GM's Goals for 2010: Shun "Bad Behavior"

DETROIT — Admitting that there has been a lot of "damage" to General Motors in the aftermath of the federal bailout and bankruptcy, the automaker's new management team on Tuesday pledged that there will be no more "bad behavior" or "parlor tricks" as it makes the transition to newer products like the 2011 Chevrolet Cruze.

Mark Reuss, the new president of GM North America, and Susan Docherty, the new GM vice president of sales, service and marketing, spent nearly an hour on a conference call fielding questions from a sometimes hostile media. At one point, Wall Street Journal reporter John Stoll described last Friday's management reorganization in negative terms, saying "it feels a lot like the old GM."

Reuss fired back: "I guess that's what you feel. We're going to do different."

Both Reuss and Docherty are longtime GM executives.

Reuss told reporters that the new management team had its first meeting on Monday and laid out its goals for the automaker for 2010.

"I'm not getting into a metric session," Reuss said, while refusing to put a number on GM's goal for future market share and other key measurements of success. "What we think success looks like for General Motors in 2010 [is this]. We need to repay the money that we've borrowed [from the federal government]. Everybody in this company wants that desperately. We want to make this country proud of General Motors, and we want to do that fast. The only way is with our products and how we sell those products and how we build those products. If we can get that done, and we can go public, and we can get the relationships of the American people back, man, look out. And that's what we talked about yesterday."

In a rather stunning confessional, Docherty said: "What's different here is that in the old GM, we had a tendency to buy our market share. With our focus from going from eight brands to four brands, we're going to earn our market share. That's where the big difference is."

Reuss added: "This is going to be a fundamental approach to being a great company. The initiatives, the parlor tricks, that's not what's going to be going on here."

When Docherty was asked to explain her remark about market share, she added: "I'm not proud of the fact that we've been the incentive leader. We are going to pull back on incentives or be more strategic on incentives. As we transition from [Chevrolet] Cobalt to [Chevrolet] Cruze, I don't want to flood the market with Cobalts while we wait for Cruze. We don't want to jam cars on the marketplace to buy share. That's a bad behavior. [We have to] manage the transition between old products and new products."

The new management team clearly is grappling with a GM image problem in the aftermath of its bankruptcy filing earlier this year. Reuss said, "There is a lot of damage with what people see in the media and a bankruptcy on one of the biggest, most respected companies in America."

While unable or unwilling to quantify things like future market share, GM did reveal some key numbers in Tuesday's session. Docherty said the automaker's 60-day money-back guarantee has resulted in 163 returned vehicles out of 300,000 vehicles sold, as of December 6. "We're learning lots from everybody that does return," she said.

Reuss said the automaker has taken information from one woman in Kentucky who returned a Chevrolet Silverado and are using her complaints to improve the truck "for the next program." Her issues included a too-small backseat, disappointing fuel economy and paint problems.

Reuss said he is not seeking the job of GM CEO, which is up for grabs in the aftermath of Fritz Henderson's resignation last week.

Inside Line says: It's Reuss and Docherty's media debut in their new jobs, and they clearly have a Herculean task ahead of them. — Anita Lienert, Correspondent