Ford Motor Company Adopts The Trump Distributed Accountability Model™
Photo by Dylan Mullins on Unsplash
In a Bold Move, Ford Motor Company has adopted the newly trademarked Trump Distributed Accountability Model™ in an attempt to improve the performance of its global operations. In a video press conference Ford CEO Jim Hackett announced the change saying, “If it’s good enough for the country, it's good enough for Ford Motor Company.
Details of the change were outlined in a press package following the announcement. Ford has pushed all corporate functions other than Public Relations to its 35 individual factory managers. Centralized planning, procurement, finance, and marketing have been mothballed with the expectation that individual plant managers are closer to the action and are better equipped to make decisions and perform the broad set of activities that traditional auto manufacturers have historically centralized. “We are proud to be the first major company to apply the solid reasoning and winning approach the U.S. government has taken to manage the COVID-19 crisis to our own operations,” stated Hackett.
In a Bold Move reached out to Debbie Manzano, General Manager of Ford’s Dearborn Truck Plant to ask how the transition was going, “ It has been a nightmare. I am in bidding wars against other Ford plants for basic commodities like spark plugs, tires and steel. Each of us are having to hire our own scientists to try to guess when it's safe to open our plants. We are the flagship auto plant in the country and are optimized to build the F-150, the number one selling vehicle in the country, but we simply do not have the capabilities to deliver on all of these functions that have been pushed down to us. Investor relations is a corporate function-- this is crazy. R&D has been pushed down to us too. How am I suddenly supposed to have the expertise to design our next model year truck and all of its subcomponents?”
In A Bold Move reached out to other plant managers and the stories were similar. In an odd twist, most felt that the Dearborn Truck Plant was the 800 pound gorilla in the marketplace and was receiving a disproportionate amount of the shared sub-components required to build vehicles. “They have more tires than they need while we are having to place cars on cinder blocks when they leave the end of the assembly line,” stated one manager.
Some plants are trying to build sub-components themselves with limited success. “How to make a spark plug out of materials that you can find at a hardware store may make for an interesting YouTube video, but trying to do that at scale is impossible,” stated Winn Guffey, a manufacturing engineer at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant. “I’m not sure they are even safe, but it is all we have so we will make do. We once were the greatest auto manufacturer in the world and now we look like a hillbilly goat rodeo.”
When asked about how things are going, CEO Hackett responded, “I think it has been perfect. Some are saying that other companies are producing more vehicles than we are, but I don't believe their data. I have a hunch, and my hunches are generally correct, and my hunch is that our new model is working. The car plants are doing great but I really wonder about the leaders of the truck plants. I’ve been sending e-mails to their employees that they need to open faster and not listen to their leaders.” When questioned about reported cases of armed employees trying to take over plants driven by his tacit encouragement, Hackett shot back, “These are good employees and they have the right to demand different decisions from their leaders. I don’t care what you hear from that loser Debbie Manzano in Michigan-- she’s a nasty woman. Whether this is a success or failure is dependent on the plant managers. If we are having problems, and maybe we are having a few, I also blame them on the previous CEO who left me with a total mess. As they say, “the monkey’s butt was red when I got there.” All I know is that I would give myself an A+ on the job that I have done.”
Fact Checker: This is completely unbelievable. No real business person is this stupid. Our sincere apologies to Mr. Hackett, Ms. Manzano and the Ford Motor Company. We also apologize for using the phrase “nasty woman” which would justifiably get anyone fired in any company across the country. We also apologize to monkeys, baboons and apes whose butts are naturally red which is not a bad thing.