Management Turnover as Change Agent

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Recommended Reading - Ford Announces Six Candidates As Mulally's Future Successor

Amy Wilson and Richard Truett of Automotive News wrote a story today that examined six potential internal candidates that might rise to ultimately succeed Alan Mulally as Ford's CEO. The six candidates listed were as follows:
  • Lewis Booth, EVP in charge of Europe and Premier Automotive Group
  • Jim Farley - Group VP of marketing and communications
  • Mark Fields - President of the Americas
  • Joe Heinricks - Group VP of global manufacturing
  • Don Leclair - CFO
  • Stephen Odell - COO Ford of Europe
Let's hope they can do more for Ford than Mulally and the family have done. With the Automotive News story panic embraced Ford headquarters. According to a story by Alex Taylor III in CNN Money,

Immediately, the company went into panic mode.

"I'm not going to go there," said one of the purported candidates, Americas boss Mark Fields, when Automotive News asked him about the report. "I'm going to let the chips fall where they may."

Laymon's untimely disclosure will have the following negative effects on the company:

... It immediately sets up a horse race among the six candidates that could create unnecessary conflict and backbiting. Ford has a history of corporate infighting going back decades (Harry Bennett and Henry Ford II, Henry Ford II and Lee Iacocca, Bill Ford and Jac Nasser) and hardly needs any more of it.

It immediately makes Mulally a lame duck, even though his contract doesn't expire until 2011. Scuttlebutt around the copy machine will now focus more on who will replace Mulally than what Mulally himself is trying to accomplish.

Stay tuned to see how the company manages to handle this messy announcement.

For more:

Autoblog

1 comment:

Mr carman said...

I just read a great new book on Ford - Ford and the American Dream - Founded on Right Decisions by Clifton Lambreth. Mr. Lambreth discusses Ford's need for succession planning.
He does the best job ever of giving the average person an inside look at Corporate America and Ford. This is a must read for every business person around the world! For more information checkout www.thefordbook.com