Saving the Business Without Losing the Company.

When Renault and Nissan entered into a strategic alliance in March 1999, Nissan was in trouble. The Japanese automaker had been struggling for eight years to turn a profit. Its margins were notoriously low, and purchasing costs were 15% to 25% higher at Nissan than at Renault. Adding to the cost burden was a plant capacity far in excess of the company's needs: The Japanese factories alone could produce almost a million more cars a year than the company sold. And the company's debts, even after the Renault investment, amounted to more than $11 billion. This was, quite literally, a do-or-die situation: Either Nissan would turn the business around, or it would cease to exist. A veteran of turnarounds at Renault and Michelin, Carlos Ghosn was asked by Renault's CEO to go to Tokyo to save Nissan. He faced an uphill battle as a non-Japanese, non-Nissan outsider--and he knew it. In this first-person account, Ghosn tells the story of Nissan's turnaround. He explains how he relied on cross-functional teams and how they became a powerful tool for getting line managers to see beyond functional and regional boundaries. Ghosn also contends that success is not simply a matter of making fundamental changes to a company's organization and operations; the company's identity and the self-esteem of its people must also be protected. Those two goals--making changes and safeguarding identity--can easily come into conflict; pursuing them both requires a difficult and sometimes precarious balancing act. The key, he says, is to nurture a strong corporate culture that taps into the productive aspects of a country's culture. INSETS: Building Trust Through Transparency;From Cross-Function to Cross-Company. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]