People are an organization’s greatest assest, says Ford Motor CFO

People
are an organization’s greatest asset, says Ford Motor
CFO
…………………………………………………………………

BY MARGOT DIMOND
Rice News Staff

“The principal
fundamental asset of an organization is its people,”
said Allan Gilmour, vice chairman and chief financial officer
of the Ford Motor Company. “It is people who run things
and make things run.”

Gilmour spoke
Jan. 22 as part of the Dean’s Lecture Series at the
Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management. His talk,
titled “Leaders and Followers,” explored the various
roles people play in making an organization work.

Gilmour has had
a 34-year career at Ford, serving in a variety of roles,
including president of the Ford Automotive Group; executive
vice president, International Automotive Operations; and
vice president, External and Personnel Affairs.

He also serves
on the boards of Prudential Financial, DTE Energy and Whirlpool
Corp. and is the principal owner of a Ford and Chrysler
dealership in Vermont.

To Gilmour, the
secret to success in business is sticking to fundamentals.
“The long-running successful organizations don’t
follow the paths of the moment or the latest trends,”
he said. “Their success is rooted in plain old solid
and sustained execution of the fundamentals of business.”

Gilmour emphasized
that he was not just talking about business organizations,
but all kinds of organizations, since the principles of
organization and management are universal and revolve around
utilizing the talents of many people to achieve a common
objective.

Execution, he
maintained, is harder than strategy. “A half-baked
strategy well-executed will be superior to that marvelous
strategy that isn’t executed very well.” That’s
why he is concerned with followers as well as leaders since
it is generally leaders who develop and followers who execute.
To illustrate
the importance of execution to the success of a venture,
he used the example of buying a car. When buying a car,
he said, “you want it completely executed. You
won’t want to hear about the brilliant engineering
innovation that doesn’t work. You won’t want to
hear about the excellent manufacturing breakthrough that
doesn’t work.”

Most people are
a combination of leader and follower, he said. Someone may
be a leader in one area, a follower in another, and of course
“every leader is a follower, because every leader has
a boss.”

Selling is important
to both leaders and followers, he said, using the example
of a research scientist with a new idea.

“He has
to sell that idea — has to explain it, describe it
to his or her superiors, colleagues and ultimately to the
public. He or she must be a leader in persuading others
to follow the idea and implement it.”

The success of
any enterprise depends equally on leaders and followers
— on development and execution, Gilmour said.

“Henry Ford
was a leader with his vision and ideas to make cars affordable
to the masses. He found the key to manufacturing. He knew
that building his business and his organization lay in ideas
and execution — in other words, leaders and followers.”

Gilmour, who
holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and
an MBA from the University of Michigan, is a strong believer
in the value of an MBA.

“It opens
up a great variety of opportunities — things to do
that probably most of you had never imagined — and
it changes your perspective on life,” he said.