1. Talk to subordinates
He believes that management means mobilizing others to work. If a business is running well, it means that the people there start well, and the only way to start people is to talk to them. A speech is the best way to mobilize a large group of people.
2. Implement a quarterly inspection system
Every three months, he sits down with his subordinates, checks past achievements and gaps, and plans work goals for the next quarter. Iacocca believes that the quarterly inspection system has five benefits: keep setting your own goals; make people more fruitful and give full play to their enthusiasm; force employees to constantly check what they have done, what to do next, and use more brains; do not bury talents , Good staff are not neglected, and bad staff can’t mess around; forcing the dialogue between staff and their superiors to encourage them to communicate thoughts and harmony, enhance understanding and improve relationships.
3, inspire and maintain the enterprising spirit of subordinates
When promoting a staff member, it is time to add tasks to him. When he succeeds, he must be more demanding; and when he is unsure, don't be too strict, otherwise his enterprising spirit will be destroyed.
4. Reasonable division of labor, less change
You cannot change the jobs of employees casually, because skills are not interchangeable. A person having expertise in one field does not mean that he has experience and expertise in another field.
5. Fully delegate power
As a leader, he can’t do the work of everyone, so he can only encourage the people at the next level to do it. The next level encourages his subordinates to do it, and never offside to do what should be done by the subordinates.
Lee Iacocca: "I have been working hard to discover those who can act as top managers. They are people who are eager to work and work hard. These people always want to do more than others expect him, and they always Help others do their jobs well."
Lee Iacocca was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA in October 1924. His father was an Italian immigrant. Influenced by his father in his early years, he believed that the road to success through risk is to do business. He studied engineering at university. When he first joined Ford, he was assigned as a trainee engineer, but he was eager to promote sales and liked to interact with people. He believes that distributors have always been the key and vital part of the auto industry and the essence of the enterprise.
In 1953, Iacocca was promoted to the deputy sales manager of the Philadelphia area. This year, he boldly proposed a sales plan of "pay 56 US dollars for new cars in 56 years", that is, when customers buy new Ford cars in 1956, they can pay 20% first, and then pay 56 US dollars a month, paying off in 3 years. This sales method is acceptable to almost everyone, thus stimulating market demand. In less than three months, sales in the Philadelphia area jumped from the bottom of the country to the top. Later, this plan became an important part of Ford's national sales strategy. As a reward, Iacocca was promoted to sales manager in the Washington area. In 1960, the young and promising Iacocca became the manager of Ford Motor Company's car department. Then, he started the production and sales of the "Mustang" sedan with good style, high performance and low price. The result was a complete victory in this battle. In 1970, Iacocca was promoted to President of Ford. In his eight years as president, he has earned a net profit of 3.5 billion US dollars for Ford, leaving the most brilliant performance in the company's history. But success incurs jealousy. In July 1978, Ford II dismissed the president of Iacocca, and at the same time promised to convert the annual salary of 360,000 U.S. dollars into a pension of 1 million U.S. dollars, on the condition that they should not be employed by other companies.
Iacocca is not tempted by the $1 million, let alone succumbing to fate. Many companies including the International Paper Company invited him, but he declined; three or four schools, including the New York University School of Business, hired him as the dean, but he also declined. But when the chairman of Chrysler Automobiles, who was in crisis and on the verge of bankruptcy, came to hire him, he readily accepted and took the post immediately. Because in his view this is an opportunity to challenge Ford. Moreover, he declared after taking office: Before the company came back to life, his annual salary was one dollar.
From then on, Iacocca embarked on the difficult trek of "the road to the top" and thus demonstrated his extraordinary strategy to turn things around.
Iacocca was ordered in times of crisis. Chrysler was in desperate situation due to poor management, dried up cash and suffered huge losses. Iacocca was wise and brave and carried out a thrilling and arduous rescue work. His first step to clean up the stall is to choose the right breakthrough. After investigation, the company's five Achilles heels were quickly found out:
One is slack discipline. On his first day in office, he encountered two irritating things: First, he discovered that the office of the former president Cafello had become an aisle for people to come and go. The staff walked through the hall without even saying hello, without any rules. The second is that he saw the former secretary of the president make casual calls during working hours. This is a job loss for Ford, but there is no scruples here. Looking further down, the grassroots organizations are like a disc of loose sand, and their rusticity is incredibly low.
The second is management confusion. The company does not have a veritable management system and no effective rules and regulations. The design department has no contact with the manufacturing department, and the manufacturing department has no contact with the sales department. Financial management was confused.
Three people are superfluous. There are 35 vice presidents of the company. Iacocca described it as: "Every hill has a prince, and his own land is the king." He started to wrestle with each other and kick the ball.
Fourth is inventory backlog. The company does not organize production according to the orders of the dealers, and the result is that the inventory is full, with more than 80,000 vehicles in stock. People call this kind of inventory "sales bank". In order to find a market for the car, the company held a monthly discount sale. As a result, dealers are reliant on price reductions. They should not buy and wait for price reductions, resulting in a vicious circle.
Fifth, there is a shortage of funds. This issue is the focus of all problems. In 1978, Chrysler lost 204 million U.S. dollars. At the beginning of 1979, it lost 1.1 billion U.S. dollars and owed various debts of 4.8 billion U.S. dollars.
Iacocca relentlessly slashed the "three-axes" in the aspect of reducing soldiers and simplifying administration. First axe, cut down the company's senior leaders first. For those mediocre people who were in high positions and had no achievements, all were removed. The 35 vice presidents of the company were fired 33, and 28 managers of high-level departments removed 24. The second axe is to streamline the organization and reduce the scale of the enterprise. He boldly adopted several measures of "closing, stopping, merging, transferring, and selling". Among 52 production plants, 16 were closed, sold, and 4 were merged and converted. The output, models, and sales were reduced accordingly, and the scale of the company was "slim". 1/3. The third axe is to cut employees. He fired more than 90,000 people, the layoff rate exceeded 50%, and the number of brokers decreased from 5,800 to 3,700.
Iacocca’s appointment of capable people is also unique. His primary criterion for selecting people is "like-minded." It is required that subordinates must be familiar with his leadership style and be able to implement his management methods thoroughly. Due to the lack of capable people at Chrysler, Iacocca had to decide among his familiar old buddies. Even the "dig" belt pull has collected several capable personnel from Ford.
The first person to be "poached" by him was Gerald Greenwald, general manager of Ford's Venezuelan subsidiary. Iacocca especially admired his acumen and hard work, and went to Venezuela to do his work in person. After several secret talks, Greenwald felt the kindness of the "old boss" and resolutely changed the door. Become Chrysler's second in command.
The second person he invited was Paul Bergmoser, who had resigned and retired and was 65 years old and former vice president of Ford. This person has worked in the position of vice president of Ford for 30 years, working hard and resourceful. Iacocca intends to take advantage of his rich experience and urge him to take the lead. Unable to withstand the repeated recommendations of Iacocca, he finally took over the role of general manager of the company.
The third one is Steve Miller recommended by Greenwald. Miller used to be Greenwald's right-hand man in charge of finance, and Iacocca regarded him as "a good hand in financial management" and promoted him to the company's deputy general manager in charge of financial business.
The fourth is Hal Spalic, who has been under Iacocca for 24 years. This person is not good looking, but has a high level of strategy and strong predictive ability. He can predict what kind of car will be most needed on the market in three or four years, and he will be in charge of the company's production plan.
In addition, he hired Ford’s public relations Mr. Ja Laokes to be in charge of sales, and hired the former Ford’s chief engineer. The retired Hans Matthias was responsible for the entire company’s machinery manufacturing. George Bartz, the former Ford company, is responsible for product quality.
In short, the capable ones step forward and the mediocre ones step aside to establish a powerful leadership system headed by Iacocca.
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