Keyword: Bill Ford

Mulally and Ford at the Coronation Announcement

The Wall Street Journal had a marvelous article [ed: unfortunately subscription-only] about the turnaround Alan Mulally is trying to make at Ford.  I have written about this before (see this post here), but put simply, I am a huge fan of Mr. Mulally.  He did great things at Boeing, and from what I can tell from this article, he’s off to a great start at Ford too.

The article goes on to describe in detail how Mulally is analyzing a business he is admittedly new to, and how he’s working on his plan for change at the company.

The fate of this automotive icon rests on the aggressive plans of Mr. Mulally, a former Boeing Co. executive who has spent his career outside the auto industry.  His emerging agenda calls for Ford to plow through “gut-wrenching” change to achieve profitability by 2009.

From what I can see, he’s hitting all the right notes by focusing on brand overlap, silly inconsistencies and waste between brands, and overall efficiency.  Again, this is a guy who has moved mountains at one of the largest employers in the country, I’m sure he can make strides here. “‘I’ve seen this movie before,’ Mr. Mulally told his new executive team when he took over Oct. 1.”  I just wish he could teach our president a thing or two about analyzing situations and facing ugly facts, but I digress…

One of the more interesting notes in the article however, very much caught my eye.

In the executive suite he shares with Chairman Bill Ford, Mr. Mulally says he asked Mr. Ford why he hadn’t integrated the company.  He says Mr. Ford agreed that integration was desirable, but told him it was difficult.  Every time Ford had considered forcing integration, a new hit product — such as the Explorer, Taurus or F-series truck — would come along and propel profitability without tough changes, explained the fourth-generation Ford leader.

To steal from Mr. Mulally, I’ve seen this movie before too.  I have watched more than a few companies put off changes they knew they needed to make because they were blinded by their success.  And the more bright the light from the current success, the more blinded they became to the obvious issues.  It’s important to realize this not only applies to products and/or projects, but also to people.  We tend to overlook the worst part of peoples’ behavior when they are having success as well.

I saw it quite a bit at Microsoft.  It is no secret that the Windows team recently made some major changes in leadership that were long overdue.  Those changes were put off time and again by the product’s stunning profitability and the fear of killing the golden goose.  There are a dozen more, less public, examples of products that were off-target and in need of correction, but still creating revenues that would finance even the most outrageous debacles.

We also had managers who were simply terrible, and yet were continually promoted or rewarded for their results. I discuss this here too, but success postpones many needed HR actions at Microsoft and elsewhere.  I even wrote in the performance review of one jerk who worked for me that he “is being removed from a supervisor position and being returned to an individual contributor role, and should never again be allowed to supervise others.”  He was recently mentioned in a national publication as a potential future CEO of the company.

The point of all this is that, just like dental hygiene, auto maintenance, and many other things, just because you seem to be OK today doesn’t mean your gut instinct that things need to be fixed is wrong.  Don’t let success blind you to the changes you need to make.  And don’t, please, make that jerk your CEO.

My mother called it back in June.  Billy Ford wasn’t long for this world.  I grew up in the shadow of Detroit, and my family always had connections into the auto industry.  She knew the Ford family was restless, and that Billy was in trouble.

The board [family] forced him out.  In a way, that’s too bad, since he is a really nice guy, charming, bright, “from good stock” as they used to say.  But, clearly, it was long overdue.  His departure is kind of sad for the Ford family, yet nothing but good for the company.  It also says something about family leadership and the challenge of passing down a Fortune 500 company generation to generation.

Bill Ford was probably doomed from the start.  If you think about his challenge, it was simply too much to ask of anyone, let alone a nice guy like little Bill.  He grew up in this company.  He toddled around the offices for years, sat on the laps of key leaders, and cut whatever business teeth he had under the big blue oval logo.  Even if he had a great vision of how to overhaul the stodgy old company, it was simply too much to ask someone to shake up a culture that was generations old — generations of his family.

These last few years must have been a nightmare for Bill.  He must have been in countless meetings where he said emphatically “we have to change, we have to do things differently, we have to shake off these cobwebs!” [ed: At least let’s hope he did (see my post here)] Only to be greeted by layer upon layer of senior management that looked blankly at him, shook their heads marvelling at how little Billy had grown, pinched his cheek and said something like “but that’s not how Henry would’ve done it.”  He couldn’t fire some of these people, it would be like firing your uncle.  For the family to expect him to make “bold moves” was simply unrealistic.

Alan Mulally and Bill Ford

Now the Ford board has made a super choice: they have selected Alan Mulally, formerly of Boeing, as CEO.  I’m a huge Mulally fan, if only from my view outside the company.  But throughout his turn at the helm of Boeing’s Commercial Airplane group, he was a sharp, effective leader.  And since his promotion opportunities were limited at Boeing by a new top dog (see my post here), moving on makes great sense for him.

I first became familiar with Alan Mulally during the development of the 777 airplane.  This was a huge deal in these parts, as it was the chance for the “Lazy B” to shake its old cobwebs and really develop something new and different.  Leading up to the launch, Mulally had numerous opportunities to appear in the press, and he always managed to do it with aplomb and to show his leadership skills.  At the launch (covered as if it were the Second Coming around here), he outshined the rest of the Boeing leadership as the clear, thoughtful, and talented one of the bunch.  Then, the incessant airing of the “Making of…” video on the local PBS station allowed us an even closer look at what a solid leader Alan really is.  He had done it, turned around the supertanker, practically in its own boatlength.

Recently, Mulally spearheaded the “Dreamliner” project, an even more ambitious plane that is, if leading-edge sales are to be believed, eating Airbus’s lunch.  It was a bold move, at a time when Boeing clearly dominated the huge plane market with it’s 747, and a simple tweak to that plane could offer again the largest plane in the world, he bet on moderation.  According to friends I have on the 787 (as the Dreamliner is now called) team, and they tell of Mulally passionately arguing of the demise of the monster busses with wings, and the coming move to smaller, more fuel efficient, point-to-point aircraft.  And how right he was, as if he could see $4.00 gas from the dust of 9/11.  It has been a brilliant move, and the 787 is a bold and beautiful plane.  Now all they have to do is ship it (no small feat, I hear the carbon fiber parts aren’t fun to manufacture).

Mulally seems, therefore, perfectly suited to follow through on Ford’s “Bold Moves”.  He’s the kind of person who seeks out a vision, and can get a whole, huge corporation behind it.  To paraphrase an old Ford advertisement, maybe Mulally does “have a better idea”.  The family and shareholders are certainly betting on it