Zac Quinn 
General Motors just announced the retirement of Gerald Johnson, its long-serving executive vice president of Global Manufacturing and Sustainability, after a distinguished 44-year tenure at the company. Alongside him, Mike Abbott, Executive Vice President of Software and Services, will be stepping down due to health reasons.
While the announcement would appear coincidental, this comes at a time where GM is facing both customer and media backlash for failures in successfully launching new products. Most recently, the Chevrolet Blazer EV, which headlines show is riddled with buggy software, and questionably high prices. As GM continues to push it’s “tech company” narrative, as it chases a higher market cap (shareholder value), and as it seeks to make a return on its absurdly expensive BEV development and manufacturing investments, such faults simply won’t do.
General Motors Executive Shakeup: Details
Johnson is esteemed for his instrumental role in bolstering GM’s manufacturing and labor relations. He was pivotal in effecting a major cultural transformation that underscored leadership, process discipline, continuous improvement, and waste elimination. Johnson is widely respected as a leader who spent significant time on the shop floor, and his impact extends beyond General Motors employees, reaching both customers and communities. Johnson was employed by GM for 44 years.
Replacing the reverent Gerald Johnson to lead GM’s manufacturing and sustainability operations is JP Clausen, who spearheaded the rapid scaling of electric vehicle propulsion systems at Tesla‘s Gigafactory 1 and played a crucial role in making EVs more accessible. He also led a financial turnaround at LEGO by simplifying the product and component portfolio. As vice president of Engineering at Google Data Centers, he drove groundbreaking technological innovation, product development, and process optimization. Johnson will remain at GM through the end of the year and work in partnership with Clausen for a smooth transition.
Mike Abbott was supposed to be the change agent that would oversee a class-leading software and technology user experience for GM products. Abbott himself hails from Apple, where he served as vice president of engineering for the company’s Cloud Services division, before being recruited by GM. He used his influence to further recruit people with backgrounds from Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft. With his absence, it’s likely that many of these key employees will walk. But at least one will stay. Baris Cetinok, the current vice president of Products in Software and Services, has been named interim head of Software and Services while a search is being conducted.
Nevertheless, the pattern remains: GM recruits outside talent, and the outside talent abruptly leaves. Repeat until shareholder value is unlocked.
