Читать книгу Reframing Organizations - Lee G. Bolman - Страница 92

In 2006, after Ford Motor Company chalked up a $13 billion loss, Chairman William Ford III concluded that the way to save the company his great‐grandfather had founded was to hire a strong and experienced outsider who could take on the entrenched mind‐sets and in‐fighting among executives and divisions at Ford. He took a gamble on a non‐car‐guy, Alan Mulally, an engineer with a long career at Boeing and a reputation for turning around struggling businesses.

Arriving at Ford, Mulally encountered many surprises. Bureaucracy was so entrenched and top‐down that it was considered bad form for a subordinate to invite a superior to lunch. Ford was struggling, but no one wanted to admit it, so executives brought thick books of minutiae to meetings, using a flurry of details to obfuscate problems or shift blame to someone else. They resorted to double speak to avoid admitting that they didn't know the answers to questions.

Mulally soon concluded that Ford needed a major overhaul of a “convoluted management structure riddled with overlapping responsibilities and tangled chains of command” (Hoffman, 2012, p. 142). He flattened the hierarchy, cut out two layers of senior management, and increased his number of direct reports. He sold off secondary brands like Volvo and Land Rover and streamlined Ford's product line to aim for fewer models with higher quality. He implemented what had worked at Boeing: a matrix structure that crisscrossed the already‐strong regional organizations with upgraded global functional units. So, for example, the head of communications or purchasing in Ford Europe would report to both the regional president in Europe and to a corporate vice president back at headquarters in the United States.

Mulally believed this structure would bring the balance Ford needed: “It made each business unit fully accountable, but also made sure that each key function, from purchasing to product development, was managed globally in order to maximize efficiencies and economies of scale” (Hoffman, 2012, p. 143). He emphasized teamwork, collaboration across divisions, and an end to blaming, hiding mistakes, and hoarding cost figures. Division presidents were instructed to act as one company, not as airtight silos.

It worked. After losing market share for thirteen straight years, Ford gained share in 2009, turned a profit in 2010, and achieved its highest profits in more than a decade in 2011. Mulally turned 65 that year amid speculation about when he would retire. Board chair William Ford III expressed the hope that he would stay forever, but Mulally chose to retire three years later in 2014.