Iacocca by Iacocca Lee & Novak William

Author:Iacocca, Lee & Novak, William [Iacocca, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307788689
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-05-21T16:00:00+00:00

Hal Sperlich was already at Chrysler when I arrived, having come over when Henry fired him in 1977. Having Hal at Chrysler was like finding a tall, cold beer in the middle of a desert. Thank you Henry!

Whenever I added someone to the team, I felt a little guilty. In order to recruit these guys, I’d have to lie to myself. If I had really been honest, I would have told them the truth: “Stay away from this place—you can’t imagine how bad it is!” But I couldn’t do that. I had to tell them what I desperately hoped was true: that if we got the right group together, we could save the company.

With Sperlich, however, I didn’t have this problem. He was at Chrysler a couple of years before I arrived and he knew perfectly well how bad things were. More than once I said to him: “You son of a bitch, why did you let me take this job? Why didn’t you warn me?” He too had lied to himself in order to get me to Chrysler.

But I forgave Hal because his experience at Chrysler gave him a big advantage over my new recruits: he already knew the place. Hal was like my advance man. Riccardo could tell me about the balance sheets, but it was Sperlich who really knew the nuts and bolts of the operation.

As a result, he was able to unearth a lot of good people who had been passed over by the previous management. Many of them were down a few layers, so Hal had to do some serious digging. He discovered a number of bright young men who had been hidden under bushel baskets. They had the talent and the enthusiasm—they just needed to be discovered.

Fortunately, the cancer at Chrysler did not reach all the way down. Although I had to replace almost all the officers, there was plenty of dynamic young talent beneath them. As we started getting rid of the less competent people, it was a lot easier to find the good ones. To this day, I can’t believe that the former management didn’t notice them. I’m talking about people with fire in their eyes: you can practically tell they’re good just by looking at them.

I quickly elevated Sperlich to vice-president in charge of product planning. Before long, I promoted him to head of all North American operations. As I saw it, Hal had a hand in everything that had gone right at Ford during the 1960s and 1970s. More recently, the same has been true at Chrysler.

Hal’s a visionary, but a very pragmatic one. He understands how to ring the cash register and he doesn’t fool around with trivia. He tolerates a fair share of facts and study, but only up to a certain point. Then he says; “Okay, what are we trying to do here?” And he does it. He’s a guy who knows how to move.

Hal’s also got that uncanny ability to see into the future, to know what people will want three or four years down the road.

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