"The board decided-and Fritz agreed-that given where we are, it was time to make some changes,'' GM spokesman Chris Preuss said. The question is what took GM's board (the government was reportedly not aware of the decision to oust Henderson until it had been announced publicly) so long to reach a conclusion that was so blatantly obvious to everyone outside of the company. GM needs to emerge as a new company, and a guy who has been part of the problem at GM for the past 25 years was maybe, just maybe, not the right choice for turning things around.

All along, there have been signs that Henderson was an abominably bad choice for the role of CEO. Back in March, Mr. Henderson refused to cut his salary to $1, as Richard Wagoner and a number of other leaders at troubled companies had. At the time, I wrote that "Henderson has been vice chairman and chief financial officer since January of 2006, and we all know what's transpired in the intervening three-plus year: record losses, shareholder value destruction and a government bailout. At least at most of the banks, the failed executives took huge losses on their substantial stock holdings. Not so for Mr. Henderson: In his quarter-century career with the company, Mr. Henderson managed to accumulate just 22,268 shares of the company's stock according to the latest 10-K."

Ousting Fritz Henderson is absolutely a step in the right direction toward turning GM around.

But the fact that he was given the job in the first place still raises grave questions about the board's judgment.