In the book Shift, in Ghosns early years his foundation came from his upbringing from his father who worked for an airline and had a job involving lots of travel, something that became very familiar to Ghosn. Ghosn learned to speak several languages, attended schools run by the Jesuit Catholic order, and moved to engineering school in Paris, France. He moved a lot as a young child and adult, which helped him adapt to different cultures. Ghosns was destined for a CEO position. He career started, as a management trainee with Michelin. Soon he was managing a Michelin plant in France. He was promoted rapidly through the Michelin organization, rising to become head of research for the development of industrial tires. Then he was asked by Michelin to return to his Brazil as chief operating officer. In Brazil he turned operations around by forming work groups and having different cross functional teams work together (instead of silos) and learn best practices from each team. He was able to turn South America operations into profit within two years. He went on the become CEO of Michelin North America where he doubled the size on his division with a merger with Uniroyal Goodrich. He also dealt with car manufactures and unions and understood negotiating with vendors. Michelin is a family run business and for Ghosn he knew and was told the successor of the company would be family. Franois Michelin had named his son Edouard the next leader of Michelin. What do you believe were major events in your life that might have prepared you for your next major role (other than attending the XMBA program) My life events have prepared me for my next role. Im the youngest of six children where we were always competing with each other within sports and academics. I grew up in a blue collar family. My Mom stayed home while my Dad worked in construction. I saw the value of loyalty and hard work. We all went to catholic grade schools and high schools. I work hard for what I have and want to give my kids all that I had growing-up and more. My father passed away two years after retiring from construction. He worked so hard but never got to enjoy the fruits of his labor. My career has taken me through many different roles within several different Consumer Package Goods companies (CPG). I have worked in sales, customer service, sales analyst, category management, consumer marketing, and now as a strategy manager. I value hard work, loyalty, I am results oriented, and family values this is how I would build my team. What was the approach he took to gain a solid understanding of the major strategic issues within Nissan In order for Ghosn to start work on the Nissan Revival Plan (NRP) he met with people, inspected factories, and visited with suppliers in Japan, Mexico, the United States, Europe, and other countries of Southeast Asia. He asked people what they thought was going right, what they thought was going wrong and what they would suggest to make things better. During this period was all about listening. He took notes and made assessments of various situations and made up summaries of what he learned. He engaged everyone from suppliers, unions, and to the people at the lower reaches. Suppliers told Ghosn about the fragmentation of the supply system, didnt know Nissans vision, and understand their strategy or priorities. He had the gain the trust from the unions. He didnt hide his agenda and spoke frank about the plan to turn Nissan around. How would his approach differ from how you would approach a similar situation What would you have done differently Im not sure I would have done things much different from Ghosn. During our re-org in my department I had only been at the company for six months. I have worked with many CPG companies and Constellation was different of all of the companies I worked for Constellation was the only company that had Category Management report into sales. This was a conflict of interest
