I’ve never met Mary Barra personally. But probably like you, I feel like I’ve gotten to know her well just from reading my share of all the coverage she’s getting in the local press. I’m fooling myself, of course, because all the press is really doing is giving her your basic star treatment, not capturing the whole person. She surely has her own set of professional and personal flaws, just like the rest of us. And if you don’t know a person’s flaws, you don’t know the person.
But it troubles me a bit that all we’re seeing right now is what I call the Jackie Robinson effect. Yes, Ms. Barra’s ascendance to the top spot at GM means that one more glass ceiling—in fact, maybe the thickest one of them all so far—has been shattered. Young girls thinking about majoring in STEM subjects in college will feel more encouraged. Young ladies early in their careers in business will feel more energized. General Motors itself will score lots of marketing points in the female demographic.
All of which, to my way of thinking, misses what should be the more important meaning in Ms. Barra’s story. That is the potential for her to bring a feminine touch to GM’s famously staid, rigid, male-dominated culture. Can she do it? And if she can, will it truly change the way the company operates? Will its key people become more collaborative in their leadership styles? Will major decisions get more consensus buy-in? Will talented younger employees, male and female, feel more nurtured? And if all those things happen, how will they affect the products—the cars and trucks—themselves?
When I first started at ASE, 24 years ago this month, I was in my last year of undergraduate studies at U of M. If someone had told me then that I would be in the top position in 12 years I would have laughed. You see, to that point ASE had had only five presidents in its 100-year history, and of course they were all male. But I was promoted to president in 2002 and I’ve been there since.
Has the culture changed at ASE over the years with a female in charge? I would like to think so; I have worked long and hard, with a lot of help from the staff, to make it happen.
But ASE is a small organization. Not to overgeneralize, but the real question is whether female leadership in large organizations can “feminize” those cultures in healthy ways that ultimately benefit the business and the economy in general. The jury is out on that question, of course, because we don’t have more than a handful of women in top spots in the Fortune 500 so far. But that is the question we should all be asking.
One reason I’ve been thinking more about this issue is that I am currently reading a fascinating biography of the Russian Czarina Catherine the Great, who lived in the middle of the 18th century. What a powerful—and completely self-taught—leader she was, especially considering the times and the world she lived in. She was an absolute monarch who played the power politics of the times well. But historians agree that she also won the love and loyalty of the great majority of the Russian people, earning the unofficial title “Matushka”—“ Mother of All Russia.” She did it not just by enacting social reforms but also by visibly embracing the two most important institutions in Russia at the time, the army and the Orthodox church. And she was neither Russian nor Orthodox by birth—she was an ethnic German and a Protestant! There is no question that over the course of her long reign she profoundly modernized Russia politically, economically and culturally. She was a 21st-century woman who lived nearly 300 years before her time. I recommend the book.
So . . . can a woman take over an entrenched, male-dominated culture and change it? History says it can be done. I wish Ms. Barra every success and I am sure you do too.