• Wall Street Journal, Friday, June 18, 2010 10:40 AM

Sharon Terlap writes that General Motors picked an unlikely candidate to win back North American market share without using big discounts or dumping cars into rental fleets -- a 46-year-old engineer and company lifer who never ran a major organization, has little marketing or sales experience, and likes to use the word "dude." But under Mark Reuss, GM reported a $1.2 billion operating profit in North America for the first quarter and an increase in U.S. sales despite its decision to eliminate four of eight brands.

Reuss is a hands-on manager -- he regularly shows up for the Friday rides that GM engineers take to work out kinks in vehicles under development -- who has also given lower-level executives more authority. "We put them in the job to do the job and I'm not going to micromanage," he says.

Reuss also has changed the way GM responds to competitors. Terlap cites his decision to not match the heavy incentives that Toyota was offering last February because, he told the board, doing so would hurt the company in the long run.

"I've been around this business long enough to see it and smell it and know that it's never as easy as it seems," Reuss says. "That comes from starting at the very bottom and working to the top ...."

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