Please enlighten me, particularly concerning how these latest fads
have saved Ford.
-- You've left out a few, like Interaction Associates and employee involvement.... I don't know Ford very well, but I have talked to aa number of people there who (I think) would bristle at the idea that anything has "saved the company" (or that the company has been "saved".) So part of what you're reacting to is the structure of the consulting industry, where whenever a consultant uses an example, it's perceived as claiming that the whole company depends on that consultant..... \ Ford seems to be particularly prone to this, perhaps because of traditions dating back to World War II, when Henry Ford II really DID "save the company" (in a power struggle he won with Harry Bennett). But we hear this about many companies, and I always regard it as hyperbole. Just for the record, here's the claim we made about Ford and learning organizations in the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: "The American auto industry has come a long way since the late 1970s. This cameo shows how far there stillis to go, and what the terrain ahead looks like from the point of view of a particularly farsighted automobile development team." If you read "saving the company" into that, then I didn't do my job as editorial director correctly.