Inside the company, some executives have taken to asking Mr. Hackett’s chief of staff, Clare Braun, to clarify his comments or diagrams following a meeting, say people familiar with the matter. Mr. Hackett said Ms. Braun understands how he operates and often attends meetings in his place when he is unavailable.
She previously held the role of “visual sensemaker” at Ford Smart Mobility, an innovation unit experimenting with car-sharing programs, self-driving ventures and other non-transportation alternatives that Mr. Hackett ran for about a year before becoming CEO.
He called Ms. Braun a “reverse mentor because of her age,” who keeps him in touch with “how someone who is still under 30 would be thinking.”
Early in his tenure, Mr. Hackett sent his senior leadership team a roughly 3,000-word email laying out ideas for the company. He talked about “fitness” and the “know-make” framework, business decision-making terms not typically used in the auto industry. Not knowing how to respond, some executives began contacting each other, trying to make sense of it, people close to the company said.
He acknowledged not everyone gets him at first, but he said employees are coming around to his way of thinking. “Things are actually gelling now in the way we’re thinking and doing,” he added. “It’s not clear to the market yet, but I see it.”
One of Mr. Hackett’s first moves as CEO was to shrink his team of direct reports from 18 to eight and cut down on the size and frequency of meetings.
Mr. Hackett said he favors giving his top executives more decision-making room.
Ford global markets chief Jim Farley said his boss was an “important catalyst” behind the company’s recent move to retrench from the U.S. sedan market, but that Mr. Hackett left the final decision to him and his team.
Since he started, Mr. Hackett has pushed for connecting all of Ford’s vehicles to the internet. The company had fallen behind rival GM, which introduced built-in wireless connectivity in 2015 across most of its lineup. Ford executives dithered over the decision for years, worried the cost couldn’t be justified.
“Jim said, ‘Look, we’ve made the decision…so I don’t want you revisiting this,’ ” said Hau Thai-Tang, Ford’s purchasing and product development chief. Ford plans to connect 100% of its U.S.-sold cars by 2019.
“We tend to place a lot of emphasis on detailed historical data as a proxy for the future,” he said. “[Mr. Hackett] is saying that approach works well if the future is going to be identical to the past.”
Too funny..."The shift is evident on the headquarters’ 11th floor, where several months after Mr. Hackett’s arrival, a plaque dedicated to Mr. Mulally’s One Ford plan was removed from the executive’s main conference room to clear the wall for use as a workspace to map out a new strategy.
"While Ford still uses parts of the One Ford plan to steer its business, Mr. Hackett said he didn’t feel the language “fit what we were trying to get across.”
The plaque has been reappointed in a common area on the same floor, a Ford spokeswoman said.
On the same floor, Ford executives have set up a series of strategy rooms, many in offices that once belonged to the company’s corporate officers."
Ford's window for catching up with rivals is narrowing, with new-car demand in the U.S. cooling after seven years of growth. The CEO unexpectedly canceled an investor presentation in September that many analysts and investors were hoping would provide clarity on his plan. The move prompted Morgan Stanley auto analyst Adam Jonas to criticize Ford during an earnings call in July for not being more forthcoming. He also questioned whether the CEO would be sticking around.
“Whenever you do reschedule the capital-markets day, to be clear with investors, will you be the one delivering the message or will it be someone else?” Mr. Jonas asked.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fords-new-ceo-has-a-cerebral-styleand-to-many-its-baffling-1534255714
