Episode 50: Former Ford CEO Mark Fields on the Value of a Unified Vision

Mik + One: The Official Project to Product Podcast by Dr. Mik Kersten

Joining Mik in this episode of Mik + One is Mark Fields, Senior Advisor to TPG Capital, a member of Planview's board of directors, and former CEO of Ford Motor Company. Mark has presided over three decades of strategic and digital transformations at global businesses and shares how he consistently succeeded with a focus on product. He discusses the value of possessing agility, a unified vision, and a rallying cry as a business to create a product that delivers more value and potentially diverts a company off more common value streams.

In this episode, Mik and Mark also discuss drive-by-wire and how a point of view on what the future is, creates a demand for businesses to create organizational structure that can support strategy.

Key discussions include:

• Early steps in Mark’s career
• Turning Mazda around in Japan
• Functional divides between business, technology, and operations
• Focusing on product is how you get customers
• Unifying vision and having a rallying cry in a business
• Turning products into platforms
• Diverting off common platforms to deliver customer missions
• ECUs in vehicles and the cost
• AWS and Azure bills for organizations
• Ford’s Mach-E
• Digital companies Mark is on the board of and how he is helping them thrive
• Learnings and agility

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Follow Mik on Twitter:

@mik_kersten #MikPlusOne

www.tasktop.com

Additional Resources:

• Connect with Mark
• Portfolio SAFe
• Dean Leffingwell on the Mik + One Podcast: Part 1, Part 2
• MarTech
• Dave West - podcast episode
• Scrum Studio
• Greenfield project
• Skunkworks
• Bimodal IT
• Agile Release Train
• Mik + One Podcast Episode 20: Justin Watts

For more information about Mark Fields and to view the full list of resources mentioned in this episode, as well as download the transcript, visit:

https://projecttoproduct.org/podcast/mark-fields/