Szygenda has been able to retain and motivate his executives by giving them room to do their jobs. They know they're fully accountable for their business objectives, which he sets with them. "I tell them clearly what I want and explain who does what," he says. And he's tough. GM is completely dependent on outsourcers to execute on IT strategy, but Szygenda holds his people responsible if a vendor doesn't deliver on time. "Every time you pick someone, you bet your job here," Szygenda says. "That's the way the marketplace is set up."

His executive team sees him as a demanding yet helpful boss with a good sense of humor. Like most good leaders, he's able to tap the style--delegator, coach, dictator, friend--that's needed at the moment. "Ralph, bar none, is the most demanding individual I've ever worked for," says Linda Taggart, group VP and CIO of GMAC and former senior VP of Bank of America, who says she knew five minutes into her 1998 interview with Szygenda that she wanted to work for him. "But at the end of the day, he gets the best from me. He can push us all to the wall, but he's as supportive a manager as I've ever had."

Track Record A look at GM's financial performance over the past six years Year Revenue (in $ billions) Income (in $ billions) 1996 $164.0 $5.0 1997 $172.5 $6.7 1998 $155.4 $3.0 1999 $176.6 $6.0 2000 $184.6 $4.5 2001 $177.3 $0.6 Data: General Motors

He's obsessed with IT's delivering measurable business value, whether it's from his vendors or from the internal staff. Szygenda is big on report cards. And once a target is met, he asks for more. For instance, Szygenda told a few of his executives that they each needed to cut $100 million from the IT budget within five years. They did it in two. Now Szygenda has mandated that they cut another $50 million each this year. "A lot of times you just don't know the results you're going to get, so why not set the bar high and go for it?" Triplett says. If the targets prove unreasonable, Szygenda is willing to reassess them. "He'll give you hell about not getting the results, but you can talk about them," he says.

Szygenda is the first to admit his quick temper, but he makes it clear that his team better not let that intimidate them into not mentioning a problem. "I might not be happy the first 10 minutes, but after that I'm trying to fix it with you," he says.

GM's technology execs know they can get Szygenda's ear when they need it. Szygenda expects his managers to execute on the details, but he also wants them to think strategically. "If you don't have vision, he'll help you find some," Triplett says. Voice mail, not E-mail, is Szygenda's preferred method of communication when his team can't reach him. Despite his jam-packed schedule, he almost never takes more than a couple hours to respond to questions from his executive team. "He's clear, reaches good decisions, and gives guidance. He doesn't leave us hanging," says Triplett, an engineering graduate of West Point and former CIO for AlliedSignal's engine division. Meetings are designed to draw out a lot of opinions, but Szygenda ends the discussion with a decision. Even if the executives don't agree, Szygenda expects them to execute his plan. "He's very focused on the team," Triplett says. "He doesn't reward a whole lot on being an individual."

Szygenda has had an amazing ability to keep intact a team of executives who are routinely recruited to join other companies. Granted, not many can touch the budget and global scope of running even a division of GM. Still, even through the dot-com craze, when headhunters and startups courted Szygenda and his team with CEO startup jobs, he lost only three members of the 16-person team he started with six years ago.

Perhaps it's his sense of humor that prevents meltdowns of key IT leaders who are pushed to their limits daily. "Ralph's a kidder," Triplett says. But his style of humor is one that takes time to appreciate. "You have to realize his type of humor; otherwise, you'll think he's picking on you." During a recent meeting with vendors, Szygenda asked if they'd like to hear from his managers. He looked around, counted five GM executives, and warned the vendors: "You'll get five different opinions."

Those relationships with outsourcers are the lifeblood of GM's IT organization. When he started, GM had already spun off EDS. Szygenda wanted to continue outsourcing the IT operations, but he shifted to a best-of-breed model so he wasn't beholden to any single supplier. GM doesn't employ any programmers or systems staff in-house. The internal IT staff consists of 1,800 people who manage GM's relationships with tens of thousands of IT staff employed by dozens of outsourcers and vendors, which include big names such as AT&T, Cisco Systems, EDS, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft. "We're in our third generation of outsourcing, when most companies are in maybe their first generation," Szygenda says.

Szygenda relishes the competition that vendors face to get GM's business, but he demands that they work closely together to deliver products. Every six months, Szygenda holds a meeting with GM's top suppliers and gives them report cards that grade them in about 20 categories and anonymously rank them against others. They can see if they dropped from third to sixth on the list of suppliers, but they can't see names of other suppliers on the list.

Yet Szygenda and his staff want vendors to succeed, and GM has gone so far as to help companies expand their business plans, at times in exchange for an equity stake in the companies. But the competition is intense, because there's no easy out for a vendor to say GM took a project in-house. "It's a free-market system," Szygenda says. "If you don't do well in executing or with working with other vendors, you won't get picked next time. They're only competing against each other."