Ford Death Watch 10: Wielding the Culture Club

This morning, I met with a management consultant who works for The Big Two Point Five. Back before the recent “unpleasantness,” Ford’s top brass engaged the consultant to tackle a marketing issue crucial to FoMoCo’s future. Department heads assembled. Despite overlapping fiefdoms and wildly different ideas for progress, the execs hammered out an innovative four-point strategic plan. Consensus was achieved. And then… nothing. Not one of the points was ever implemented. “These guys are scared to death of change,” he sighed. “Ford’s culture is always working against them.”

Although pundits recognize FoMoCo’s corporate culture as a bad, bad thing, they fail to identify the Blue Oval’s underlying take-no-chances, pass-the-buck, cover-your-ass management philosophy as the root of all evil. Reverse engineer all the decisions that lead to the Ford Focus’ interior, or the existence of the Freestar, or the plan to market a six-cylinder Lincoln crossover, or the general lack of killer cars, and it’s clear that the company’s corporate culture is slow, fat, lazy and stupid.

At the moment, Ford’s busy trimming the fat from the equation. At the top of the food chain, several of The Blue Oval’s biggest big shots are floating out the door on their golden parachutes: Steve Hamp, Chief of Staff; A J Wagner, Vice President of Ford Motor Credit Company; Dave Szczupak, Group Vice President; and Anne “Push Push Hug” Stevens, COO of the Americas. Upon her resignation, the last executive on the list left a love letter with The Detroit Free Press indicating the full extent of the ossification within FoMoCo: “The company has too many layers, the company is too bureaucratic, and it takes too long to get things done."

Note: this comment comes from the woman ranked number 22 on Fortune magazine's list of the “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” and number 41 on Motor Trend’s “Power List” of the industry’s top 50 execs. Meanwhile, further down the food chain, Ford is slicing 14k white collar workers from its North American payroll. That’s one-third of FoMoCo’s entire white collar staff. At the end of this process, Nicole Richie will have more fat than Ford’s management structure– leaving them with lazy, slow and stupid.

The Machiavellians amongst you might disagree, imagining the bloody hand of freshly-minted Ford CEO Alan Mulally behind all this, taking comfort in the carnage, predicting that a new, more market responsive corporate regime will follow. It’s certainly true that the best way to “cure” a diseased corporate culture is to knife as many slackers/potential enemies as possible, erring on the side of excess. But one need only consider the timing of the cuts and look at the top of the pyramid to conclude that it’s business as usual down in Dearborn.

The latest round of white collar cuts was announced prior to Alan Mulally’s arrival. That’s just plain dumb; even if Mulally didn’t swing the axe, he should have at least looked as if he was swinging the axe. Does the executive who appointed Ford's thirty-five million dollar man care? Obviously not. And what does that tell you about Billy Ford? My take: Bad Billy’s inability to walk away from the family firm he’s been running into the ground makes him part of the problem, not the solution. The fact that Baby Face Mark Fields– original architect of The Way Fordward and twenty-minute heir apparent– is still wandering the corridors of power is equally troubling.

All of which raises the single most important question for Ford’s future: who’s in charge? I Don’t Know is on his second executive savior and third way forward. Someone’s at FoMoCo’s got to sort out who does what first. The second they figure that out, the country’s third largest automaker can stop making so many product decisions that come straight from left field. Then they’d have a chance to sort out their corporate culture and start building desirable products in a timely fashion. Which is why Detroit's chattering class is waiting for Alan Mulally to step up to the plate and knock someone's head off.

He better. Not to put too fine a point on it, the only way to motivate people is fear and greed. God knows Ford’s tried greed. For decades, they’ve paid off the unions. For decades, executives have failed upwards. For decades, the top dogs have enjoyed gold-plated pay packages and plenty o’ perks– regardless of their performance or lack thereof. Greed’s done. It’s time for fear. It’s time for a ruthless leader to step forward who’s ready, willing and able to excise the weak-willed in his ranks. When you hear Billy Ford mumble the words “Et tu, Brute?” on his way to a comfortable retirement in, say, the Maldives, THEN you will know that Ford is truly ready to move forward.