nrc
Well-Known Member
It sounds like we largely agree. I don't discount that someone can come from outside the automotive world, but the nature of the product and market make it challenging.Regarding the bold part.... On that we definitely agree, but there is always more to the story. Mulally is a great example. Because he is a trained and degreed engineer with experience with a highly technical product, he was able to transition from a CEO role in one industry to a CEO role in another industry. That happens a lot. Not always successfully, though. But even when you have an engineer born and raised within the industry, it doesn't mean that they will make a good CEO. We were all really excited when Robert Stempel, a career engineer, was promoted to CEO of GM. It didn't take long to realize he was in way over his head. He was a great engineer, but didn't have the right skillset to be a CEO.
Hackett has more of a marketing background. Marketing backgrounds (and sales backgrounds) also tend to transition well from industry to industry. In his case, maybe not so much. I lived through one of those too.
We had Ron Zarella come in from heading Bausch & Lomb marketing to head up GM marketing. I still have nightmares from an executive conference where he basically yelled at us for criticizing the Aztek and "challenged" all of us to ask to be assigned one as a company car so that we could demonstrate to people how well it drives. He was right that the thing drove really nice. Thing is, it was so butt ugly that you couldn't get a customer to get in the thing to see how well it drove. I was really disappointed that a guy who lived his career in marketing couldn't remember that one of the 4 Ps of marketing is PACKAGE. And the Aztek was one ugly package.
Everything I see from Hackett looks like the anti-Mullaly. He has his playbook and he's running it. Cut costs and add brands. He lacks Mullaly's understanding that products are the top priority and brand value stems from that.
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