“You love reading book, how come you have never read
this? I advise you to read it soon. I
will a copy to you if you want it!” – words or rather strong advise from my
manager when he found that I haven’t gone through his gospel!
Though I was intrigued to know how the company weathered the
financial crisis which had swallowed behemoths , the author’s disclaimer that he was given
full access to what transpired in the 12th floor of the Glass House
got my alarm bells ringing. Chances were
high that Ford would have vetted the final draft, exclude the bad part and
paint Allan Mulally and his team as the saviours of American Icon. This was not
the case to be. The book has a no-hold barred approach towards a compelling
narrative of how Bill Ford plucked Alan Mulally to save the company of his
forefathers. Each rumour, substantiated
or unsubstantiated, was recounted in the book.
I was surprised to read the overtures that Bill Ford made to the “rockstar”
Charles Ghosn; or the whipping that Congress gave to CEO’s of Big 3,
which was recounted in an unabashedly manner.
The narrative starts with a discourse on the history of Ford
and its journey of being a smooth operation company to an unmanageable behemoth.
The author keeps the narrative succinct in this part and dives right in to the
plague that Ford suffered in the early part of the previous decade. The dogged
approach of Bill Ford and Joe Laymon to
get Mulally to join the team is a compelling part of the book. The misgiving of the management to see a “new”
guy at the helm and how Mulally’s style of functioning compelled them to tailor
their activities to the CEO’s needs; and eventually synergize to the CEO’s
vision. The author and the company, to their credit, did mention the shortfalls
of some of the senior guys in the company but in that process painted Mulally as a superhero
who could do no wrong. That was a bit
hard to digest.
The book tells all the chess moves that Mulally makes to not
only weather the crisis but also to change the culture of the company. The gazelle
like approach to have more liquidity at hand even before the bubble burst was
one of the key ingredient of the foresight that make a good manager to a
remarkable one. The book though loses steam at the second part of the story and
falls flat when the crisis is weathered.
Mulally efforts remind me that of Steve Jobs’ who also
turned around the company with his own signature management style. Though Steve
was more of an insider at Apple as compared to Mullay at Ford; historwill
salute Alan Mulally to save not only Ford Motor Company, but in many ways the
whole of Auto Industry.
