General Motors: Back from the Dead | Fatal Flaws | 2

Business Movers

Wondery

History, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2021

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

General Motors’ brand new CEO Mary Barra navigates a crisis unlike any other as General Motors recalls thousands of vehicles after investigations reveal they caused the deaths of dozens of drivers.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's January 31st, 2014, and GM's Detroit headquarters two weeks after Mary Bara took
0:21.4	over as CEO. Mary sits in her new executive office reviewing a report when the phone rings.
0:28.6	Hello. Hey, Mary, it's me, Mark. Mark Royce is the executive who replaced Mary as head of
0:34.8	global product development when she was promoted to CEO. Normally, Mark has a cordial pleasant
0:40.3	demeanor, but today, his voice is tense. So I need you to open your email, Mary. You can
0:44.8	want to see this. All right. What's going on? It's building on fire? That's about to be.
0:50.2	Cut your email open. Yeah, right here. Give it a read. Mary reads an email Royce forwarded to her
0:57.2	from a GM safety recall committee that is investigating a problematic ignition switch. Mary remembers
1:02.9	getting a report from the same committee about a month ago. She told them then to find all the data
1:08.3	and do the right thing. Now the data is in, and it's not good for GM. So, Mary, the parts
1:14.4	aren't just effective. They're killing people. I met with that committee in December. They didn't
1:19.2	say anything about people dying. How many? We're not sure yet. The committee thinks at least six.
1:24.6	Six. Mary's head drops into her hands and she sighs deeply. Six people with lives and families
1:32.5	died in GM cars. It's unforgivable and Mary feels sick, but she also feels a laser-focused
1:39.2	determination to make it right. How many vehicles did this impact, Mark? Right now, 780,000.
1:45.4	All Chevy cobalts and Pontiac G5s made somewhere between 2005 and 2007.
1:50.8	Mary stands from her chair and begins pacing. It's routine for automakers to recall millions of cars
1:57.6	a year to fix parts with small manufacturing defects. For a company like GM that sells about 10
2:03.3	million vehicles a year, recalls are just the cost of doing business. But recalls related to fatal
2:08.8	crashes are extremely rare, and Mary knows that if a faulty part is in one type of car,
2:14.5	chances are it's in others too. We need to figure out what we're dealing with. The whole landscape
2:19.5	all of it. I want that committee in my office right now. Issue a recall, Mark, and cancel all
	...

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