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After several hours, they took a break and went for a walk
downtown. Laymon thought it was a calculated move on Mulally’s part, to show Laymon how well loved he was by the good people of Seattle. If it was, Mulally could not have scripted it better. Every ten or twenty steps, they ran into somebody who recognized him. Laymon was not impressed by Mulally’s local celebrity: he was impressed that it was not just businesspeople who came up to him on the street but maintenance workers and students, and Boeing employees. And Mulally greeted all of them with the same enthusiasm. Laymon knew that was rare for someone of his stature. He thought it would play well at Ford, where even jet-setters like Hank the Deuce had been at ease with the lowliest line workers. But it also compounded Laymon’s concerns about getting Mulally to Detroit.

He started working on a plan as they walked.

There is no way I’m going to get this guy to leave Seattle. He’s an icon in the community. Even if he takes the job, he’s never going to sell his house here because, when he leaves Ford, he’s taking his ass right back to Seattle
, Laymon mused.
I’m going to have to set him up with a condo in Dearborn and aplane for him and his family. Some of the shareholders aren’t going to like that, but we can make it work. And besides, I won’t have to worry about him spending his days at Bloomfield Hills Country Club or going to lunches in downtown Detroit. We’ll park him a mile from the office and work his ass off
.

Laymon stopped and turned to Mulally.

“What if we let you and your family use a corporate jet? Would that work for you?” Laymon asked.

Mulally loved the idea.

But when he returned to Dearborn, Bill Ford was less thrilled with Laymon’s offer.

“You promised him what!?” he asked. He reminded Laymon that the media was already hounding Ford Americas president Mark Fields for his personal use of Ford’s corporate jet. Fields had only agreed to return to the United States if his family could stay in Florida. His two sons had been following him around the world for years, and he wanted to make sure they spent a little time in America before going off to college. Fields had just bought a home on the water in Delray Beach when Bill Ford called and asked him to come to Dearborn. He
told his boss that he did not want to have to move his family again. Bill Ford agreed to let Fields use a company plane to commute back and forth from Florida each week, but he regretted it as soon as the media found out. Now Ford was worried that Laymon was repeating that mistake. But Laymon persisted.

“I think we have a chance with Mulally,” Laymon told Ford calmly. “If he says no because of that, what are you going to do?”

“Okay,” said Ford. “Keep after him.”

T
he truth was, Bill Ford could not contain his excitement about the Boeing executive. Though he knew better than to say anything before making Mulally a formal offer, he started whispering to his closest confidants that he had finally found the man who could save his company.

“This guy is a turnaround expert. He’s done it before at Boeing,” Ford told his vice president of communications, Charlie Holleran. “That’s what we need. I’ve never turned around anything.”

Holleran was a heavyset, white-haired Irish American from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Give him a badge and a desk, and he could have been precinct sergeant. With a helmet and a hose, he could have passed for a fire chief. He was Bill Ford’s personal, one-man damage control squad. And that meant he knew more than most at the company just how much his boss needed help. Holleran was relieved to hear that Ford might finally be getting some.

Getting the board to green-light a deal with Mulally required little effort after Hockaday and Thornton shared their impressions with the other directors. Though they were aware of Ford’s previous, unsuccessful efforts to recruit a new chief executive, Mulally’s name was the first one presented to the board as a serious candidate. Because most of the board members were not “car guys,” none of them objected to hiring someone from outside the industry. In fact, some thought that made him a more desirable candidate. After all, it was the car guys who had screwed everything up in the first place.

B
efore Mulally would agree to talk terms, he called Bill Ford with one more question. He had been thinking about what Ford had told him about some of the board members wanting to dismantle the company. Mulally wanted to make it clear that if he came to Dearborn, it would be for only one reason.

“I’m not coming to take it apart. I’m coming to take it flying,” he told Ford. “I just want to know that that’s what you want to do. Because I want to create a viable business—not only for Ford, but for the good of the United States.”

Ford told Mulally that was what he wanted as well.

“I will back you one hundred percent,” he promised Mulally.

Once more, Mulally asked Ford if he understood what would be required. Mulally was working on a plan. It would mean painful sacrifices. As they had agreed, consolidating Ford’s global operations to better leverage its worldwide assets and achieve real economies of scale would be Job One. But Mulally also wanted to sell off the foreign brands and eliminate both Mercury and Lincoln. He wanted to trim the dealer base, close more plants, and move more manufacturing to Mexico. The latter was important, because Mulally feared the upcoming contract negotiations with the UAW might get ugly—particularly since he would reject any deal that did not make Ford competitive with the foreign transplants. He wanted to reduce the automaker’s dependency on its domestic plants ahead of a possible strike, which he urged Ford to begin preparing for immediately. Finally, he wanted to borrow money. A lot of it. The top-to-bottom restructuring he was planning would not be cheap, and Ford needed to up its investment in new products at the same time.

“You’ve been going out of business for thirty years,” Mulally said. “This is how to get back in it.”

“Let’s get to work,” Ford said. “The fourth quarter is really ugly.”

O
n Friday, August 18, Laymon flew back to Seattle with a formal offer. He was no longer worried about landing Mulally. Laymon had been working his connections and knew that Mulally and
McNerney were not getting along. More important, Mulally had convinced himself that he could save Ford.

This time Laymon booked a suite at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel and met Mulally for dinner downstairs at Shuckers Oyster Bar. The carved oak paneling and tin ceiling made it a cozy place to discuss business. Laymon was confident the letter he carried in his pocket would seal the deal, and he made a big show of slowly withdrawing it and presenting it to Mulally. When Mulally opened the envelope, he was visibly impressed. He accepted Ford’s offer on the spot—tentatively. He wanted to review it with his financial adviser before signing. Laymon smiled. He had two other offers in his pocket. The one he had handed Mulally was the second best of the three.

“No problem—but be careful,” Laymon said, urging Mulally to think hard before breaking the news to Boeing. “They’ll counter. They’ll throw money at you. Jim is going to offer you shared governance rights, dependent on board approval. But, Alan, you cannot accept that until you have it in writing.”

Mulally assured Laymon his mind was made up.

On the way back to the airport, Laymon called Bill Ford.

“We’ve got our guy.”

H
owever, Laymon’s initial concerns turned out to have been well-founded. For Mulally, leaving Boeing would prove easier said than done. Boeing had moved its corporate headquarters to Chicago, though the Commercial Airplanes Group remained based in Seattle. Mulally waited for Jim McNerney’s next visit to tender his resignation in person. But as Mulally walked down the hall to his boss’s office, the aeronautical engineer found himself regretting his decision to leave the plane maker a little more with every step.

I love Boeing. I love airplanes
, he thought.
My work here is not finished
.

Even though it had yet to fly, Mulally’s 787 Dreamliner was already being heralded as a game-changer. Moreover, once it was done, he still had one more aircraft to build to complete his planned transformation of Boeing’s lineup—the replacement for the aging 737. As
Laymon had predicted, McNerney did not make Mulally’s decision any easier. When Mulally told him that he had been offered the top job at Ford and was thinking of taking it, the Boeing CEO shook his head.

“Alan, you’re crazy,” he said. “Ford is a dying company in a dying industry in a dying town.”

By now Mulally knew the depth of Ford’s woes better than just about anyone outside Dearborn. He had convinced himself that he could overcome them. But as he listened to McNerney, he wondered if anyone really could.

Maybe it is too late
, he thought.

Mulally knew that if he accepted the job at Ford and failed, no one would remember that he was the guy who had saved Boeing.

McNerney asked Mulally if he was happy at Boeing. He could understand that Mulally felt bad about being passed over for CEO, but McNerney told him the game was not over yet. Perhaps there was something that could be done to allow him to play a bigger role in running the entire company. He was willing to consider a different management structure. It would be up to the board of directors, of course, but there was a meeting coming up in a few days. Who knew what the future held?