Mary Erdoes:
Welcome Mary, thank you so much for being with us. You get Mary squared here. We are so excited to have Mary Barra with us. She needs absolutely no introduction. CEO of General Motors, on every single list there is, Forbes, Fortune, Time's Most Influential Women, People, first female CEO in the entire auto industry, Stanford Business School grad, Disney board member, General Dynamics board member, and really just a fabulous, fabulous person that I've had the good fortune of getting to know over the last few years. We sit on The US-China Business Council together, and that's a pretty special thing to watch Mary as she navigates all that goes on between the two countries and her company and how well it's done through that. So we're really excited to have you with us. Many of us on this session today, come from the finance industry. And I think many of us think we probably live in the most male-dominated or historically male-dominated industry, but we got nothing on you coming from the auto industry. And I just thought we should start with that, which is how have you sort of muscled through the, what was historically an incredibly male-dominated industry to rise to where you are and how did you think about it or what is it about your personality, you think, that got you through all of this?
Mary T. Barra:
Well, Mary, first of all, thank you for this opportunity. And it's so great for, like you said, Mary squared to be talking today because I've so enjoyed getting to know you and work with you on The US-China Business Council. So thank you so much for hosting me today. But I think if I go back all the way to when I started at General Motors, I think it actually even starts before then. My parents, neither had the opportunity to go to college, but they just truly believed that my brother and I could do and be anything we set our mind to. And so we were raised with this, you can do and be anything you wanna be. And so I think as I got to the working world, I took that with me and I had this kind of inner, heard my mom in the back of my head saying, "You can do this." And it was really something of a huge lesson for me, or eye-opening that when a lot of people talk to me and they say, I don't aspire to that because I don't see anyone who looks like me there. And my mom just really instilled this competence that I belonged there and I could do anything. And that was probably what has been so instrumental. And then I would say the other thing, and I learned this earlier in my career, so often people who have career expectations and that's great, but if you're doing your job today and you're more focused on your next job, it's not gonna work out well. I mean, I always tell people do the job you're doing today like you're gonna do it for the rest of your life, because that means you're gonna invest in it. You're gonna make it better. You're gonna drive efficiencies. If you're just passing through, then you're more like renting the job. And frankly, when you're investing, that's when you get noticed. So this idea of own your job, do it like you're gonna do it for the rest of your life, I think also gets the right commitment, and people notice.
Mary Erdoes:
Before you were CEO, one of your big first jobs was Head of HR. And I can imagine what it was for the many years leading up to when you got there. And then when you got there, there you are making your mark, changing it in the way that you wanted to change it. And I think you're quite well known for converting the whole thing into really empowering people. And you were gonna be the best HR manager that there ever was, maybe cause you had been, sort of worked your way up in the industry. And so there you were, I think one of the early things you did was you changed the dress code of the car industry, which is sort of crazy, but you didn't do it in a command and control way. You did it in a, like, why don't we just say dress appropriately? How about we try that? And so maybe just a little bit of that job, I'm sure people said to you, "Did you do it 'cause you think you wanted to be CEO or whatever?" Like, no you did it because you wanted to be the best HR person ever.
Mary T. Barra:
So when I was offered the opportunity to run HR, I think it was largely because through my whole career, I had been on a lot of committees or task force on employee engagement. And I just really believe that people are our strength and I knew how talented the people were at General Motors. But I also knew we had some cultural challenges about empowering. And I know, I think this audience has a lot of people who are in the manager role in it. And it's so important to know your people and empower your people. It really started, I think, to shift our culture to, first of all, trusting people and believing in people are gonna do the right thing, but also holding them accountable to make that decision as opposed to thinking, well, I'm gonna be told what to do. So it really was the start of, I think the cultural shift we wanted to make in the company.
Mary Erdoes:
It's amazing. And we've gone through the same exact things in our company. And so it's just great and it inspires us all to rethink about what are all those things that we think we have to be so command and control about and what you'll get as a lift from the company if you think differently. Can I pivot to the world that you live in, which is like constant... It looks like when you read about the industry it's constant crisis. So you've got labor issues constantly. I remember right after you became CEO, you had a major recall and like, how was she gonna manage through it? And how was that gonna happen? Now we've got like microchip shortages, we've got China-US issues. We've got COVID that shuts down plants and, how does that work? And now you've been able to sort of work all the way through that. Pick any of those and just bring to life your management style through crisis. Sort of what is it that people say, the reason we got through it is 'cause Mary does these things.
Mary T. Barra:
Well, I think it's not just me. I have a phenomenal team. And so whenever we're faced with something, I think one of the things everybody needs to understand is on the first day of a challenge, you only know a little amount. You learn over the days and weeks and sometimes you're learning hour by hour what you're really facing. And so, one of the things we do is we get the right people together and say, okay, here's what we're facing. And one of the things I'm so proud of at GM is when we're faced with one of these challenges, the team just execute. I mean, I'll use just quickly the ventilator. Last year when we got a call from Ken Chanel saying, can you help this small company that builds 250 ventilators a year? Can you help them scale? And within 30 days we had the first ventilator roll off a line in a operation that was capable of making 10,000 ventilators a month instead of 250. And so when the team has clear goals and they know the challenges, they just come up with amazing things, creativity, innovations. to get the job done. So when I look at some of the serious issues and the ignition switch, recall, was probably the most serious issue to date because it involved people's lives. And doing the right thing for our customer, keeping our customers safe, delivering quality to them, that's one of our most important challenges. In the pandemic, it was keeping our employees and our customers safe. And so it's getting the cross-functional team together and doing, one of the things I learned early in my career is you've gotta do the right thing, even when it's hard. So often people think, especially in leadership, you think, well, I've gotta make this tough decision and you sometimes can convinced yourself you're the only one who knows this difficult choice. I had a leader tell me early in my career, and this happened to be about an HR issue. The person who said, "Look, everyone knows there's a problem here. And they're just waiting to see what you're going to do. And so going forward saying, I'm gonna do the right thing even when it's hard and I need to recognize that there's many other people who realize we've got a challenge, we've got a problem, I think is almost freeing because then you sit there," and you say, okay, what's the right thing to do for employees? What's the right thing to do for our customers? And let that guide how you deal with the challenge and you get clarity pretty quickly. So when we were faced with the ignition switch, we said, we were gonna do three things. We were gonna do the right thing for the customer. We were gonna be transparent. And then the third thing we said was we were gonna do everything in our power to never let anything like this happen again. And so whenever the world we live in and the challenges we face, we get the right people together and we figure it out.
Mary Erdoes:
How do you get disruption in a very well long-term established company like General Motors and get yourself to be the leader in EVs and AVs? Like just give us a little of the inside baseball of how you get the teams together and do that with each other.
Mary T. Barra:
It was a couple of years ago that we said we believe in an all-electric future. And I can tell you the day we did that, yes, it got maybe not that well covered outside the company, but it was really impactful in the company. And even just recently, when we put the announcement out that we aspire to sell all of our light duty vehicles in the U.S. to be electric by 2035, that was so important because it changed the dialogue in the company from when and if, to, all right, now we've drawn a line in the sand. This is what we've gotta work toward. And it stopped all the internal debate. And so I think that's important to help people, because again, everybody's trying to do the right thing, but to give them clarity of, why climate change, we're developing a solution that is broad, a whole portfolio of vehicles and now when, so people don't debate or think I can think about that tomorrow. No, we all have to think about it today, but it's also very important to reinforce the important work that people are doing on today's products. We can't just drop everything. We're responsible for the way a lot of people move. And we also have a lot of employees who are building those vehicles today. So helping people understand it's a transition, everybody has a role in it, but we have set a pretty ambitious goal to make that transformation, just allows the whole company to have clarity. And then, like I said, once we have clarity, I think, we've got an excellent team on the field to get it done.
Mary Erdoes:
If you could, in this audience of mostly women, give us all the tricks of the trade. If we had time we would keep you here for hours.
Mary T. Barra:
Sure, sure. Well, you know what I learned and I would say I'm still learning. First of all, I think women need to understand we bring a lot to the table and I know we're all different, but in general, I think we approach things more collaboratively. We recognize people we include. And I think those are all important things, because I think when you look at most of the challenges we solve today, most of them are cross-functional. In whatever industry and company you're in, you've got to engage other people to get the best outcomes. And so, when I look at it, a couple of things that I've realized, first, work-life balance. Yes, it can be about childcare. It can be about elder care. It can be about other life responsibilities, but it's your responsibility. I always say any company will gladly take 24/7 from you and not even feel bad. Because it's a company, it's not a person. And your manager or your leader can't work-life balance for you cause they don't know what's important to you. So you have to take ownership of your balance and recognize that sometimes the most important is not the most urgent. And that was something I learned when, my children are both out of college now. I guess they're not children anymore, young adults, but as I was working, when they were young and through middle school, high school, there was a lot of times where every now and then I had to say, look, Mary, yes, I know there's this demand today and you really wanted to leave at five o'clock so you could go to the soccer game, the hockey game, the cross country meet, whatever. And I had to really give myself permission to say, that demand I can get it done after I go to the game and maybe I'll stay up a little later than I want, but this is really important to me. Or maybe it really isn't a deadline today. It's an artificial deadline I'm giving myself. So when you look back over a month, over a year and you say to yourself, wow, I didn't spend the time, I wasn't there for the important things in my life. Well then that's something you've got to adjust and you've gotta own that. The other thing I would tell you is, I'll just tell one quick story. This was when my kids were very little and my husband was in consulting, so he was traveling. So I was it. And the person who was taking care of my children went to school in the evening. So if I didn't get home on time, I made her late for class, and that's not right. So I think I was sitting in my boss's office, it's 5:30 and I'm literally going, this meeting was supposed to end at 5:15, I've gotta go. I've gotta, you know what I mean? This is this internal dialogue I’m having. And finally, I think, I let another five minutes go and I just said to my boss, I said, "Harry, I really need to leave." "Mike, if I don't leave now, I'm not gonna get home in time and my daycare person's gonna be late for class." And he's like, "Oh my gosh, go." He goes, "Why are you still here?" And then from that point on, if it was toward that end of the day, he'd be like, "Mary, do you need to leave? If you need to leave." And he didn't say, "You can leave, we're gonna keep going." He ended the meeting. And so I'm fortunate to work for someone like that. But what I learned is most managers are like that. That if they understand you've gotta go because you're trying to be a good parent or you're trying to be respectful of someone who's part of your ecosystem, they're gonna want you to go. So sometimes I think the pressure we put on ourselves, is really we're doing it and the company is not doing it. And frankly, if you work for a company that isn't gonna respect the fact that you've worked a full day, you do a good job and you've got to get home you for someone like I described, maybe then it isn't the right company. Or it's something you need to talk to your leader about to say, look, this isn't working for me. But I think own that but really remember, when you look back, you wanna look back and say, you know what? No one gets it perfectly right but I feel like my kids know, or my parent that I'm taking care of or whatever obligations I have, they know I was dedicated and I cared and it was important. And I think, months can turn into years. And if you don't do that from a work-life balance, that's gonna be a challenge. I guess one other thing I would say, Mary, you and I talked about this is, yes, there's a lot of great attributes we bring to a meeting and again, overly generalizing. But the other thing is, don't take yourself out of an opportunity before you've even explored it. This is beyond the auto industry. When women get offered a look at a new position and say, wow, I've got eight of the 10 requirements. I'm not gonna apply. A man will look at it and say, I've got six, I'm gonna go for it. And my message to women is, go for it. Even if you don't get the position, you're gonna learn so much through the interview process. You're gonna be better for the next opportunity. And who knows? You might actually get it. So go for it, don't hold yourself back.
Mary Erdoes:
I love that. And you're exactly right. It's just like, go for it. What's the worst thing that's gonna happen? The worst thing that's gonna happen is you're right back to what you're doing today and you've learned a lot through the process. I also really appreciate you saying the comments about how to deal with a situation where you need to go home or you need to keep the stuff in balance. It can't be in balance every day, but it certainly can be in balance over the time that you have. And I personally think if there are any positives that have come out of this horrible pandemic, it's the ability to do things from a remote location somewhere, that is now acceptable. And once it's acceptable, you have now freed up an entire population of people that can walk out at five o'clock or 5:30, and do the work later in the day or the evening and adjust the time zones that are so precious with the things that are most important in life. 'Cause as far as I can tell, we only get one of these, so we need to make the most of it. And we're just so thankful that you gave us the time. You are an inspiration for all of us, me particularly, and I'm just really, really appreciative that you were with us today.
Mary Erdoes:
Thank you so much, Mary.
Mary T. Barra:
Well, thanks for the opportunity. And Mary, it's always great to have the opportunity to work with you. So thank you so much.
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