Who is Iacocca?

Lee? Iacocca, 1924 10 was born in Eldon, Pennsylvania, USA. His father is an Italian immigrant. Influenced by his father in his early years, Iacocca believed that the road to success through adventure was business. He studies engineering in college. When he first joined Ford, he was assigned as a trainee engineer, but he was eager to promote sales and liked to deal with people. He believes that the seller has always been the key and vital part of the automobile industry and the essence of the enterprise.

1953, Iacocca was promoted to assistant sales manager in Philadelphia. This year, he boldly put forward the sales plan of "56 dollars for a new car in 56 years", that is, customers can pay 80% of the money first, then pay 56 dollars a month, and pay it off in three years. This sales method is acceptable to almost everyone, thus effectively stimulating market demand. In less than three months, Philadelphia's sales jumped from the lowest in the country to the first. Later, this plan became an important part of Ford's national sales strategy. As a reward, Iacocca was promoted to sales manager in Washington area. From 65438 to 0960, Iacocca, a promising young man, became the manager of the automobile department of Ford Motor Company. Then, he began to produce and sell "Mustang" cars with good style, strong sex and low price. As a result, the battle was completely won. 1970, Iacocca was promoted to President of Ford. During his eight years as president, he earned a net profit of $3.5 billion for Ford, leaving the most brilliant performance in the company's history. But success begets jealousy. 1In July, 978, Ford II dismissed the post of president of Esca, and promised to exchange the annual salary of $360,000 for a pension of $6,543,800+on the condition that he would not be employed by other companies.

Iacocca was not tempted by $6.5438+0 million, and even less willing to give in to fate. Many companies, such as International Paper Company, invited him, but he declined. New york University Business School and other three or four schools hired him as the dean, but he declined. When the chairman of Chrysler Automobile Company, who was in deep crisis and on the verge of bankruptcy, came to hire him, he readily accepted and took office immediately. Because in his view, this is an opportunity to challenge Ford. Moreover, after he took office, he claimed that his annual salary was one dollar, and the company came back to life.

From then on, Iacocca began the arduous journey of "the road to the top", and thus showed his extraordinary strategy of reversing Gan Kun.

Investigate and prescribe the right medicine

Iacocca was ordered to be in danger. Chrysler was in a desperate situation because of poor management, and it ran out of cash and suffered huge losses. Iacocca carried out thrilling and arduous rescue work with great wisdom and courage. His first step in cleaning up this stall is to choose a suitable breakthrough. After investigation, we soon discovered five fatal weaknesses of the company:

First, discipline is lax. On his first day in office, he encountered two annoying things: first, he found that the office of former President Cafero had become an aisle for people to come and go. The staff walked through the hall without even saying hello, without any rules. Second, he saw the former president's female secretary talking on the phone during office hours. This will cost you your job at Ford, but you have no scruples here. Looking down, grass-roots organizations are like scattered sand, and the rural nature is incredibly low.

The second is management confusion. The company does not have a veritable management system and effective rules and regulations. There is no contact between the design department and the manufacturing department, and there is no contact between the manufacturing department and the sales department. Financial management is a mess. Third, people are overstaffed. The company actually has 35 vice presidents. Iacocca described it this way: "Every mountain has a sovereign, and every mountain occupies its own land." Do things with each other, kick the ball. The fourth is the backlog of inventory. The company did not organize production according to the dealer's order, and as a result, the inventory was full, with more than 80,000 vehicles in stock. People call this kind of inventory "sales bank". In order to find a market for cars, the company holds a sales once a month. The result is that dealers rely on price reduction, do not buy it, and wait for price reduction, resulting in a vicious circle. Fifth, there is a shortage of funds. This problem is the focus of all problems. 1978, Chrysler lost $204 million. At the beginning of 1979, the loss was as high as 1 1000 billion USD, and the accumulated liabilities reached 4.8 billion USD.

Better army and simpler management, using capable people.

Iacocca mercilessly cut down the "three axes" in streamlining the army and simplifying administration.

The first axe, first cut the top leaders of the company. For those mediocre people who are in high positions and have made no achievements, all of them are removed. 33 of the company's 35 vice presidents have been dismissed, and 24 of the 28 senior department managers have been dismissed.

The second axe is to streamline the organization and reduce the scale of enterprises. He boldly adopted several measures of "closing, stopping, merging, transferring and selling". Of the 52 manufacturers, 16 closed for sale, and 4 merged for production, resulting in a corresponding reduction in output, vehicle types and sales volume, and a "downsizing" of the enterprise 1/3.

The third axe is layoffs. He has fired more than 90,000 people, with a layoff rate of over 50%, and the number of brokers has been reduced from 5,800 to 3,700.

Iacocca is also unique in appointing talents. The first criterion for choosing him is "like-minded". Require subordinates to be familiar with his leadership style and thoroughly implement his management methods. Due to Chrysler's lack of talents, Iacocca had to advise among his old friends. Even "Digging" and "Pulling" have received several right-hand men from Ford.

The first person he "dug up" was Gerald, general manager of Ford Venezuela subsidiary? Greenwald. Iacocca especially appreciated his quick mind and down-to-earth spirit, and went to Venezuela to do work in person. After several secret talks, greenwald felt the kindness of his "old boss" and decided to change his family. Become Chrysler's second in command. The second person he invited was Paul, a 65-year-old former vice president of Ford, who has retired. Bergmoser. This man has worked in the position of vice president of Ford for 30 years, which is both diligent and resourceful. Iacocca intends to rely on his rich experience and urge him to take the lead. However, Iacocca repeatedly recommended that he finally took over the responsibility of the general manager of the company. The third is Steve recommended by greenwald? Miller. Miller used to be greenwald's right-hand man in charge of finance. Iacocca regarded him as a "good financial manager" and promoted him to be the company's deputy general manager in charge of financial business. The fourth is Hal who has worked under Iacocca for 24 years. Sparic. This person is ugly, but he has a high level of strategy and strong predictive ability. He can predict what kind of cars the market needs most in three or four years, and he is in charge of the company's production plan. In addition, he also hired Mr. Jia, a public relations officer of Ford Company. Loucks came to the company to be responsible for sales and hired Hans, the retired chief engineer of Ford. Matthias was in charge of the machinery manufacturing of the whole company, and promoted George, the former headquarters of Ford, who could find fault in an egg. Bartz is in charge of product quality. In a word, a strong leadership system headed by Iacocca should be established under the guidance of the capable and the mediocre.

Open source and reduce expenditure to tide over the difficulties.

First, strive for government loans. As a loss-making enterprise, how difficult it is to borrow money, Iacocca gave up his own capital. At the last stop, he used huge sums of money to lobby key figures inside and outside Congress and use key government departments. He finally got a loan guarantee of $654.38+50 million. Later, he moved around the state government and the people, raised considerable funds and eased the financial situation.

The second is to lay off employees and reduce wages and reduce labor expenses. Wage expenditure decreased from 2 1 100 million dollars to 654,380+0.5 billion dollars; The salary of senior employees above 65,438+0,700 will be reduced by 65,438+00%, and that of junior employees will be reduced by 2%-5%. At the same time, it is announced that the reduced salary will be reissued after the company makes a profit. The shareholders of the company are in awe of this. After long-term consideration, they agreed with the company's opinion on temporarily freezing dividends, saying that it is difficult for them to share the same responsibility with the company.

Third, vigorously improve inventory management and reduce inventory costs. Iacocca boldly introduced the management mode of "timely purchase, timely use and rapid circulation" of Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan, and paid attention to the relatively centralized layout and nearby use of factories and warehouses while reducing the scale of the enterprise; Changing time-consuming, high-priced and large-scale train transportation into cheap and time-saving and small-scale car transportation will save $450 million in inventory costs every year. At the same time, let the design and manufacturing departments make great efforts to study different models and use the same parts, which reduces the number of spare parts produced by the company from more than 70 thousand to more than 4,000, which brings great convenience to procurement and inventory, saving 300 million US dollars every year. The annual inventory value of the company decreased from 2 1 100 million USD to 654,380+0.2 billion USD.

Fourth, comprehensively reform procurement, budget and production, and strive to reduce the cost rate. First, improve procurement methods. It turns out that the company's raw material production, supply and sales have been circulating internally. Later, the company decided that as long as the cost of self-produced parts is not as good as that of procurement, it will no longer "pump fat and release water" and boldly purchase from outside. The second is to improve the factory budget system. In the past, the internal budget was completely based on the cost of its own products, lacking horizontal comparison, which was not conducive to reducing costs. Later, the company stipulated that the cost of finished products of similar products must be compared with the outside world before making a budget, so that the factory can consciously keep up with the low cost of the same industry. Third, change the imported projects into their own production.