John Chambers makes a lot of excellent points in his HBR article "Cisco's CEO on Staying Ahead of Technology Shifts." He emphasizes how companies have to be willing to take bets on investing in new technology when the industry shifts, otherwise, they will be left behind. I think this is especially relevant to the auto industry, and I can draw upon my internship experience at Ford Motor Company to compare. In his article Chambers discusses a lot about when to make a strategic transition within a company. He says "by the time it's obvious you need to change, it's usually too late. Very often you have to be willing to make a big move even before most of your advisers are on board." I see this happening at Ford. By the time Ford recognized that they needed to put an emphasis on driver experience and design (they are currently trying to make this org shift now), other companies were way ahead. They did not anticipate early enough the amount of effort it would take to build up the technological infrastructure to actually support this new thinking.
Currently, Ford has many different design units that do a lot of mockups and hypothetical scenario like thinking. For example, creating what a future "smart city" would look like, or designing the interface of a potential Ford ride share. They also have many different teams competing against each other to design one idea. Unfortunately, none of these ideas are ever integrated into the final engineering product because there is no organization (such as a product manager) that serves as an effective link between design and engineering. Additionally, executives in the company are hesitant and push back a lot when it comes to spending money on improving the design or user experience of their cars. They revert back to their traditional and historic practices and refuse to recognize that their customer base and priorities of their customers are shifting.
I believe Ford needs a visionary and bold leader like John Chambers in order to pivot successfully. The organization is struggling to pull itself out of its old practices and into the modern era. They are aware of the smart mobility push and want to address future mobility challenges. They have also made strategic investments such as Argo, however, their core org is not well structured to actually engineer and implement the initiatives they have invested in. The hierarchical and top heavy flow of information disempowers designers and engineers without management or in low level management positions from influencing product at scale. Ford's disparate product offerings (Trucks vs sedans) also create manufacturing constraints that compromise one design's priorities over the other. We can find evidence of this in Ford's recent shipment of Fiesta vehicles where the car automatically shifts into neutral on the highway. The design signals of the car are not clear and often leave the driver confused and in a state of panic. Even though Ford says they are shifting their methodology to put more of a focus on the user and her experience in the car, releases like this prove otherwise and support the previous points made about the difference between recognition of a problem and then actually having the power and the vision to address it within the organization.
Citations:
https://hbr.org/2015/05/ciscos-ceo-on-staying-ahead-of-technology-shifts
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2019/05/02/ford-sharpens-focus-on-customer-experience.html
(shows that Ford is aware of the issue)
Ford does not put an emphasis on design and sells cars that have flaws: https://www.freep.com/in-depth/money/cars/ford/2019/07/11/ford-focus-fiesta-transmission-defect/1671198001/
Currently, Ford has many different design units that do a lot of mockups and hypothetical scenario like thinking. For example, creating what a future "smart city" would look like, or designing the interface of a potential Ford ride share. They also have many different teams competing against each other to design one idea. Unfortunately, none of these ideas are ever integrated into the final engineering product because there is no organization (such as a product manager) that serves as an effective link between design and engineering. Additionally, executives in the company are hesitant and push back a lot when it comes to spending money on improving the design or user experience of their cars. They revert back to their traditional and historic practices and refuse to recognize that their customer base and priorities of their customers are shifting.
I believe Ford needs a visionary and bold leader like John Chambers in order to pivot successfully. The organization is struggling to pull itself out of its old practices and into the modern era. They are aware of the smart mobility push and want to address future mobility challenges. They have also made strategic investments such as Argo, however, their core org is not well structured to actually engineer and implement the initiatives they have invested in. The hierarchical and top heavy flow of information disempowers designers and engineers without management or in low level management positions from influencing product at scale. Ford's disparate product offerings (Trucks vs sedans) also create manufacturing constraints that compromise one design's priorities over the other. We can find evidence of this in Ford's recent shipment of Fiesta vehicles where the car automatically shifts into neutral on the highway. The design signals of the car are not clear and often leave the driver confused and in a state of panic. Even though Ford says they are shifting their methodology to put more of a focus on the user and her experience in the car, releases like this prove otherwise and support the previous points made about the difference between recognition of a problem and then actually having the power and the vision to address it within the organization.
Citations:
https://hbr.org/2015/05/ciscos-ceo-on-staying-ahead-of-technology-shifts
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2019/05/02/ford-sharpens-focus-on-customer-experience.html
(shows that Ford is aware of the issue)
Ford does not put an emphasis on design and sells cars that have flaws: https://www.freep.com/in-depth/money/cars/ford/2019/07/11/ford-focus-fiesta-transmission-defect/1671198001/
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