Mary Barra knows something about difficult conversations — and the high price of avoiding them. Not long after she became chief executive officer of General Motors in January, the U.S. automobile giant began recalling millions of cars in response to allegations that the company had failed to correct a defect tied to at least 13 deaths and scores of accidents.
Some GM employees had long been aware of the potential seriousness of the engineering fault. What did executives and board members know and when did they know it?