Good morning! Levi Strauss CEO Michelle Gass shares how a Beyoncé song led to an ad campaign, the FTC with chair Lina Khan makes memberships easier to cancel, and GM's Mary Barra discusses the past and future of the automaker. Have a terrific Thursday!
- Barra none. In her decade at the helm of General Motors, Mary Barra has been tasked with modernizing a century-plus-old automobile company while righting the ship after a bankruptcy and ignition switch scandal threatened the historic carmaker’s future.
It’s not an easy role, and one in which Barra has experienced myriad successes and setbacks. She was interviewed remotely Wednesday by editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Laguna Niguel, Calif.
Barra is No. 1 on Fortune’s Most Power Women ranking this year, a spot she’s held three other times since becoming the first female CEO of a global automaker. Her decade-long tenure is more than double the average for female Fortune 500 CEOs, and almost three years longer than the average male CEO’s tenure. She said part of that longevity is having a team around her that all has the same mission—and changing the company culture to reflect the shared values of employees.
“It's easy to live your values and have a corporate mission statement when everything's going well, but when you're really challenged, that's when people really take notice,” Barra said, noting doing so allowed the company to rally when the ignition scandal was unfolding. “We also said, look, we're going to do everything in our power to help our customers through this period. We're going to be transparent, and then we're going to do everything possible to make sure something like this never happens again.”
GM has come a long way since Barra became CEO. In fact, last year the company brought in $171.8 billion, its best performance in 17 years. That’s the long-term outcome of structural changes Barra started instituting from the beginning of her tenure.
It’s also the result of listening to customers and giving them more of what they want. And as Barra and GM look to the future, that includes doubling down on affordable electric vehicles.
“We've got to continue to have affordable vehicles that people want to own and drive that are beautifully designed, and the charging infrastructure needs to continue to improve,” she said. “We're going to be flexible based on where the customer is and really be driven by the customer.”
Asked for advice for other leaders, Barra said it comes down to doing the right thing and investing in the right people.
“The other thing I always say to people is, when's the best time to solve a problem? And they kind of look at me perplexed," she says. "It's the minute you know you have one, because problems rarely get smaller."
MPW 2024 is over, but you can find more of our coverage from the week here. And Emma will be back tomorrow with more reflections from the conference.
Alicia Adamczyk
alicia.adamczyk@fortune.com
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