There's a reason General Motors Co. CEO Ed Whitacre is promoting fortysomethings into top jobs:

It turns the automaker's decades-old entitlement ladder upside down. It says you don't get the next big job just because you're next in line. It prizes performance and perspective over longevity and cynicism. It rewards working to succeed over working to retire, a time-honored Detroit tradition that hastened its decline.

The dispatching of CFO Ray Young to a new job overseeing international operations, announced Monday, is only the latest move by Whitacre to reload GM's executive ranks, to accelerate its turnaround and to prepare the company to sell itself anew to would-be investors, perhaps as early as the second half of next year.

Net-net, this is just what the General needs -- fresh eyes, hungry new leadership, people less tarred by the past and more focused on a future unencumbered by the weight of GM traditions, group-think and self-justification. The art will come in the balancing -- of who to fire (as Whitacre & Co. clearly are prepared to do), who to promote from the inside, who to woo from the outside.

But everyone will know who will be held accountable -- and what's likely to happen to them should they stumble for very long. That's a dramatic cultural shift for GM, a company that, more often than not, rewarded operational failure with either a) promotion or b) multiple second chances or c) an endless litany of excuses usually intended to defend the CEO's often flawed personnel choices.

My guess is that neither Whitacre nor his fellow directors would accept a head of GM-Europe delivering five-plus years of red ink and declining market share (as former CEO Rick Wagoner tolerated). Or a continual slide in North America whatever the state of the national economy. Or perennially meager showings in Consumer Reports' "recommended" list.