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Corporate cultures are notoriously change resistant, and this is not just any corporation. The company ethos is steeped in the history of the Ford family. Henry was a compulsive innovator, although not a particularly good manager. Bill inherited the independent mind and high expectations of his great-grandfather. As a student at Princeton, he wrote a senior thesis titled "Henry Ford and Labor: A Reappraisal." Today the culture needs a lot more of its founder's inexhaustible curiosity than it does its later devotion to spreadsheets. "Bill is the first Ford since Henry Ford to have the ability to operate...
...considered a hero, shook things up with tough performance evaluations and a hyperaggressive management style that alienated workers, dealers and suppliers. He also diversified the company into noncore businesses such as Internet ventures and a repair-shop chain while going on an acquisition spree of luxury brands. After Bill Ford fired Nasser and stepped into the CEO job, his gentler approach was a relief, yet some industry executives are skeptical. "So far, the company's driving him," says Gerald Meyers, former CEO of the defunct American Motor Co. and an expert in crisis management. "He needs to say, 'This...
...sense of how plodding Ford Motor can be, talk to Vance Zanardelli, whose windowless office is tucked away in the Research and Innovation Center. Zanardelli, who is working on cutting-edge hydrogen research, has experienced firsthand Ford's roadblocks--and how the new leadership is trying to remove them. When his team unveiled the prototype it had developed for a hydrogen-powered internal-combustion car to top Ford executives in 2001, "Bill just loved it," Zanardelli says. "Everyone else raised all the reasons it wouldn't work." Despite the boss's enthusiasm, Zanardelli ran into budgetary problems and decided...
Coming up with exciting designs will be crucial to Ford's success. Until recently, with the exception of a new Mustang, an instant hit, Ford has failed to produce cars that have energized the market. Peter Horbury, the company's director of design and Volvo's former design chief, whom Ford brought to Detroit in 2004, was stunned by Ford Motor's rulebound ways. "I told the designers to just get on with what they were doing," he says, "and they looked at me terrified, like, What does that mean?" The designers were so used to following orders that Horbury...
...creating a management team for his new vision, Ford deliberately chose executives who have either come from other companies or spent time at divisions overseas, where they developed fresh perspectives. Fields, a baby-faced former sales and marketing guy with a smooth, confident touch, returned to Detroit in September after 10 years overseas, where he turned around Mazda in a difficult Japanese environment and then took on troubles at Ford in Europe, which is now profitable. "[Ford] has given me and my management team [the leeway] to turn the ship around," says Fields. "But he expects us to deliver...