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Over the weekend, Holleran and Laymon flew out to Seattle to prepare Mulally for the announcement. First they played a round of golf. Mulally was an avid golfer. So was Laymon. But the HR chief was also a student of human nature, and he spent most of his time on the course watching Ford’s new CEO closely. He noticed that Mulally learned from his mistakes, adjusting his swing whenever he hit a less-than-perfect shot. Mulally was also friendly with the beverage cart vendor—not at all condescending or aloof. And when someone hit a particularly bad shot and got frustrated, Mulally slapped him on the back and said, “Well, look how far down the right side you are.”

We got lucky
, Laymon thought.
This guy is the real deal
.

After eighteen holes, the group sat down to discuss the upcoming announcement. Mulally told Holleran that he had come up with a plan for dealing with the media.

“We already have one,” Holleran said, sliding a thick binder across the table. Mulally opened it.

“Holy shit!” Mulally said as he thumbed through the pages, which contained not only the answers to every question he was likely to be asked but also detailed plans for staging the event. It covered everything, right down to where the press photographers would be corralled to control the composition of their shots.
^*

“Every picture that’s taken is going to include you and Bill, because we don’t want a palace coup as the story,” he explained.

“Is all this necessary?” Mulally asked.

“This isn’t Seattle. It isn’t even Detroit. It’s the world. This is the Ford Motor Company, and every burp is news,” Holleran told him. “There’s a reason that the
Wall Street Journal
, the
New York Times
, and all the wire services have offices in a decaying city. This is the linchpin of the economy, and you’re going on center stage.”

Holleran’s team had been setting that stage for days. They drafted memos for Bill Ford to send out to employees bemoaning the lack of honesty at the top of the company and calling for fundamental
changes in the way the corporation was run. Then they leaked these to the press. The idea was to paint a portrait of Bill Ford as a man looking for a lever with which to pry his company out of the rut it had been stuck in for too long. That way, the hiring of a new CEO would be seen as something Bill Ford did, rather than something that was done to him.

Ford’s PR team knew that reporters would be looking for quotes from outside sources come Tuesday, and they wanted to make sure those were positive, too. That weekend, they had Bill Ford call David Cole, the chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor and the most quoted industry pundit in America. Holleran knew that Cole would be the first person most reporters called for a reaction once they heard the news.

“We’re going to bring in a new CEO,” Ford told Cole. “I’m really enthusiastic about this guy, because he’s done it before. He’s coming from Boeing. His name is Alan Mulally. You’ll like him.”

Unlike most people in Detroit, Cole knew all about Mulally. Cole was a Boeing shareholder and had followed his efforts to keep the company flying. Cole also knew that the aerospace business was at least as complex as the automobile business. Mulally called Cole himself a few minutes before Tuesday’s press conference and worked his own magic. When the reporters started calling a few minutes later, Cole had nothing but good things to say about Ford’s new CEO.

Holleran and Pepper even figured out a way to bend the nation’s most influential financial organ to their will. The
Wall Street Journal
’s top investigative reporter, Monica Langley, was already working on a piece about the automaker. They were worried it was going to be an indictment of Bill Ford’s leadership but had agreed to cooperate with her because they knew she was talking to board members and would end up with a story either way. Her piece was slated to run a few days after Mulally’s hiring was announced. They decided to call her and offer her the scoop. If she had it, the only thing her story could be about was Alan Mulally. Langley might hurl a few barbs at Bill Ford in the process, but she would also have to give him credit for having the courage to step aside. But they needed Bill Ford’s approval to let her
in on the secret, and Ford was nervous about letting anyone in the press know ahead of time.

“Bill, it’s the best way to get this story told,” Holleran told his boss. “The
Journal
will set the tone for the rest of the national coverage.”

In the end, Ford agreed. At eight o’clock Tuesday morning, Langley received a call from Pepper. He told her that Ford was about to make an important announcement and offered to fill her in if she agreed not to release the story until the press release went out on the wire. She was reluctant, but Pepper told her she would have hours to work on her story before the rest of the media even knew about it. Langley agreed. Like David Cole, she received a call from Mulally Tuesday afternoon.

T
he press release went out as soon as the markets closed, just after 4
P.M.
, as did an e-mail from Bill Ford to his employees around the world. In both, Bill Ford described the challenges facing the company and the reasons for his decision to step aside.

“While I knew that we were fortunate to have outstanding leaders driving our operations around the world, I also determined that our turnaround effort required the additional skills of an executive who has led a major manufacturing enterprise through such challenges before,” he wrote in his message to employees. “After dealing with the troubles at Boeing in the post-9/11 world, Alan knows what it’s like to have your back to the wall—and fight your way out with a well-conceived plan and great execution. He also knows how to deal with long product cycles, changing fuel prices and difficult decisions in a turnaround.”

Ford stressed that his own commitment to the company remained unchanged.

“Let me assure you: I’m not going anywhere,” Ford continued. “As executive chairman, I intend to remain extremely active in the direction of this company. I’ll be here every day and I will not rest until a prosperous future for this company is secured.”

Throughout Dearborn and around the world, Ford offices fell
silent as employees read the message. Murmurs ran down the assembly lines in factories on six continents.

Meanwhile, dozens of reporters and photographers rushed to Ford World Headquarters for the 5
P.M
. press conference. Inside the media center, cameras clicked and flashes popped as Ford and Mulally fielded questions beneath a big Blue Oval. Most of the reporters wanted to know just who was in charge in the Glass House now.

“This is a partnership,” Ford said. “Alan is going to be CEO, and I’m going to be executive chairman, and we’re going to be working closely on all of these issues.”

Mulally was also asked if his experience in the aerospace business was transferable to Detroit.

“The fundamentals between these two industries are exactly the same,” Mulally insisted, holding both companies up as icons of American manufacturing. “Some people think the United States can’t compete in the design and production of sophisticated products. I personally think we can.”

He said he had demonstrated that at Boeing, and he promised to do the same at Ford.

Then someone asked Mulally what type of car he drove.

“A Lexus,” he said without even a hint of embarrassment. “It’s the finest car in the world.”

“That’s being keyed now as we’re sitting here,” Ford quipped, referring to the practice of scratching a vehicle’s paint with a car key.

The always-personable Bill Ford had a way of turning press conferences into laugh-fests, a rare quality in a town where most executives took themselves far too seriously. This one was no exception. When a reporter observed that Mulally was sixty-one and noted that most Ford executives retired by sixty-five, Ford threw out another zinger.

“Doesn’t he look great for sixty-one?” he said. “This place will change that.”

T
he next morning, Ford and Mulally addressed employees in a town hall meeting at World Headquarters that was broadcast to the company’s facilities around the world. As Ford mounted the stage,
he received a standing ovation from the workers in the auditorium. Mulally did, too, but there was less enthusiasm in their applause.

Both men reiterated what they had said the day before. Bill Ford talked about the need to have someone at the top who had “been through the wars, and has the scars to show for it and came out victorious.” Mulally said he was honored to be asked to lead such a storied company. Then they opened the floor to questions.

The first came from a woman who nervously asked about the epic downsizing Mulally had presided over at Boeing. She was not alone in her concern; many in the company were worried that what Ford had hired was not so much a CEO as a hatchet man. Mulally did his best to reassure her, explaining that the cuts he had made at Boeing were the direct result of the 2001 terrorist attacks, which had forced the aircraft manufacturer to slash production by more than 50 percent.

“We had to take dramatic action just to survive as a company,” Mulally told her. What he did not say was that Ford would have to as well.

Another employee asked for the specifics of his turnaround plan. That was still a work in progress, Mulally said, but he thought the company’s recent restructuring moves were a good start.

“Matching the capacity to the demand right now is just critical,” he said, adding that improving quality and productivity while continuing to invest in new products would also be essential. “I’m building on what you’ve done to get us to this place.”

Mulally was asked if he was going to bring in his own team of executives.

“My team is right here,” he said with a smile.

The senior executives sitting in the front row smiled back, though few of them believed Mulally meant it. If the past was any guide, many of them would soon be looking for jobs. But Ford’s recent past was nothing to Mulally but a cautionary tale. It was a new day in Dearborn, as Mulally made clear when one executive, Linda Dunbar, asked if her strategic planning group would play a bigger role in his regime.

Mulally shook his head.

“You don’t want somebody on the side doing the strategy,” he said,
nodding toward the front row. “It’s us. That’s the number-one thing. It’s not going to be a strategy department. It’s going to be our team. It’s going to be the leadership team that decides where we are going.”

Dunbar’s group would be dissolved a few months later.

A Jaguar–Land Rover employee called in from Britain to ask Mulally what he intended to do with Ford’s European brands. The man could not help but notice that Boeing had only the one brand. Mulally said he was looking forward to having a discussion about Ford’s brand lineup. That did not exactly reassure the folks in England.

An engineer in Dearborn asked Bill Ford if his family was prepared to give Mulally a free hand.

“I wouldn’t have been able to attract someone of Alan’s caliber if his hands were tied,” he replied. “Alan’s the CEO. He’s going to make the changes that he feels he should make and wants to make, and I’ll support him.”

Ford made it clear that his decision to bring in an outside CEO meant the end of business as usual at the company.

“Everybody here has not always been on the same page, and we have not had alignment always throughout the organization. It’s frustrated me enormously,” he said. “That’s been an inhibitor in the past, and it’s time for it to change.”