survived decades of declining market share, financial losses and an epic bankruptcy. Those serial embarrassments mostly failed to penetrate, much less change, critical corners of the automaker's engineering and legal operations.

Whether the recall mess proves any different will depend on how dramatically GM’s Barra-led leadership unambiguously departs from the go-along, get-along management culture that persisted for way too long there, enabling the ignition-switch fiasco blamed for at least 13 deaths and dozens of accidents.

There are the “demotions” that move personnel problems around instead of remove them; the unofficial “management union,” as Akerson referred to it in an interview last December, that memorializes excuses and protects underperformers; the nice-guy legacies of former CEOs Jack Smith and Rick Wagoner, who each presided nobly over decline.

RobertPaulson - 7/29/2014 12:21:34 PM

+2 Boost

Pointing fingers and playing the blame game works when you are a 1st year associate. Not when you are CEO and Chairman of GM.

I get the point that Dan Akerson (AKA Captain Queeg) is trying to make; that it is a deep cultural problem at GM. But wasn't this genius the one who was supposed to clean it up? Akerson had nearly 4 years to do it.

TheSteve - 7/29/2014 12:57:20 PM

+1 Boost

Old Italian saying: "When a fish rots, it always starts at the head."

GM's ailments are systemic, and decades old. They led to their first bankruptcy, in which GM's staggering losses and debts were converted to tax-payers' debts by way of a massive bailout. Throwing money at a failing company won't transform it into a prosperous, well-managed one.

PUGPROUD - 7/29/2014 7:30:45 PM

+1 Boost

Somebody should tell Dan that this was all there under his watch. He's embarrassed at his Gross Pointe golf club whenever GM's issues come up
in conversation after holding his position at GM over everyone's head for years. His wife is embarrassed at her boutique hairdresser for the same reason. You cannot change your legacy now Dan by openly blaming others.