357. Can an Industrial Giant Become a Tech Darling?

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🗓️ 8 November 2018

⏱️ 54 minutes

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Summary

The Ford Motor Company is ditching its legacy sedans, doubling down on trucks, and trying to steer its stock price out of a long skid. But C.E.O. Jim Hackett has even bigger plans: to turn a century-old automaker into the nucleus of a “transportation operating system.” Is Hackett just whistling past the graveyard, or does he see what others can’t?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, so if I'm looking at your resume, I'm not seeing CEO of an auto firm.
0:07.0	Oh, God. You and me both.
0:14.5	And yet, he is.
0:17.0	I'm Jim Hackett, President and CEO of Ford Motor Company.
0:20.0	I have to ask, how would you get to our studio today?
0:23.0	A Lincoln navigator.
0:25.0	When's the last time you rode in a vehicle that wasn't made by the Ford Motor Company?
0:29.0	Probably a year before I was the CEO.
0:33.0	I actually had three other vehicles in my garage when I was on the board and I got rid of all of them.
0:39.0	Hackett became CEO of Ford in May 2017.
0:42.0	But we began with a big shake up at Ford.
0:45.0	Mark Fields is out and Jim Hackett is in.
0:48.0	Let's face it, Jim Hackett wasn't on anybody's radar when it came to automotive succession here at Ford.
0:54.0	One reason Jim Hackett wasn't on anyone's radar is that he is not what they call a car guy.
1:00.0	In Detroit, the world is pretty much divided into car guys and everybody else.
1:05.0	Hackett is a 63-year-old Ohio native who started out in sales and management at Proctor and Gamble.
1:11.0	Then worked for many years at the Michigan Furniture Company Steelcase, including 19 years as CEO.
1:17.0	And after that, he was interim athletic director at the University of Michigan, his alma mater,
1:22.0	where he hired the football coach Jim Harboh.
1:25.0	He did join the board of directors of Ford in 2013 while he was still at Steelcase.
1:31.0	But like we said, not an obvious candidate for CEO of one of America's big three automakers.
1:38.0	However, as it is often said, desperate times call for desperate measures.
	...

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