Alan Mulally's Report Card

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But Mulally has busted through the Ford culture and structure of regional fiefdoms that created waste and duplication throughout its global enterprise, and bedeviled his predecessors.

Marketing: B

Mulally rightly says that marketing has to be a major priority as he puts almost all the company's resources behind the Ford brand. The decision to rename the Five Hundred/Freestyle the Taurus and Taurus X for the 2008 model year was correct. His criticism of the company launch advertising of the Edge SUV was correct. He says he is searching for a global chief marketing officer to organize the company around one global brand message. But where is he or she? The search began eight months ago.

Mulally says he'd like to see "Have You Driven A Ford Lately?" come back and replace "Bold Moves." You can't turn back the clock and hope that nostalgia solves your problems. It's true that "Bold Moves" was a weak idea around which to rebuild the brand's credibility. Bringing back an old line that is identified with a time when Ford's quality was drooping isn't the right move either. Mulally is saying all the right things when it comes to the importance of marketing, but we need to see some sharper and clearer marketing direction and decisions.

Personnel: B-

Mulally hasn't brought in a single top-level talent. He has been combing through the team he inherited. And, he says, he doesn't plan to hire, for example, a chief operating officer. He likes to be hands-on. That's commendable, and probably the right move. Managers including Mark Fields (president of the Americas) and Lewis Booth (chairman of Ford Europe) seem to be dancing a new, more disciplined step under Mulally, compared with the chaos and changing plans that characterized Ford before he arrived. They certainly give the impression of buying into his program top to bottom. But it would be nice to see some top-flight new talent come in to help widen and deepen Mulally's change-agent style.

Culture Change: B+

Before Mulally arrived, many employees and managers in the company had come to view working on the Ford brand as the minor leagues. The prestige was in the truck business and the Premier Auto Group. Mulally, via a series of informal employee gatherings, has delivered the message that the Ford brand rules. He has a style that empowers employees and tends to get them to line up behind him. But there is a lot of cynicism that he must overcome. Employee morale tracking shows a slight improvement from when Mulally arrived. By his own admission, morale is not where it needs to be. Regular profits undoubtedly will help. But that's still two years away if his plan succeeds.

The Vision Thing: A

One thing that separates good CEOs from poor ones is the ability to see the field in front of them and make decisions that affect both the short- and long-term prosperity of the company. Another separator is whether employees respect, rather than simply fear, their chief executive. Mulally seems to be earning respect week to week with the rank and file because of his obvious grasp of how a global manufacturing enterprise is supposed to operate. Many of the moves he has been making are those that smart middle managers would have made had they been empowered.

Despite a huge pay package, the former head of Boeing's commercial aviation unit is earthy, and he works hard, perhaps to show that he is still a kid from Kansas who hoped to one day be an astronaut. It can seem as corny as a Kansas farm field in August at times. But the word around the water coolers at Ford these days is that Mulally is the real deal. That should carry him a long way if he keeps his plan focused. And it will make the inevitable bumps in the road from here to profitability feel a bit smoother for the whole company.

Overall Grade: A-

David Kiley is a senior correspondent in BusinessWeek's Detroit bureau.