I sat there listening to the Ford Motor Company press conference Monday morning – as first Bill Ford, Jim Padilla and then Mark Fields outlined the “Way Forward,” confirming the elimination of up to 30,000 jobs and the closings of 14 manufacturing facilities over the next several years, while basically admitting that the company was culturally bankrupt, bureaucratically paralyzed, and woefully and relentlessly clueless about how to function in the modern automotive world – and the first thought that came to my mind is that it’s a flat-out miracle this iconic American company has managed to survive this long.
Monday morning’s presentation, designed to take us under the tent with Ford executives thinking and talking out loud for the assembled media, financial analysts and a worldwide Ford company audience, was a lurid combination of multiple mea culpas and a blatant pep rally – and the net-net of it was that it exposed Ford to be a company so far out of touch and so far removed from being a competitive force in the U.S. market that I was literally stunned at what I was hearing.
I have to agree with Peter. Reading the blowback from Ford’s Monday announcements, I, too wondered where the company is heading, and, if indeed it has been so rudderless, how has it survived?