William Clay Ford stepped down as Ford’s CEO in 2006, the carmaker was all drenched in a big bowl of hot soup, with the worst market scenario. Detroit had totally given up on Ford. The world had too. William Ford tried hard, but there were no respectable names in the auto space willing to take charge as Ford’s CEO and digest the numbers that threatened Ford’s very existence. Imagine this: During the first half of 2006, while Nissan earned $1800 per vehicle, Toyota and Honda pocketed about $1,400 apiece. Fly westward, and the numbers turn turbid. While GM lost $333 per unit, DaimlerChrysler lost $1,100 during the same period. And Ford? It bled the most – a disquieting $1,400 per vehicle.
Given the state then, what followed in the succeeding years was baffling – despite Ford being the first one expected to crumble first, since December 2008, GM and Chrysler were the ones forced to live through the ignominy of a Fed bailout plan of $110 billion. As for Ford, it managed to become the first one to bounce back into the black sans a revival package, having made $2.72 billion in net profits during FY2009 – the very year GM & Chrysler filed for Chapter 11!
And how in heavens did this astounding turnaround happen? The answer, the single change agent, as experts and researchers globally have accepted now, was the recruiting of one man – the most authoritarian CEO that Ford had ever seen after Henry Ford – Alan Mulally. This man, a veteran engineer at Boeing (who was in charge of the Boeing 777 development project), took up the task to play Captain America for Ford Motors in September 2006. Forget about never having been exposed to labour issues in his life (Ford had had enough of it with the UAW in place), or even having never seen a car being assembled before, this new boss of Ford, had never had the chance to make a single pitch as a salesman during his entire career. But what made him victorious was not just his desire to win, but in his viewpoint that what he – and not his team – believed was right. His style was autocratic and simply “results oriented”. When Mulally walked in as CEO, Ford was known as a maker of pick-up trucks and the Mustang. Despite popular displeasure, he forced his strategic planning teams to get a line of more efficient & smaller engines in place. It worked for the company. In his first two months at the company, he went ahead pledging $23.6 billion against Ford’s assets including its logo. Ford’s management disagreed. But Mulally was convinced, and that was enough. The idea of doing away with Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin and Volvo, was his brainchild.
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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