Analysis Of Alan Mulally's Strategies To Change The Corporate Culture At Ford

Alan Mulally aimed to change the corporate culture at Ford. He aimed to bring about honesty and transparency in the company. He realised that the executives at the company did not function as team. Each was trying to protect his own turf. The company functioned as multiple separate units. Alan Mulally wanted to bring in transparency and honesty to the culture at Ford. He started weekly Business Process Review (BPR) meetings where senior executives of the company would make presentations of the condition of the units they led. They were expected to be very honest in these meetings and strict disciplinary procedures were put into place. Initially, the executives were reluctant to share true details about their units and always painted a better
Before this, the American Team of Ford had no idea of what was going on in Ford Europe. There was a disconnect in the business units. Mulally therefore split the company into Business units such as Americas and Europe and functional units such as sales, finance and human resources. Each manager was expected to report to a Business unit head and a functional unit head. This brought about a strong connect and cohesion in the company. The Ford leadership team worked more closely than ever when the company was falling apart. This was only because of the change in attitude brought about by
Ford was known to be one of the worst companies to do business with. Ford therefore came up with an “Aligned Business Framework” to improve its relationship with suppliers. Alan Mulally called together all the suppliers in a stadium. He took the very unusual step and told all the Ford employees present to yell an “I love you” to the suppliers. This he then repeated with the dealers. This greatly built goodwill for the company among the dealers and suppliers. During the financial crisis of 2008, there was a chance that many of the suppliers would go bankrupt. This would cause great problems in Ford’s supply chain. "Project quark" was started to ensure that there were no supply chain disruptions. HR of ford was assigned to work with suppliers to help them with their problems. Ford treasury would give the suppliers money in case they needed it. The Legal team would be there to make sure everybody would follow rules. 850 suppliers were identified who were critical to the survival of the company. They had to be bailed out no matter what if Ford had to survive. However, Ford soon realised that it couldn’t bail out suppliers on its own. It therefore approached the other car manufacturers who had a significant overlap in parts manufactured with its proposal of Project Quark. General Motors and Chrysler refused as they did not have funds to support operations at their company.