18 Months in Crisis Mode
So here are some lessons from a Leader guiding his company through crisis for a little over a year now, and getting some traction.
A partial list of what Alan Mulally inherited when he took the CEO job at Ford in the Fall of 2006 – the “Brutal Facts:”
* A divided company, actually a lot of different companies under one roof, each with a leader going in a different direction
* Tight cash flow with a real risk of running out altogether
* A built-in $3,400 expense premium on every finished product based on onerous labor costs
* Complexity of business systems that predecessors had been unable to untangle
* Infighting and turf wars among his direct reports
* Lots of elaborate plans (marketing, manufacturing, sales, product) followed by poor execution
* A talented and dedicated team of workers (the problems lay mostly with management, not the workers!)
At lunch last week in Charlotte, home to big banks reporting record losses, my friend sat down and said, “Well, at least we can celebrate Ford’s good news.”
When Leaders Fudge Because They're Afraid
This past Spring I noticed a rash of reports (in less than one week!) about current and future leaders of all ages caught lying.
* April 27th ”The Dean of Admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was forced to resign after the school confirmed . . . that she had lied about graduating from college herself.” Marilee Jones is 55. (The Wall Street Journal)
* May 2nd Fifteen freshmen Air Force Academy cadets were expelled in a cheating scandal. The cadets “either confessed or were found guilty by an honor board of sharing answers to a test . . . .” (Louisville Courier-Journal) Assume their average age was 19.
* May 2nd (This right below the Academy cheating article . . . .) Duke University is threatening to expel or suspend 24 of 34 graduate students caught in “the largest cheating scandal ever in its Fuqua School of Business . . . . Similar answers to a take-home test led to an investigation of the final exam and other assignments . . . . The average age of students in the first-year class is 29.” (Louisville Courier-Journal)
