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B
ill Ford’s cellphone rang just after 7
P.M
. on Friday, August 25. When he saw that it was Alan Mulally calling, he smiled. He was already counting the days before his new CEO took over. He hit the “Talk” button.

“Hey, Alan!” Ford said brightly. “What’s up?”

“Bill, I am honored that you asked me to serve,” Mulally began, his voice quavering slightly.

Ford’s heart sank as he heard Mulally’s regretful tone.

“Working together with you would be really neat,” Mulally continued. “But I’m going to stay at Boeing.”

He waited for Ford to respond, but there was only silence. After a few long moments, Bill Ford composed himself and calmly asked, “Is there anything I can do? Is there anything you’re not satisfied with?”

“No, I love the opportunity. I love the idea of working with you. I love everything I’ve learned about Ford,” Mulally said. “I think we could do it. But there’s one more airplane that I want to make.”

There was another awkward pause.

“Well, if anything changes, please give me a call,” Bill Ford said amiably. “We really want you to come, and we really think you could make a difference.”

As soon as he hung up the phone, Mulally regretted making the call.

B
ill Ford may have taken Mulally’s rejection gracefully, but he was dying on the other end of the line. He would later call it one of the darkest moments of his life. There were no other names on his list. For the past five years, Bill Ford had been trying to find someone to help him save his company before it was too late. As he stared at his cellphone, he realized that there was nowhere left to turn. He called Laymon.

The HR director was eating dinner at home with his family when the phone rang. Laymon had been spending a lot of time in Seattle trying to woo Mulally, and was planning a big weekend with the wife and kids to celebrate his catch.

“We lost Alan,” Ford said as soon Laymon answered.

Laymon smiled. Both men were world-class practical jokers and prided themselves on their ability to yank each other’s chains.

Shit
, he thought.
You’ve gotta come up with a better one than this
.

“Sure we did,” he chuckled.

“No, Joe, we did,” Ford insisted. “And you cannot call him. He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

Laymon suddenly realized his boss was serious.

After he got off the phone with Laymon, Ford set up a conference call with his board of directors. They were all disappointed.

“
Let me take a crack at him,” Thornton said.

Later that night, Ford called Charlie Holleran and gave him the bad news. Holleran was with his lieutenant, Jon Pepper, a former
Detroit News
business columnist who handled press for Bill Ford and
corporate communications. When Holleran got off the phone, he told Pepper everything. Later that night, the two men sat in a piano bar near Dearborn, doing their best to drown their misery with martinis. They both knew Bill Ford was out of options.

“What the fuck are we going to do now?” Holleran sighed.

J
ohn Thornton called Mulally the next day.

“
Alan, you’ve done everything you can for Boeing, and you should feel good about it,” he said. “But a great American company needs you. This is about America and our competitiveness.”

Mulally admitted that he was already regretting his decision. Thornton hung up and called Bill Ford.

“
It’s not over,” he said.

Ford immediately called Laymon.

“Get back to Seattle right away,” he said. “Stay there until you get Mulally. I don’t care if you have to buy a house out there. If you can’t get him to sign, don’t bother coming back.”

Laymon already had a bag packed. He headed for the airport.

However, once he arrived in Seattle, Mulally refused to see him. But Laymon was nothing if not persistent. He kept calling the apartment and finally persuaded Mulally to meet him at his hotel Sunday afternoon, just before the Boeing board dinner.

“I’m not here to change your mind,” Laymon told him as they sat down. “I’m just here to help you with your conversation.”

“What do you mean?” Mulally asked.

Laymon told him he knew exactly what was going to happen during Boeing’s board meeting.

“It’s going to be one of the toughest damn conversations you’ve ever had. McNerney’s going to make this presentation about your matrix organization and how you sold all these damn planes, and you’re going to look like a hero. Then they’re going to go into executive session, and he’s going to come out of there, and he’s going to give you every dollar I gave you—plus one. He’s going to beat our offer. He’s going to then tell you that he proposed to the board that you should be one of the top guys—COO—but the board wouldn’t let that
happen,” Laymon said. “So, you can say, ‘Thank you for the money.’ You’re much better off. You can stay in Seattle. Or you can say, ‘I just got fucked, and it doesn’t feel too good.’ ”

Mulally said he doubted things would turn out that way. Boeing respected him too much. Laymon smiled at his naïveté.

“Alan, let’s just play through this for a minute,” he continued. “If you’re right, you’re going to be COO, on the board, with a hell of a lot more money—and you don’t have to move. If you’re wrong, you’ve got a lot of money, and you have some pride. You can run a Fortune 10 company
today
. You can be a CEO
today
. Boeing isn’t the only company in the world that you can run that deserves your leadership. That’s the extremes. If I’m right, he’s going to fuck you. If you’re right, I’m going to give you the most expensive glass of champagne I can find, and we’re going to celebrate. But we have to prepare for both extremes.”

Mulally promised Laymon he would call him and let him know how things went.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Laymon said. “I’m staying right here and waiting for you.”

B
oeing’s board of directors met on Monday and Tuesday. What happened inside the boardroom depends on whom you ask. But one thing is certain: By the time he met back up with Laymon on Wednesday, Mulally had changed his mind again. Bill Ford’s emissary could tell things had not worked out the way Mulally had expected. He looked dejected, but Laymon had just the thing to cheer him up. He reached into his pocket and handed Mulally another envelope. It was the best of the three offers.

“Since they bettered my offer, I’m going to better their offer,” Laymon said.

Mulally opened the envelope and studied the numbers. He was blown away.

The package Laymon had put together for Mulally included a base salary of $2 million, which was prorated to $666,667 for the remainder of 2006. It also included a $7.5 million signing bonus and another
$11 million to make up for the deferred compensation that Mulally would be walking away from when he left Boeing. With stock grants and options, the total package was worth more than $28 million. Mulally’s total compensation at Boeing the previous year had been worth less than $10 million. Even without the one-time up-front payments, he stood to make nearly twice that amount at Ford annually. In addition, the company would pay for Mulally’s housing in Michigan for the next two years and grant him personal use of a company aircraft. Finally, the offer included a golden parachute clause that would pay Mulally more than $27.5 million if Ford was sold or merged with another automaker during the next five years.
^*

The dream home on Mercer Island was about to get a whole lot dreamier.

“I’ll be disappointed if, when all is said and done, you aren’t the industry’s first half-billion-dollar guy,” Laymon told Mulally.

Mulally was grinning even more than usual. They shook hands and opened a bottle of champagne. There were still loose threads that needed to be tied up. For one thing, Mulally had to tender his resignation, and McNerney was already on his way back to Boeing’s corporate headquarters in Chicago. Mulally decided to go there to break the news to him in person.

Once again, Laymon coached Mulally on how to negotiate the meeting with McNerney.

“Tell him, thank him, shake his hand, and leave,” Laymon advised. “Tell him that we’re announcing Tuesday. If he wants to get his PR people in contact with us, we can do that.”

The press conference was a ploy on Laymon’s part to keep Mulally from changing his mind again. He wanted to push the deal past the point of no return as quickly as possible.

When the bottle was empty, Mulally stood up and wished him a good trip back to Michigan.

“Nope, I’ll wait for you,” Laymon said. “I can’t let you go to Chicago without me.”

He had let Mulally get away once; he was not going to let it happen again.
^*

J
im McNerney was surprised when Mulally arrived at Boeing headquarters on September 1 and asked to speak with him. McNerney thought everything had been resolved when he left Seattle. Mulally sat down and told him he had changed his mind; he was leaving to take the CEO job at Ford. McNerney scoffed at Mulally’s indecisiveness. Laymon had warned him to expect that, and had reminded Mulally that McNerney had done the same thing before taking the job at Boeing.

“Jim, I’m going to do just what you did,” Mulally said. He stood up, shook McNerney’s hand, and left for Midway Airport.

Laymon was waiting for him there in a meeting room, pacing the floor with Mulally’s contract in his hand. Mulally sighed as he sat down at the table. Then, with a decisive flourish, he signed the document. For once he omitted the smiling airplane.

“I’ve got to call my wife,” Mulally said when had finished, reaching for his phone.

“No, you’ve got to call Bill first,” Laymon told him. He dialed his boss’s number and put him on speakerphone.

“Do you still want me to come?” Mulally asked Ford playfully.

“Yes!” Bill Ford almost screamed into the phone.