last week's ouster was raging at Renault, to punish the company to senior managers had launched a false alarm about a fictional corporate espionage scandal. An executive was notably absent from the list: Carlos Ghosn, president and chief executive of Renault alarmist. Gave a tithe to the executioners and continued flying at high altitude.
When approaching an end this espionage series, rediscovered these important lessons of survival for a CEO:
"If you're a superstar and put money on the table, will require much more than making a humiliating scandal to keep it out of the game. That is especially true if the directory has no obvious successor and just throw the window to a key surrogate CEO.
- -trial errors, including high profile as those of Ghosn, can be tolerated provided they do not suggest that you have lost the magic of leadership essential to expand into corporate profits.
- to Ghosn, the episode of complicated espionage that certainty, at least in the near future.
- A reminder of the plot:
- Renault alert anyone that three senior managers are stealing intellectual property of the electric car key program of the company. The company investigates and fire managers.
- Ghosn appears on national television and says there is enough evidence to support the dismissal.
- Further investigation determined that the informant is a fraudster. Renault relieve managers and begin to negotiate. Ghosn returns to appear on television to apologize.
- within Renault The outcome was this: last week, Renault said it would assign other tasks to Patrick Pelata, chief operating officer and possible successor to Ghosn. Pelata had helped supervise the investigation. A number of executives and staff, including the legal department director and the secretary general, were fired or asked to resign. An employee ended up in jail.
- And Ghosn forfeited his stock options at Renault for 2010 and a bonus of $ 2.3 million. This is no small sum, but a fraction of the total received as chief executive of Renault and Nissan: in 2010, Renault his salary was U.S. $ 1.8 million. His compensation for 2010 Nissan has not yet been disclosed, but in 2009 earned $ 9.8 million.
- The board did not propose a more severe punishment and has unanimously supported throughout the episode, said Rachel Konrad, communications director of the Renault-Nissan alliance. In fact, an internal audit indicated that the key decisions in the case occurred many levels below the CEO. Ghosn suggested that he was deceived along with the rest.
- external analysts have a similarly benign view. "Carlos made a mistake" and hurried , says Dave Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. But his intentions to protect the company, were good, and should not be punished for "being resolved," he says.
- No matter how far Ghosn may have been the facts of the case, it was a seal on the allegations that gave them credibility. In the automotive world, they often call "rock star" by combining the management of two complex businesses in much of the world. People believed him and believed in him.
- His work on the recovery of the ailing Nissan is a legend in the industry. Ghosn made clever use of his role as an outsider, and ordered the bureaucracy the company to make changes that had resisted for years. Japanese managers used it as an excuse to get rid of sacred cows, closing plants and changing relationships with suppliers. The multilingual executive, born in Brazil, soon was speaking Japanese and became a celebrity in Tokyo.
- Renault's board knows who employs one of the best in the industry, and has been tempted by offers from competitors. And he knows that, especially in the short term, while Renault forward with an ambitious domestic reform and Nissan is busy recovering from the recent earthquake in Japan, it is important to the continuance in office of the CEO. Hence the unanimous support of the directory. In the trenches, among the rank and file, may be different.
- Ghosn was perhaps one or two levels above the details of the case, but had a starring role in the drama. First, he publicly accused three senior managers of Renault innocent of, ironically, violation of trust. Then he helped oversee the dismissal or degradation of several managers who, as Ghosn had a role in the first act of the drama.
- "has a credibility problem," says Joe Porac , who has given as a class study of the Renault-Nissan alliance at the Stern School of Business at the University of New York. "Who would want to be loyal to this man?".
- Which refers again to the question of the essential magic of leadership. And if Carlos Ghosn still has it.
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