Word: forde
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...familiar with the frustrations of building missile defenses as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Back in 1975, when Rumsfeld was Gerald Ford's Defense Secretary--he's the only person to have held the job twice--he inherited the Pentagon's first attempt at a missile-defense shield, the $25 billion Safeguard system, designed to protect 150 Minuteman missiles dotting North Dakota...
William Clay Ford Jr. knows it would have been easier to take the money and run. He's a fourth-generation favored son of America's first industrial family, a clan so ludicrously wealthy the members have their own accounting firm to manage their allowances. Life could easily have been a dividend-enriched affair of multiple parties, multiple mansions and multiple marriages, the big challenges being to avoid alcoholism and choose the right charity boards...
Instead, Bill Ford insisted on having a career at the family shop, Ford Motor Co., which is far more complicated than you would think. Any number of times since the 1920s, the carmaker's professional managers have had to take the keys away from actual Fords before they did irreparable harm to the business. Ford, 44, became chairman in 1999 only after parrying the objection of his predecessor Alex Trotman, who didn't care to see another Ford in the driver's seat--particularly this one. "I was a heretic," Ford admits. "There were a lot of people saying...
...late. Having grabbed the wheel, Ford the rich kid is driving Ford Motor down a radical path. A fiercely principled environmentalist and congenial company man, Ford is fomenting a revolution to transform the family firm--now a worldwide industrial monster with $170 billion in annual sales--into a corporation that cares as much for consumers and the air they breathe as it does for its bottom line. And he's doing it at a time when Ford Motor's image is suffering from allegations that its Explorer models had design flaws that contributed to the failure of their Firestone tires...
...Ford believes that by reconfiguring Ford Motor, he has a shot at rearranging the entire 21st century industrial landscape. "We have the ability to transform a great old-line company into a vital, global model of sustainable manufacturing," he said recently in his office, gazing over the sprawling River Rouge factory complex that his great-grandfather Henry established in 1917. "But we're on a continuum, and I don't know if we ever declare victory...