Remember the Crisis

"I never want to put this behind us."

Mary Barra said that to General Motors employees at a town hall in June 2014, five months into the job, with the company recalling 2.6 million cars over an ignition switch tied to dozens of deaths. She finished her sentence: "I want to put this painful experience permanently in our collective memories."

A retired GM executive later told Fortune it was unlike anything any previous GM CEO had said.

The normal way to handle a crisis is to close it: settle the claims, announce the reforms, and let everyone move on. Her own employees would have preferred that, and she stood in front of them and demanded the opposite.

She created a VP of Global Vehicle Safety role that had not existed before and put Jeff Boyer, a 40-year GM engineer, in it. She hired Anton Valukas, the former US Attorney who had examined the Lehman Brothers collapse, and told Congress he had free rein to go where the facts take him. She put Kenneth Feinberg in charge of a compensation fund that paid out roughly $595 million in claims.

Any competent board can hire an investigator and pay the victims.

Only a company with deep values decides to keep remembering what happened. No budget forces that choice.