Ford: can DEI, merit and profit coexist?

Back in 2023, our 2016 Ford F150 4X4 needed a new oil pan. Things didn’t go as I hoped:

It was in early January that I began to find increasing amounts of oil on the floor of my garage under the truck, which until that point, had been unfailingly reliable. I didn’t worry about it too much, but in February, finally took it in to my local dealer and discovered we needed a new oil pan. So no problem, right? Normally if the dealer doesn’t have a part in stock, they’d have it within a few days. And this is the 2.7 liter twin turbo V6, a reliable and powerful engine used in a variety of vehicles across Ford’s offerings, so I was surprised to discover there were no oil pans—none—in the entire country(?!).

To make a long story short—take the link—the oil pan was eventually replaced, Ford paid 80% of the cost, and for my trouble, Ford gave me a three-year, comprehensive warranty, free.  Still, I wondered what went wrong?  How could Ford allow there to be no oil pans, anywhere, for one of its most popular engines?  No one could give me an answer, but now we know:

Graphic: Twitter (X) Screenshot

At any rate, Ford has “gotten its head right” since its racist-sexist-bigot-alphabet-phobic days of competent management. “In October 2018, Ford joined the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion Pledge which aims to rally the business community to advance Diversity and Inclusion within the workplace by working collectively across organizations and sectors,” the company brags on its website. “The CEO Action pledge outlines specific actions companies participating [sic] can take to cultivate a workplace where diverse perspectives and experiences are welcomed and respected.”

Ford wasn’t done signing onto DEI-themed time and resources-sucks with that one, either. “Women are significantly underrepresented in the tech industry which is why we have partnered with different organizations such as MARC (Men Advocating Real Change). MARC is an immersive program focused on engaging men in the inclusion conversation, in order to raise awareness and increase women [sic] advocacy,” the woke website goes on. 

There’s more, but you get the idea: Ford wanted to be one of the cool kids. 

Where DEI is concerned, “cool” can’t coexist with profit.

“Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley on Thursday admitted the automaker would be ‘much stronger’ today had he more quickly focused on fixing the company’s longstanding quality issues and other operational inefficiencies when he assumed the top job in 2020,” reports Automotive News.

“I wish I had the same laser-focus on transforming our industrial system” as on other parts of the business, Farley said at the Wolfe Research Global Auto Conference in New York. “The capability atrophy in engineering, supply chain and manufacturing at Ford — [CFO] John [Lawler] and I talk about this every day — needed a much more fundamental reset than I had realized. I think we all have regrets, and that’s a big one for me. It’s a humbling thing.”

Ford lost nearly five billion in 2023 on its EV debacle, and is projected to lose as much in 2024, despite dramatically scaling back its EV plans. But that’s not all they lost to woke ideology:

“In 2022, Farley bemoaned having left about $2 billion in unrealized profits on the table over what he termed ‘dysfunctionality‘ within Ford,” says Automotive News. “[CFO John] Lawler at the time said Ford was not working as productively as it needed to and that the company had an $8 billion cost disadvantage compared with its legacy rivals from inefficiencies in how it sourced, designed and built vehicles.” These losses stemmed from leading the industry in the number of recalls and repairs.

A billion here, a billion there, and profitable companies go bankrupt. Finally, Farley has backpedaled, at least a little, from wokeness:

“You have to set up a culture shift — a performance reward system where every engineering manager, purchasing component manager and plant manager is fully accountable for the quality and cost of their work,” he said.

Of course, Ford already was busy setting up a culture shift; it was just a stupid culture shift. Now it looks as though the storied car company is shifting its culture — and compensation — to a merit-based system. 

We traded our beloved F-150 on a 2024 Maverick we had to order. Ford tells us they’ll begin building it the week of April first, which is ironically appropriate. We’ll soon see just how well DEI, merit and profit can function together. That Ford, or any company, has to experiment to determine the answer to that question does not bode well for American industry, but at least the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward reality and sanity. We’ll also see if that happy trend can save Ford, and America.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.