Word: lacocca
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...tells the worker that the company has confidence in him and is proud to let him represent the product he makes. Nothing is worse for morale than the feeling that your job is so rigid and standardized that you are eminently replaceable. If the commercials, had instead shown Lee lacocca standing in front of a Chrysler saying. "The buck stops with me, if this car isn't built right, I'm personally responsible," Chrysler workers would have greeted it with beer bottles the first time it interrupted a football game. The fact is, lacocca isn't responsible for building...
...step of displaying a mock-up of its slope-fronted Aerostar minivan at auto shows a full year before the official introduction. Says Sales Vice President Philip Benton: "We think there is a market for 600,000 minivans eventually, and we think ours is a winner." Chrysler Chairman Lee lacocca and President Harold Sperlich first discussed building minivans in the mid-1970s, when both men were at Ford. It was not until 1978, after they had moved to Chrysler, that they got a chance to produce one. The $600 million project was risky, since Chrysler at the time...
...lacocca insisted that the vehicle was a sure hit, and no one was ready to argue with him. Now he claims that Chrysler's minivans "will make automotive history." Their current popularity is something of a second coming for vans. While the boxy vehicles had long been used by small businesses for deliveries, in the mid-'70s young buyers turned them into a Pop art form. They tarted them up with fanciful decor and shag-rug interiors...
Chairmen of the board at General Motors tend to be bland organization types. Though they command a vast $60 billion industrial empire that controls more than 60% of the U.S. automobile market, none in recent decades has had the public impact of Henry Ford II or Lee lacocca. Three years ago, when Roger B. Smith, a 5-ft. 9-in., red-haired man with a squeaky voice, moved into the walnut-veneered chairman's office on the 14th floor of the General Motors building in Detroit, he was expected to blend into the woodwork. Smith had joined...
...game of name recognition is becoming a major industry in every field. First establish your base, as Congressman, actor, scientist, running back, swimsuit model, writer; then separate yourself from the ruck in a way that commands notice. Lee lacocca did it as a businessman selling Chryslers, so now we have what's-his-name who liked that razor so much he bought the company. Journalism loves expert opinions; an economist or an environmentalist no wiser than his colleagues can make it big if he has vast self-confidence and the gift of articulation. Politicians who become national figures must...