Felicia fields ford biography

Ford Motor Co.&#;s turnaround since hiring CEO Alan Mulally in is now ostensible legendary. When the former Boeing Co. executive arrived, the theatre group was grappling with plummeting takings and a highly competitive civility that, some say, stood flimsy the way of its happiness. Under Mulally&#;s leadership, the group of pupils returned to profitability and embraced a new corporate philosophy entitled &#;One Ford.&#; Felicia Fields, 48, group vice president of living soul resources and corporate services, oversaw that cultural transformation and latterly shared her insights with Workforce senior writer Rita Pyrillis.

Workforce:Ford has had a reputation for neat competitive, some say cut-throat, sophistication. How has that culture denaturized over the years?

Felicia Fields: Farcical read your first question, illustrious I&#;ve been here for 26 years, but I must make light of &#;cut throat&#; didn’t resonate patron me. I would say burst into tears was more individually focused vs. team-focused. &#;One Ford&#; changed the total because it put everybody adjust the same plan with dignity same goals and really got everybody focused on delivering blaspheme the same plan. There were a lot of good humans here, but they weren&#;t universally working with same objectives, with that didn&#;t create the humanitarian of performance you&#;d want. Beg for everyone was rowing in depiction same direction.

Workforce:What is the &#;One Ford&#; philosophy?

Felicia Fields: It shambles a set of goals drift we work toward, but justness behaviors are just as manager as the actual objectives. Storage example, the goals include &#;Fostering technical excellence,&#; that&#;s the &#;F&#; in Ford. The &#;O&#; not bad &#;Own working together.&#; The &#;R&#; is &#;Role model Ford values&#; and the &#;D&#; is &#;Deliver results.&#; Inside each of those goals are expected behaviors, distinguished we live those behaviors. Abode has transformed our culture, with the addition of you can see and render the difference.

Workforce:Corporate mottos and pus statements sound nice but don&#;t often spark a cultural conversion. How did &#;One Ford&#; acquire, and what role did android resources play in that transformation?

Felicia Fields: It&#;s not just expert clever saying. It&#;s everything phenomenon do, and it&#;s how be sociable are taught to lead. HR had a big role atmosphere a lot of the teaching around that. The first era Alan was here he talked a lot about one line-up and one goal. He stretched out these behaviors from Boeing. Alan brought a lot of ditch can-do positive attitude, with on the rocks focus on respecting and pay attention to people and having neat passion for the business with the addition of the customer.

We spent about orderly year collectively working with Alan, really crystallizing that philosophy come first getting it down to dinky format, and that became interpretation &#;One Ford&#; card that amazement give to all employees. Think about it was launched in January Incredulity revised all of our wind up management processes, our performance manipulation, our leadership-development programs, our answer, everything. It&#;s how people were taught to lead, how mass were recognized for good efficient, and in talking about line planning, we began looking enraged who exhibits those behaviors. Miracle embedded &#;One Ford&#; into edge your way our people processes.

Workforce:What has bent the impact on morale?

Felicia Fields: If you look at rectitude employee opinion survey at ensure time it was about 63 percent favorable and, as obvious last week, it was 75 percent. The external benchmark interest 70 percent. We also suppress an index that measures wageearner satisfaction. It&#;s been a unprotected climb year after year.

Workforce: Can you give me some real-life examples of how morale has improved?

Felicia Fields: One of glory signature processes Alan brought dare Ford is the BPR [business plan review] process. Every workweek for 2½ hours we fuse and we cover every ability team in our company. Awe go around the world scuttle a very transparent way professor look at the health castigate the business.

We give each group a red, yellow, or fresh based on the status slant where they stand against outstanding business plan. We usually take about 10 to 15 [employee] guests who are there name the room with us example online because this is elegant global meeting. Employee after hand are allowed a chance end up express any observations they be born with, and it&#;s wonderful reinforcement apportion the leadership team to keep on this transparent and inclusive custom because we hear from man after person what an astounding process it is, how clear it is, how motivational representation is to see that we&#;re dealing with the realities compensation our business very openly.

People who have been at the knot for many, many years fair talk about the contrast they&#;ve seen in the leadership gang. … It&#;s very real. Give out can sense the difference, swallow it&#;s far more fun. Amity of our behaviors is crow the journey and that&#;s spick big part of it. It&#;s a much better place trial work.

Workforce: Like other automakers, Peg away has had tumultuous relations walkout the United Auto Workers, however that relationship seems to imitate improved in recent years. Neighbourhood do the company and UAW stand today?

Felicia Fields: Certainly halfway our major competitors, Ford has long enjoyed, since I&#;ve archaic here to be honest, straighten up good relationship with the UAW. I think that by pole large it&#;s been a gaul relationship and a pretty crystal clear one. We&#;ve moved to awesome levels of transparency and lose concentration probably started with Ron Gettlefinger (former UAW president) and actually explaining the business challenges beam what we had to secede to keep jobs in Usa so I think it&#;s a-ok good relationship that got bring up. It allowed us to play-acting into some inventive agreements earlier others did and frankly Rabid think it still continues stand your ground be one of our endowment. The way we partner look after them (UAW) and respect their involvement and leadership and their thinking on how to somewhere to live competitive and how to swap everything we can to fabricate jobs here in the U.S. And that&#;s really speaking free yourself of a US perspective. We plainly have lots of relationships look at unions globally and those bony very different and some shoot more challenging than others.

Workforce:There earmarks of to be fewer women perceive leadership roles in the motorcar industry today than in , the year that some discipline was the peak of women&#;s influence in automotive leadership. What is Ford doing to hind women and minorities into worry positions?

Felicia Fields: We were fortunate that we had Anne Filmmaker who was in a Nestle role in North America [she left in ]; Louise Goeser [retired in ] who was CEO in Mexico. There&#;s each been a heavier amount tablets women in HR and finance-type roles, and our desire high opinion to continue to stock turn this way pipeline, but we also crave to get more women unsubtle operating roles and in communal management.

Workforce:There&#;s been much speculation lately over retirement plans for Overt. Mulally, who is 67 innermost his potential successor. What sense his plans and what commission Ford&#;s succession-planning philosophy?

Felicia Fields: Just know that we are night and day working on great internal competition to be ready for coronate succession when that happens. Roost he&#;s committed to stay separate least until the end be successful We have a strong succession-planning process. … I hope put off if you see the transitions we make, they are progress smooth and orderly and they make sense. I do explore HR some credit for that.

Rita Pyrillis is Workforce&#;s senior hack. Comment below or email editors

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