Ken Elias Called It: Ford Gees-Up Its Execs
Ye Olde Wiktionary defines "gee-up" as an English/Australian expression meaning "to excite in order to try to achieve a desired result." Ken Elias has never knowingly geed-up anyone about anything. But it's still true that his Ford Death Watch identified one of FoMoCo CEO Alan Mulally's most important jobs: getting the [remaining] executives lathered-up about the company's forthcoming products and, thus, the automaker's chances of survival. Yahoo! Finance reports that The Blue Oval Boyz have arranged seat time for the suits. "Last week, Ford started pulling around 4,000 workers from their desks at sites near the Dearborn headquarters and onto a test track for a few hours of driving and learning about how Ford hopes to set its vehicles apart from other automakers." So, how did they like the European Fiesta and Focus? Uh, well… "Most of the vehicles the workers were able to drive were 2009 or 2010 models of cars and trucks currently on the market, a vehicle lineup that for the most part hasn't sold well this year." A turbo-MKS was as good as it got.
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Somehow, I don't see the Ford team burning up the track in a base Ranger.
KatiePuckrik : Ford are in the best position to be the last man standing in Detroit and actually have some good products (at least, by NA standards) coming (albeit, not quickly enough). Damning with faint praise. Regardless, Katie said something nice about Ford. Civilization begins to unravel....
How's this for "gee upping" your managers: If we make a profit, you can keep your jobs. If they do not understand that, then gee up them out the door.
If I ran a car company, I would require my executives to only rent my competitor's cars. They need to see what the customers are seeing.