Hackett just sent an email letting us know that GDIA founder Paul Ballew is electing to retire and asked us to wish him well. Rumor has it that GDIA will be slimmed down considerably. Nice that top management is allowed to retire, we're supposed to say bye and thanks. But the manager in my area was let go 2 weeks ago and they still won't officially announce it. They told another department that our manager was let go, and we heard through rumors. Seriously ridiculous.
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Thanks @dEptg+YhXxvrt I had wondered how the Loblaws posting was going for Paul.
It seems that a lot of the “salesmen” have a series of 2 year stints following the same pattern.
Paul came to Canada and literally did the exact same thing at Loblaws (Canadian grocer). Hired a ton of people, lots of fancy strategy decks, but ultimately ideas were not adopted by those running business day to day. Gone after 2 years and now the org he built is being unwound...
A number of are wondering that. We are taking bets on how long it will before her coffee boy CIO will knife her and advance. Sitting with a bucket of popcorn and not really enjoying the Ford show.
I am just surprised that Marcey is still leading mobility
Well said -2ddl
I feel the same way. It seems like GDIA would really benefit the company by asking business areas like powertrains what problem can we help you solve. Then collect the data needed to solve the problem, and solve it.
I felt that we, GDIA, were always making up work and having solutions to problems we do not be having. Many, many peoples just moving data from point A to point B and then once we having data at point B no one ever looks at it. No one questions why we be doing this. It pays well no doubt on that.
What always gets glossed over and what Hackett doesn't seem to understand is that Ford is still fundamentally a vehicle manufacturing company. Shiny buzzwords like "data analytics" and "mobility" get the attention, but it is vehicle sales that are the revenue generators. And quality vehicles require quality engineering. Hackett does not understand the fundamentals of what goes into engineering a car. He may understand what goes into the exterior or interior engineering of a car. He understands what the customer sees. But he doesn't understand what goes into engineering a powertrain or any of the non-s-xy components that are underneath the sheet metal. He doesn't understand how long it takes to test these components before they can go in production vehicles. He.doesn't.understand. So he'll just send out another cliche- filled Huddle and tell us all how much he appreciates us. His fitness initiatives have not made it into engineering yet, especially powertrain engineering, because there are still so many fiefdoms among the vehicle programs. And I'm not saying that there isn't room for data analytics in engineering. Because there is, and we're fighting that fight in our department right now, but it's an uphill battle because we don't have enough headcount to effectively use data analytics. We desperately need an activity in FMC that tracks powertrain development. There is none today. There is not an activity that can tell you the cycle plan for transmissions, engines and drivelines for 2020. Each department can give you their piece of it by putting it all down on an Excel spreadsheet. But not one of them can use data analytics today to pull all this information together. And that's a shame. And that is where data analytics could be really powerful because powertrain development is a fundamental part of Ford Motor Company and no one totally understands the big picture. That just blows my mind. But you don't hear about it. Because powertrains aren't shiny.
It is as it ever was at Ford some people are more special than others. Just like orwell’s animal farm. Nothing can be done about that.
Everyone knows that some areas are over staffed. Hackett himself stated that in the Fields era Ford grew its headcount way too fast. Paul was brought in by Fields. The GDIA staff went from virtually zero to thousands in a blink of an eye. All the problems with rapid growth and undefined goals ensued. The quote that stuck with me from an early GDIA dept meeting was “We are far behind our competitors and we don’t really know what data we need for analytics, so we will copy all Ford data into our data lake and figure it out later.” Several of us seasoned professionals exchanged looks, we knew what was unfolding before us.
So I wrote the post and I'm sorry it was taken as an attack on GDIA, it was not meant that way AT ALL. I was posting about frustration that somehigher ups seem to be able to retire and are politely waved off while others are disappeared and the rest of us peons are left wondering what the hell is going on. As far as agency employees go, our group was hit last year so I thought they rest were all in the clear....
What a terrible response. First, 30-40% if GDIA and Fordpass resources are agency. So why not cut them first?
Second, both of those groups have been running under hiring targets for years. So it isn't as if they are overstaffed.
So nice try on the worst take on this entire site. Tool.
GDIA is a classic example of wildly hiring anything with a pulse. Could easily take a 70% trim. Ford Pass is another example.
Wish Paul well, sorry for all those Ford employees who followed the pied piper off the cliff. The GDIA culture of we are better, smarter and more important than anyone else at Ford got old fast.