If you worked directly with him, you know he was self absorbed a-s.
Did he really save Ford or get lucky because the government responded to the housing crisis by dumping money into the economy?
His cuts to UAW wages are biting us in the bu-t now. We can't find enough people to fill plant jobs.
Is he a hero for not asking for a bailout? He borrowed a ton of cash, just not from Uncle Sam.
He cut pay, benefits, and jobs while making himself rich. How was he different than any other CEO?
Mullaly was the bo-b!
Met him twice and he remembered my name the second time.
Very humble and intelligent guy.
Asked himself the right questions before he questioned others.
Shame Junior felt threatened and made him leave early!
Joke when you look at Hackett and Farley and the clown in waiting from apple.
What is up with that loser?
@2wgd+1n3bHB9I. WOW, you say Doug Field’s biggest accomplishment at Ford is having moved some ds around in words. Amazing.
These people bashing Mulally don't have a clue. I was at Ford for 36 years. He was the best CEO we ever had PERIOD! Even during the darkest days, he was a bright light who inspired. He unleased and energized our engineers, he didn't trash them like Farley. The dealers loved Mulally and felt he saved their franchise. If dealers are happy, they sell more vehicles and the oval shines. They would line up at car shows to get a picture with him. His hiring from Boeing was the best accomplishment Bill Ford ever had. We had quality vehicles during his tenure- probably due to his process and engineering background. The best CEO's we had had engineering backgrounds and Mulally was the best. Ford should bring him back as an interim CEO to get this current situation fixed. Farley only seems to blame others and has excuses.
Sum it up bracket team rants.
One of the items DF influenced on mach e when he came in was change name of the drive mode from Unbridled to Unbridle since other mode names Whisper and Engage were not past tense. Then he changed Unbridled Extend to Unbridle Extended as it was an "extended" version of Unbridle Mode. Ford and model e are in good hands.
Model E may be the best led organization at Ford right now, but only because the entire company is sinking. Doug almost 2 years of failure behind him. He is without a doubt one of the worst hires of the last several decades. He has been given way too much leeway, and the collection of yes men will make recovery difficult. The sooner he leaves the better.
@2zym+1n3bHB9I 1 year 10 months is significant time LMAO. The first 1.5 years are smoke blowing, by year 3 the flash in the pans are gone like clockwork.
To date a whole lot of DF blow and promises very little go and deliverables.
If there were tangible, quality, profitable deliverables Farley would be crowing at ever opportunity - so far the crowing has been about vapor-ware and future plans whose actual delivery date keeps moving further and further into the future.
Doug Field has already been at Ford for a significant time already. Accusations of job hopping don't hold water with his time at Ford. Model e is the best led organization in Ford right now.
Mulally is a leader. People respond to him as he is a genuine guy who believes in helping others become their best selves. If you have Netflix watch Downfall:the case against Boeing around 47:30 you will see a young Mulally. Watch the interaction with people and their facial expressions. Compare that with JF at town halls.
@1but+1n3bHB9 DF resume speaks for itself. Never stayed in any one job for more than five years. Sorry that is called a "RED FLAG".
Alan may not have been perfect. He was by far more of a leader than the current management . That includes Bill Ford. Sorry buy he is no leader. lacks KARMA.
Farley. is no leader. blames everyone but himself. Don Shula once said
A strong leader takes responsibility
A weak leader blames others.
Farley has been in a senior position since he hired in. Yet he is despised by the employees. Bill well he is like a deer in headlights. clueless. Sorry but I do not see leadership form either of them Doug Fields.. Professional job hopper.
Fact #1 The company was in the cr-pper because of Bill's leadership
Fact #2 Mulally came in and mortgaged the blue oval to raise operating capitol because we were broke
Fact #3 Employee morale was sky high when he was here
Fact #3 The company was at the top of the heap in products and quality when he left
draw your own conclusion.
OP: Stop the BS and twisting the truth. I worked for Mullaly in a supporting role and spent many hours in WHQ 11/12 FL. I don't "Love Mullaly", but have the upmost respect for what he did for Ford. I wish Netflix can make a documentary on Mullaly and his time at Ford. There are so many individual stories and interactions with employees that if it comes to light, people would wish he could run for US president.
@ 1uuw - while I’m not a Musk fanboy, I can see why he has such a cult following.
In the automotive space, Tesla was far ahead of the curve. If ur into space, u have space x, if ur into neuroscience, there is neurolink. Plus many other companies in his portfolio. All these things seem hip and cool. There is the possibility to work on really cool things and make money via stock stock options (Tesla as an example). Musk wasn’t a 1 hit wonder. Ford is automotive. We can try to dabble in other areas, but let’s face it, we can’t even keep our eye on the prize and build quality vehicles that people want.
I wouldn’t want to work for Musk, EVER. I would be interested in having a discussion over dinner. He is probably very interesting. I wouldn’t mind having a discussion with Farley either if he could put his ego aside. But I can tell you, I don’t like the us vs them company culture Farley created. Morale sucks.
Oh please @1but+1n3bHB9I. The primary reason Ford is in such a fix is that as soon as Mulally was gone the Ford “leadership” once again began playing all the usual Ford games . Quality tanked, costs soared, bureaucracy ballooned, it was back to Hierarchy trumps knowledge and skills.
The hole dug by Ford leadership post Mulally now has to be re-filled while trying to move into different arenas. If there was no hole to fill, Ford would be on easy street. And BTW Farley is responsible for a large portion of the mess, and the “leadership” including Farley is still fully engaged in playing Ford games, after all they must preserve the system they skillfully construct and manipulate to advance their own careers.
Mullally's era clearly was not as challenging as the current mobility landscape. If we had current leadership (Doug Field, etc.) back then, Ford would be on better footing with the BEV space than we are currently. But luckily we are fast tracking our company transformation now to become the best in modern mobility services and products.
Tesla hemorrhaged money - all on the backs of the tax payers. But I forgot. RINOs like having higher taxes on the working class if it means that the rich get richer? And Tesla cars are fit and finish nightmares. I'm sure all the deep south conservatives are lining up to buy their brand new high priced electric rattle boxes as we speak.
@OP. I cannot tell much about Mullaly, or Fields, or Fartley, since I never met them, nor share time with them. However, from the point of view of an employee, I like better Mullaly's style over Fartley's "lack of style".
Maybe Mullaly though himself the smartest person in the room, but never said it publicly. Maybe Mullaly blamed others for his mistakes, but didn't do it publicly. Maybe Mullaly was a secretive S-B, but at least he gave Ford employees 3 months of notice before the layoffs in 2008, while Fartley prefers to make wild accusations and comments to the press, where we have to guess what that means for us and when.
Last year, my LL6 didn't know about the layoffs until the same Monday when it started. This year, we are all waiting, trying to guess where the axe is going to fall next. I'd prefer to know it in advanced, so maybe I can get another job (if I am targeted) or be at ease because it is not yet my turn.
Under Mullaly, Ford employees worked hard trying to save our jobs from bankruptcy. Under Fartley, we spend more time worrying about our jobs, than working. Under Mullaly, the company survived. Under Fartley, who knows for how long the company will survive.
Another bribe giving snake oil salesman!
I don’t know that people worship Musk, but you have to admit he has done some remarkable things. He took on the established Auto manufactures and essentially won. Despite the old guard trying their best to prevent his success. You have to give him props.
Sure he has some quirks, and can be a bit of a jerk at times, but he can actually hold deep technical conversations, is creative, innovative and knows what is going on in his companies. I certainly wouldn’t bet against Elon.
It is astounding what he has accomplished, and motivated the old guard to attempt to catch up. It’s almost like obese grandpa (Ford) is puffing away pedaling a bicycle attempting to catch the grandkid (Tesla) who is miles ahead on his bicycle. Will grandpa catch him? Too soon to tell.
Why do they love Elon Musk?? Elon would have them working 12 hour days - all in office - and be on call the rest of the time. All for the lowest possible salary based on local cost of living.
Please Fan Boys - explain why you worship him?
Mullaly was known as saving FoMoCo. Actually the architecture of leveraging the Blue Oval was done prior to his employment.
He brought morale up in a very dark time. I do remember how he also screwed the employees out of large bonuses by changing the payout structure to a global payout vs NA only about 2 months prior to the end of the year. That still pi---s me off. Does this sound familiar to the GSR & LL6s more recently when they told us we asked to be paid on NA moving from Global metrics, yet never asked me nor communicated it out? Same sh-t different CEO.
However, he did not talk sh-t about the employees, or at least not that I heard. Encouraged transparency and didn’t pit employees against each other with the whole Ford Blue and Model e. Now that is just pi-s poor mgmt.
Mullaly encouraged everyone to work together with One Ford. He didn’t build more walls and silos like Farley.
Farley’s lack of understanding of how to work with employees has ruined morale. While he tries on one hand to be human, he fails miserably overall. In addition, it’s my understanding that u never know which Farley you will get. Leading me to believe he is moody. He also thinks he is the smartest person in the room, which may be the case, however, the minds of many outweighs and outperforms the mind of 1.
From my perspective, that is why employees like Mullaly and can’t stand Farley.
Are you picking up what I’m putting down Farley? Stop being an a--hat and start caring about employees, what we r all trying to accomplish - Blue generating the cash, e moving forward and we r people not numbers. Use that wicked smart mind and learn about psychology. Then apply it to the workforce. It will serve u well on ur next stop. It’s too late to change opinion at Ford. Even u have the opportunity to learn from your mistakes. Yes. U made mistakes.
@OP BS on “ If you worked directly with him, you know he was self absorbed a-s”.
You clearly did not work with him, and likely are projecting your attributes onto others.
Mulally was humble and had the heart of a servant. He lifted others up and got people to work together towards a common goal.
One memorable moment was a meeting where JF was boasting and cackling about how he would kick a competitor while they were down with PR campaign (a “cheating scandal” was breaking news at the time). Mulally told him that was not acceptable; we should remain humble and classy as one never knew what was around the bend. He then directed JF to focus on solving Fords problems. JF bristled at the gentle rebuke, but complied on the surface.
Seriously what adult truly feels its acceptable to say things like
“I’m going to beat GM on the head with a baseball bat. And I’m going to enjoy it.”
Much less say it to reporters knowing it will be published.
At best Poor judgement.
To add to what @1ead+1n3bHB9I said, Ford's quality was actually improving under his regime (I.E. the Ford Fusion was consistently topping safety/reliability ratings), supplier relation scores were actually improving employee morale was much better
Just another man not worth the 10s of millions he was paid.
Mullally took home a vehicle every night just so he could figure each one out. That was how dedicated he was. He knew we had to downsize and get back to basics. He convinced the leadership to mortgage everything, including the blue oval. This got us through the tough times. He was a visionary.
Ford is and was always a joke, 100+ years in the business and they still can't build a car or truck that isn't loaded with defects. Most recalls in 2022, way to go.
The current leadership hasn't taken anything on. They are following a federal regime who wants to limit mobility and they are driving Ford and Michigan into failure.
Mullaly was and is overrated. He did not have to deal with the challenges of a modern mobility company and certainly did not see the company through a total company transformation with Model e like the current leadership has taken on.