Recommend: Yes
On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a book about Alan Mulally.
American Icon was on the shortlist for the next work Book Club selection and a strong contender until we found out it has no audiobook. For those with more children/less time than me, this was a deal-breaker. However the book still intrigued me enough to source a copy and I am glad I am did.
The book is a biography of the Ford company covering most of the 2000s, but with a focus on the last half when Alan Mulally takes the CEO reigns and deftly saves the company from an inglorious end during the Global Financial Crisis. Alan is an ex-Boeing manager and oversaw the development of the 777 and Boeing commercial over the early 2000s (watch the excellent Building the 777 3 part PBS documentary to see him in action at his Pacific North-West peak). This was obviously the draw for me, but I was curious how automotive companies do business.
There’s a good depth to the book. For someone with limited (arguably no) business knowledge it laid things out in a structure I could understand, but was comprehensive enough that I didn’t feel it had glossed over details. They go through their approach to cutting costs, restructuring debt and the bond markets in an engaging narrative format with each chapter focussing on one particular aspect. This works stronger than a strict chronology and helps you keep focussed on the topic at hand for that chapter.
There were lots of interesting tidbits throughout the story. From Ford’s unusual ownership structure (the key voting shares are all still controlled by Ford’s descendants directly), their partnerships with the other car companies (at one point they owned Volvo, Land Rover, Jaguar and a large stake in Mazda – Mulally cut all this to focus on Ford only) and the role the unions play in automotive (in addition to pensions, there are jobs banks, indefinite rights of refusal for offers and more – the unions do negotiate on these in the GFC as they see the industry is on its last legs and they risk losing it all). It’s definitely more business focussed than engineering or technology, but Ford is a technology company (design and manufacturing) at its core. So I still enjoyed this.
The author, Bryce Hoffman, is an ex-Detroit journalist who covered Ford for years, so knows his stuff. He says he had excellent access to Ford when writing the book as it’s fundamentally a story of recovery and strength that is positive for Ford. And it is. Ford (and Alan in particular) come off looking competent and the other automotive companies a bit dastardly and naive by comparison. Ford was the only of the Detroit three (GM and Chrysler being the others) to not accept a bailout in the GFC. That’s not saying there aren’t issues and problems at the big blue oval, but the redemption of Ford by the Messiah Mulally is the key story and it is well told.
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