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Charlie Holleran was a more immediate concern. Though Mulally was impressed with how Ford’s vice president of communications handled his hiring, he did not like Holleran’s style. Holleran was an old-school public relations manager whose expertise lay in crisis management. If someone lobbed a grenade into the room, he was the guy who would grab it and pitch it back out the window before it went off. But Mulally did not need a crisis manager; he hoped the days that demanded one were over. As with the other functions, Mulally wanted someone who could come up with a plan—in this case, one for improving the public perception of Ford Motor Company—and then rigorously monitor its execution. Holleran ran things by instinct and intuition; he was not one for PowerPoint presentations and media metrics. He would keep his job for the time being, but Mulally had his eye out for a replacement.

Mulally was generally satisfied with the rest of the team that he inherited.

Legal affairs was led by General Counsel David Leitch, a beefy, battle-scarred Beltway veteran with a sharp legal mind. He was a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and had clerked for U.S. Supreme Court chief justice William Rehnquist. On September 11, 2001, he was a few months into his new job as chief counsel for the Federal Aviation Administration. He spent the next year exploring uncharted legal waters as the United States locked down commercial air travel. Then
he was tapped to be deputy assistant to President George W. Bush and deputy White House counsel, just in time for the invasion of Iraq. Leitch loved being in the White House, even though his work there took him into some unsettling legal areas, such as the debate over “enhanced interrogation techniques.” But he knew going in that his position there was not permanent. When Leitch had the opportunity to come to Ford, he took it. He had only been at the Glass House since 2005. Mulally liked him instantly—in part because he was another outsider who was still untainted by Dearborn, in part because he was a good attorney. Mulally would rely on Leitch’s counsel a great deal in the months and years ahead.

Ziad Ojakli, Ford’s vice president of corporate affairs, was another veteran of the Bush administration. A fast-talking, well-connected Turkish American lobbyist with a knack for political deal making, Ojakli had been deputy assistant to the president for legislative affairs and Bush’s chief liaison to the Senate from 2001 to 2004. Bush, who liked to bestow nicknames on his closest advisers, dubbed him “Z-man.” Others in Washington referred to him as “
the Energizer Bunny,” because of his frenetic pace. The smiling, pudgy-faced Ojakli grew up in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge neighborhood and earned a bachelor’s from Georgetown and a master’s from Johns Hopkins. His unique blend of street smarts, elite education, and stamina made him a real force on Capitol Hill, where he worked behind the scenes to build support for the president’s agenda. He got along with Democrats and Republicans alike, and his connections in Washington ensured that Ford’s concerns always got a hearing.

Chief Information Officer Nick Smither was a tall, thin Brit who said little but kept Ford’s computers running. He would now report directly to Mulally. So would Chief Technical Officer Richard Parry-Jones, a Welsh engineering savant who was considered one of the best vehicle tuners in the industry. Mulally had forgiven Parry-Jones for doubting his ability to grasp the complexities of the automobile business during their first meeting in September.

Mulally thought he had a chief marketing officer in the person of Hans-Olov Olsson, who was also chairman of Volvo. But the sixty-four-year-old Swede announced his retirement on November 30. He had grand plans for a massive marketing campaign that would embrace all of Ford’s disparate brands, and it did not take Olsson long to realize that was wholly incompatible with Mulally’s new vision for the company. Besides, he missed Sweden. So Booth added the title of Volvo chairman to his growing list of responsibilities, and Mulally began searching for someone else to fill the critical post of marketing chief.

Marketing would be key to Mulally’s transformation of Ford, and he quickly concluded that no one inside the company was capable of leading the major push he had planned. He would need to hire another outsider. Mulally tapped Lisa Bacus, the brand manager for the
Lincoln Mercury division, to fill in as the senior marketing executive until he could find the right person.
^*

Some functions at Ford were already led by people whose titles implied a global purview. In practice, however, few were able to exercise real, direct authority worldwide. Mulally wanted to make sure that they owned all the processes, all the people, and all the responsibility.

Vice President of Global Quality Bennie Fowler was a good example. A stern, African American manufacturing expert from Georgia who looked like a former linebacker, Fowler learned the value of order and structure from his father, an army sergeant, who ran his house with the same discipline that he ran his platoon. As a boy, the other kids in the Augusta housing project Fowler grew up in called him “Streetlights,” because his parents required him to return home at dusk. As an adult, he applied that same disciplined approach to manufacturing and was known to mete out wire-brushings to subordinates who failed to live up to his high standards. Quality was a religion for Fowler, and he approached his job with the intensity of a Baptist preacher. He was the sort of guy who could change the way a plant operated by force of will alone. He came to Ford after stints at General Motors and Chrysler, starting as superintendent of Ford’s assembly plant in St. Thomas, Ontario. Fowler went on to rattle the teacups of tweed-coated Brits as chief operating officer for Jaguar and Land Rover before the progress he made on their abysmal quality ratings prompted Jim Padilla to call him back to Dearborn in the summer of 2005. He was given responsibility for manufacturing engineering and new product launches on Mark Fields’ Way Forward restructuring team.
^†
After a particularly rocky board meeting led to the demotion of the previous quality chief, Fowler added vice president of global quality to his title in April 2006.

Fowler made the mistake of taking his new title seriously. He started by calling a meeting of all the Ford quality chiefs from around the
world and asked each one to explain the processes in place in their regions. Every part of the company was handling quality differently. That upset Fowler, because he knew Ford had invested a great deal of time and resources in developing what he thought was one of the best quality control systems in the industry—a system that nobody besides him seemed to be following. When he suggested they start, Fowler’s subordinates responded with a chorus of impossibles. Every region found some part of the system it could not implement. Fowler quickly discovered that he lacked the necessary backing to force the issue, so he focused on fixing North America. He had made real progress there by the time Mulally was hired. But Fowler was certain he was going to lose his job. He knew that he was considered one of Padilla’s protégés and assumed that was reason enough for Mulally to get rid of him. He was surprised then when he first encountered the new CEO walking down the hall in November.
^*

“Hey!” Mulally giggled. “I’m your new quality guy!”

The two men spent the next fifteen minutes talking. Mulally assured him that his position was secure.

“We’re going to focus on quality and productivity at the company,” he told Fowler. “We’re going to make it a priority. You’re the guy!”

Then Mulally looked at his watch and arched his eyebrows.

“I’ve got to run!” he said. “I’ve got to get a home-improvement loan.”

A few weeks later Fowler got a call from Mulally, who told the quality chief that he would now be reporting directly to him. Mulally also told Fowler that he wanted him to start taking the “global” part of his title seriously.

Fowler, too, was overwhelmed by his first Thursday BPR meeting. There was just so much information to absorb. He was also daunted by the task of getting his own data together for his part of the presentation. Initially he did not have the quality metrics for the other regions and could only present the numbers for North America. Once he started getting reports from other parts of the world, Fowler
discovered that each region measured quality a bit differently and presented its data in different formats. It took about eighteen months before Fowler was able to present a comprehensive snapshot of Ford’s quality efforts worldwide. It took several of the other functions just as long to get up to speed—evidence of just how disjointed the company had been before Mulally. Presenting the data in the five minutes that he was allotted each week was a challenge, too. Fowler practiced before each meeting like an actor rehearsing his role. As tough as he was, Fowler was a little intimidated by suddenly finding himself on equal footing with men who had been his bosses until a few months ago. Mulally spent some time with him alone after each of his first few meetings.

“Look, Bennie, you’re at this level now,” he said. “Just watch the team and observe. I’ll give you a little time to do that, and I know you’ll figure it out.”

Like the other executives, Fowler worried at first that Mulally’s talk about honesty and transparency was just a trap, and he waited to see who would be gullible enough to fall for it first. He made sure all of his charts were solid green, even though he knew many of the boxes should have been red. But when Fields survived his first brush with the truth, Fowler decided to show his true colors, too.

F
ields may have emerged from that meeting with head still attached, but he was still worried about his job. Rumors of his imminent departure were everywhere. In addition to the jet scandal, many outside the company continued to view Bill Ford’s decision to bring in Mulally as an indictment of Fields’ own abilities. One Dow Jones reporter even tried to start a pool, inviting other journalists to place bets on how much longer Fields would last.
^*
Fields was a tough Jersey boy who prided himself on his ability to shake off just about anything, but this speculation started to get under even his thick skin. When Daniel Howes of the
Detroit News
called Fields and flat out asked him if his days were numbered, he decided to find out. Fields
hung up the phone and walked down the hall to Mulally’s office, brushed past his secretary, and stood before Mulally’s desk.

“Everybody around here seems to think you’re planning on canning me,” Fields told him. “Is that true?”

“No!”
Mulally said with evident dismay. “Mark, you’re a valued member of the team.”

“Can we just have an agreement?” Fields asked. “If you don’t think I’m working out for you, let’s just have that discussion. I’m okay with that.”

“Sure,” Mulally said. “But you shouldn’t let yourself get distracted by rumors.”

Fields said it was hard not to when the city’s leading columnist was getting ready to write his obituary. A few minutes later, Howes’ cellphone rang.

“Hi, Daniel. This is Alan. I heard you were writing something about Mark.”

“I am,” said the surprised columnist.

“Well, I just want you to know that I think he is a really, really fine leader,” Mulally said. “
I have the utmost confidence in him.… He’s done a great job. And I
really
believe in him.”

Mulally meant it, too. He saw plenty of potential in Fields. Mulally had adopted his accelerated restructuring plan and had been deeply impressed by Fields’ courage in the Thunderbird Room. Yet he needed Fields to do more than just pay lip service to the new order. He needed him to embrace it. And Fields was starting to do just that. He did not swagger quite so much when he walked, and he had toned down his tough-talking rhetoric. He started to refer to “the team” and “we” instead of “I” and “me.” Fields was starting to worry less about scoring points and more about how to fix what was wrong with the North American business. He was beginning to see that Bill Ford had been right—that Alan Mulally was the guy who could teach him to be a world-class CEO. Fields was not only learning everything he could from Mulally; he was also becoming one of his most valued lieutenants.

Fields was not the only one worrying about being replaced. As Mulally worked on his new organization chart, Ford’s top executives
watched their doors warily and cringed a little each time the phone rang. They knew it was a rare outside CEO who does not bring in at least a few of his or her own people. With each new appointment to Mulally’s senior team, they relaxed a bit. Then came news that seemed to confirm their worst fears. In November, Jerry Calhoun—Mulally’s head of human resources at Boeing—announced his retirement from the aircraft company. Word leaked that he was coming to Dearborn as a consultant. Many assumed that Laymon’s career at Ford would soon be coming to an end. In fact, it was Laymon who had suggested to Mulally that he hire Calhoun. He reckoned that no one knew the new CEO’s management style better and thought he could help him figure it out. When it became clear that Laymon was not going anywhere—at least not yet—the other executives finally began to calm down.