Page 539 PROBLEMSOLVING APPLICATION CASE Cultures Clash at Ford Ford Motor Company revolutionized the auto manufacturing industry more than 100 years ago with the invention of the assembly line, but lately the company is struggling to remain attractive to investors. Ford has experienced costly recalls and lost hundreds of millions of dollars from its international businesses in recent years.129 New tariffs on steel and aluminum have eaten up $1 billion of Ford's prots, and Moody's has downgraded the company's credit rating to one level above \"junk" status. By the fall of 2013, Ford's stock price hit a nine-year Iow.13 Meanwhile, rival manufacturers are inching closer to delivering on new technologies like fully autonomous and connected automobiles, and Ford needs to reinvent itself to have any chance of surviving, let alone thriving, in its rapidly shifting competitive environment. But can a massive, entrenched. "6-year-old company change itself? Executive Chairman Bill Ford believes it can, and in May 201? he brought on CEO James Hackett to make it happen. Hackett planned to drastically alter the way Ford operated.131 Specifically, he wanted to change Ford's culture to one that was more open-minded, creative, and adaptable so that it would be better equipped to respond to rapidly shifting market demands.132 Stakeholders had high expectations for Hackett's ability to deliver. In the two decades he spent as CEO of Steelcase, Incan office furniture company Hackett was a strong proponent of \"design thinking." This approach to problem solving focuses on the customerwhat goes through their minds and how they experience a product.133 At Steelcase. Hackett's teams of sociologists, anthropologists, and technology experts used design thinking to transform the company from a cubicle designer to a trailblazer in today's open, collaborative workspaces.134 Hackett was hired to bring design thinking to Ford, overhaul its culture, and reinvent the approach the automaker took to creating its products."35 Hackett made some noticeable changes right away. He reduced the number of people reporting directly to him from 18 to 8 and decreased the frequency of meetings with them to allow them more time for creative thinking and decision making. He hired 28-year-old Clare Braun as his chief of staff, calling her a \"reverse mentor\" who would help him understand how people under 30 were thinking. Hackett also made waves by removing a plaque that commemorated former CEO Alan Mulally's \"One Ford\" plan. Mulally's plan had been credited with repairing Ford's culture and saving profits ten years earlier, but Hackett wanted to make the point that old approaches only continue to work if the past and future were identical. The space on the wall became dedicated to drawing, mapping, and diagramming out Ford's strategy for competing in its new reality.13'5 Hackett favors collaboration over traditional top-down management. Many of his efforts to change the culture inside Ford's corporate ofces have centered around removing hierarchies to generate creative discussions across functional areas.137 For example, Hackett launched \"Team Edison\" to focus exclusively on electric vehicles. The cross-functional team occupies an open space inside one of Ford's former Detroit factories and, according to director Darren Palmer, knew that to succeed they needed to \"be willing to challenge every truth and every process we had developed over the course of our careers.\" Hackett has encouraged the team to generate ideas from multiple viewpoints. According to Palmer, \"On any given day you can nd yourself sitting next to someone working to market our electric vehicles, someone looking at the prot potential of our electric vehicles, or be on a coffee break with someone involved in our charging strategy.\"133 FR USTRATIONS WITH HACKETT By mid2018, approximately one year after Hackett took over. Ford's prots were down around $1 billion. Key stakeholders were growing increasingly anxious and Impatient with the fact they still didn't understand exactly what was going on or how Hackett planned to change the company.139 Analysts began criticizing Hackett for failing to articulate a compelling vision for exactly where he planned to take Ford. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said what little Hackett had communicated was \"vague and unstructured\" compared to Ford's industry competitors. Onejoumalist said Hackett used \"fuzzy terms more common to urbanists and businesspeople. and talking with him can feel like taking a college philosophy seminar after a few bong rips.\"140 Issues with Hackett's communication were present inside the company as well, where executives were often calling upon Braun, Hackett's chief of staff, to translate Hackett's diagrams and cryptic messages after meetings.\"" Ford dealership owners also expressed concerns about communications from corporate headquarters. Jack Madden. owner ofa Ford dealership in Norwood, Massachusetts, said \"There's been a lot less exposure to senior management. . . There'sjust not enough information flowing down to dealers about where the company's headed."142