通用汽车候任女CEO注定会失败？

    舆论已经一致认为玛丽•芭拉是通用汽车（General Motors）下一任首席执行官的极佳选择。不过她究竟能表现得有多么出色还取决于许多因素。一位著名的领导力专家担心通用汽车是否为芭拉时代的到来做好了准备。

    诺尔•蒂奇是密歇根大学罗斯商学院（University of Michigan's Ross School of Business）的教授，一直密切关注汽车业。杰克•韦尔奇执掌通用电气（General Electric）期间，蒂奇曾经负责管理通用电气的克罗顿维尔（Crotonville）领导力培训中心，因此广为人知。他曾撰写以及合作撰写过数本商业畅销书，其中包括《把握命运：通用电气的成功奥秘》（Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will）、《领导力引擎》（The Leadership Engine）和《判断力》（Judgment）。他的下一本著作将于明年八月出版，名为《继承》（Succession）。他强烈赞同芭拉担任首席执行官。他说：“她是一位拥有极佳背景的优秀领袖。不过，坏消息是（通用汽车）董事会和现任首席执行官（丹•埃克森）可能把她推向了一个注定失败的位置。”

    首先，蒂奇注意到通用汽车并未给予巴拉董事长的职位，通用汽车的董事会将由过去18个月中的公司主管、前康明斯公司（Cummins）的首席执行官西奥多•索尔索担任。目前，拆分首席执行官和董事长的角色已经成为了主流——标普500指数（S&P 500）公司中，几乎一半的公司都这么做，不过蒂奇不喜欢这样。他说：“这几乎起不到作用，大多数时候都会失败。”因为它可能会导致新的矛盾诞生。

    其次，通用汽车还增添了一个新职位：总裁，将由首席财务官丹尼尔•阿曼恩担任。蒂奇表示，这个举动表明，“通用正在上演一场《回到未来》的戏码（电影中主角回到了过去，改变了可能发生在未来的事件——译注），增加了阻碍发展的决策层。”20世纪80年代，总裁这个职位在美国公司中一度十分盛行，不过如今业已失宠。《财富》最近一期的全美十大最受尊敬的公司中，没有一家公司设置了这个职位。

    蒂奇还注意到通用汽车将许多重要的职位赋予了其他首席执行官的竞争者。阿曼恩是其中之一，还有马克•罗伊斯，后者将担任巴拉的现职，管理全球产品开发。蒂奇认为，想要让他们向一个赢取了他们所觊觎的职位的人汇报，恐怕很难。

    根据以上三点，蒂奇认为可能会导致严重的后果：“这些都是重大的缺陷，可能致使通用汽车重蹈覆辙。”

    通用汽车发言人拒绝对蒂奇的观点发表评论，他指出，芭拉目前尚未开始担任首席执行官——明年1月15日才会上任，而公司也愿意用实际行动来证明质疑者的错误。（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正

    The overwhelming consensus on Mary Barra is that she's an excellent choice to be General Motors' (GM) next CEO. But how well she performs will depend on many factors, and a famous leadership expert is concerned about how GM has prepared the company for the Barra era.

    Noel Tichy has watched the auto industry up close as a longtime professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. He's well known for having run General Electric's (GE) Crotonville leadership development center under Jack Welch, and he has written or co-written several business bestsellers, including Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will, The Leadership Engine, and Judgment. His next book, due out in August, is called Succession. He strongly endorses the choice of Barra as CEO -- "a hell of a good leader with a great background," he says. "The bad news is that the board and the CEO [Dan Akerson] have potentially set her up for failure."

    Tichy's first concern is that GM didn't give Barra the chairman's job; GM's board will be chaired by former Cummins CEO Theodore Solso, a GM director for the past 18 months. Splitting the CEO and chairman roles is becoming mainstream -- almost half the S&P 500 companies do it -- but Tichy doesn't like it. "It rarely works and most of the time fails," he says, because it introduces a potential new source of conflict.

    A second concern is that GM added a new job, president, which will be held by CFO Daniel Ammann. Tichy says that move is "back to the future at GM, adding layers that get in the way." Presidents were common among U.S. companies in the 1980s but have fallen out of favor; among America's 10 most admired companies in Fortune's latest ranking, for example, you won't find a single one.

    Tichy is concerned also that GM has given important jobs to the other CEO contenders. Ammann was one, as was Mark Reuss, who will move into Barra's current job running global product development. Tichy believes it just doesn't work to make them report to the person who got the job they were after.

    Combine those three factors, Tichy believes, and the effect could be significant: "These are serious flaws that can potentially set GM back to the good old days."

    A GM spokesman declined to comment on Tichy's views, noting that Barra isn't even CEO yet -- that happens Jan. 15 -- and says the company is content to let performance prove the doubters wrong.