4 Reasons GM CEO Akerson Should Go Sooner, Not Later

Based on this recent Detroit News interview with General Motors (GM) CEO Dan Akerson, you'd think the man with no significant prior auto industry experience now intends to remain at the helm of the good ship New General for three or four years. He's done a great job of staging GM's comeback and launching an IPO that raised more than $20 billion. But if he hangs around until 2015, it will be a disaster for the company. Here's why:

1. He's the ultimate bean counter. There are bean counters and then there are bean counters. Akerson is actually a breed apart from your typical elite numbers guy. He ran a piece of the Carlyle Group prior to joining the GM board, so he's a private equity meta-numbers guy. His stomping ground is finance of the highest-falutin caliber. What he lacks is a feel for the products his company is actually selling. So impoverished is his view of GM's future that he's resorted to strategizing the whole thing by stealing from Ford (F) CEO Alan Mulally and Toyota (TM). Like 10,000 numbers guys before him, he ardently believes that streamlining GM's engineering resources and directing them to produce "world cars" built on a few interchangeable platforms will serve up major economies of scale and deliver the profits. In 20 or 30 years, when massive standardization enters the industry as people are introduced to cars that, Minority Report style, drive themselves, this will be a good plan. Now, it simply reveals a failure of imagination.
2. It means we have to wait longer for Mark Reuss to be put in charge. If you want to see the next great CEO in the auto industry, look no further than Mark Reuss, who runs GM's North American operations. You could say that he's a GM lifer -- he's been with the company since the 1980s -- but he's the kind of lifer you want to keep. As analyst Aaron Bragman told the Detroit News for the Akerson story, all of GM's new vehicles were guided by retired product czar Bob Lutz. Ruess could fill that role -- and it's about time that role at GM isn't treated as a sub-CEO position, but is synonymous with the top job.
3. Wall Street doesn't like GM -- and GM shouldn't like Wall Street. The American financial oligarchy already tried to kill GM once. Akerson has shown refreshing indifference to the skepticism of his former colleagues. But can it last? GM has been making money, but its share price hasn't moved much from the $30 doldrums it's been stuck in. And Akerson isn't the type who's likely to endure this rebuff forever. But what difference does it ultimately make? If GM continues to produce appealing products that consumers respond to, and continues to be profitable, the markets will eventually stop resisting. A potential U.S. market share of 25 percent won't hurt, either.
4. GM can't afford any more Chris Liddell departures. Liddell came to GM as CFO from Microsoft (MSFT) and was seen by many as an excellent example of fresh blood and fresh thinking that the U.S. auto industry needs on the money side. When he was passed over for Akerson after Ed Whitacre stepped down, he resigned -- taking with him the no-debt attitude that he understandably developed in Redmond. GM urgently needs this point of view, if it can attract it, to stay in the company. Otherwise, it will be run by executive who think primarily in terms of products and banking relationships, rather than what the consumer demands.

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