Gary Lemon

Summary Ford has a reconstruction plan which brings scares to the plants that could be closed and the jobs that could be cut. Mark Fields has been hand picked by CEO William Clay Ford Jr. to lead the company’s second big overhaul in four years. The challenge was to change the culture at Ford which some employees were dissatisfied with and described with such words as “toxic”, and “hierarchical”.

Summary “Way Forward” was dubbed for the spiritual rethink inside the company. The rethink is Ford is trying to figure out what it stands for and who are their customers and who are not. They want to keep the truck buyers but attract new customers like the female customer with new passenger cars and wagons.

Summary Ford already gets critics who say they could ultimately seek bankruptcy along with GM The skeptics have done all of this without even seeing Mr. Fields reconstruction plan.

Summary Mr. Fields decided on two lieutenants, Ms Stevens and Mr. Shanks to oversee the program and help. They have meetings everyday with 20 to 50 people who are working on the plan. These people represent a larger group of 200 or more that are working in 9 or 10 cross-functional teams focused on subjects like brands, revenue, purchasing, culture and capacity The cross-functional teams were used to get so many different people involved to help restructure.