Just finished with reading of the book titled as “IACOCCA: An Autobiography”. The book is a bit thicker in size which I don’t like much but once started reading, I finished this book within no time.
For those who don’t know much about Lee Iacocca, this is the brief. The son of Italian immigrants, who went onto become President of Ford Motors and Chrysler respectively. A visionary leader, Marketing icon, media person who received celebrity status in America during 1980s.
An engineer by education, Iacocca started his career as Management Trainee at Ford. After few months of working at manufacturing section, he chose a more happening field of Sales and Marketing. At the age of 36 he went onto become General Manager of biggest division of Ford Motors.
Lee is popularly known as the father of Mustang, a sensational Car model launched in 1964. This model created history in American Automobile sector. Within the first 2 years Mustang generated net profits of $ 1.1 billion.
The success of Mustang, coupled with his great management, selling, interpersonal and decision making skills made him President of Ford Motors in 1970, a business empire of 4,32,000 employees.
During his presidency over the period of next 8 years, Ford was making the average profits of around $ 2 billions per year, the largest margins in its history. His growing influence in Ford and indifferences with Henry Ford II, (who was Chairman of Ford) made the matters worse for Iacocca. After working for 32 years (out which 8 years as President) he was fired.
The insulted and devastated Iacocca then joined Chrysler as President. But the Chrysler was already plagued with bad management, poor quality of cars, declined sales, which led it to almost bankruptcy. As a president, Lee had to take a lot of tough decisions like restructuring of board of directors, shutdown of non-profitable plants and firing of a huge manpower. But in doing so he had the vision and confidence to bring the Chrysler on the right track.
He implemented a lot of other cost cutting initiatives, like he opted to reduce his annual compensation from $ 1 million to $ 1 per year. Other employees then voluntarily came ahead and made their contribution. Lee brought out the concept of “Equality of Sacrifice” at Chrysler.
The OPEC oil crisis in 1980 made the matters worse for him and other than bailout, the only option he had left was asking for Government help. After a lot of struggle and convincing, US govt sanctioned a loan guarantee of $ 1.5 billions. The guarantee was given for the period of next 7 years at the annual interest rate of more than 20%.
After that, Lee concentrated all of his efforts on work and brought the concept of K- Car, which introduced 2 Car models, Aries and Reliant. These models made history in sales and Chrysler came out of the situation of bailout to profit making company within 3 years and paid the entire outstanding loan to US congress.
This is an incredible story. A straight from the gut talking, aggressive sales and Marketing guy became an American legend. His growing influences in America made him a celebrity and people were insisting him to run for Presidency of United states.
I liked this book very much. Personally I took a lot of lessons. This book can prove to be the bible for those who are inclined towards management and wants to climb that ladder very fast.
Through this book, Lee openly criticised working style of Henry Ford II. He openly talked about stringent emission regulations in America, tax policy, Japanese Car challenges and even insisted about the mandatory use of safety belts as precautionary measure to reluctant US citizens. He also expressed his views on bringing back the American glory, importance of work life balance for individuals, etc.
One thing I didn’t liked as a reader is Lee’s open criticism towards Henry Ford II and he also revealed personal side of Henry. But, apart from this, the book is a true masterpiece. One thing is for sure, this book is going to be a part of favourites section of my bookshelf.
No comments:
Post a Comment