Fresh Blood at GM?

Fritz Henderson resigned at General Motors yesterday. Will we finally see fresh blood at GM? Several months ago, I ran a post in which I calculated the average tenure at GM for the top management team, based on data found in Fortune magazine. The average tenure at the firm was 28.5 years! Since that time, two members of the top team have resigned: Fritz Henderson and Mark LaNeve, VP of US Sales. Henderson was replaced by the Chairman of the Board, while LaNeve was replaced by Susan Docherty. You would think that this should dramatically reduce the average tenure. However, it has not. LaNeve had only been at GM for 8 years, while his replacement has been there for 24 years. Thus, with these two changes, and even though Whitacre has zero years of tenure at GM, the average tenure of the top team members remains 27.1 years. Fresh blood? Not much. 77 year old Bob Lutz has the lowest tenure at GM of anyone other than Whitacre!