To try to eliminate all of Ford's unnecessary duplication, Mulally is asserting more control over the product line. Now he personally approves every new vehicle worldwide. Production is now coordinated by Derrick M. Kuzak, Ford's first-ever chief of global product development.

Kuzak's team is already hard at work designing cars that can be easily adapted to appeal to worldwide markets. They've developed a global small car that Ford will build in two or three plants starting in 2010, and which will sell in the U.S. for $10,000 to $12,000. It will differ only slightly from the version that will sell in South America, Europe, and Asia. Another key goal in the near future is to create a midsize sedan that could serve both North America and Europe. Today, for example, the European Mondeo sedan and the North American Fusion are built independently of one another. Kuzak is overseeing an attempt to coordinate the future designs of those vehicles.

But Mulally knows that changing the organizational chart won't cure Ford. The company's deeply ingrained hierarchical culture needs to be blown up. So for the first time ever he's forcing every operating group to share all its financial data with every other group. That information used to be closely guarded. Shortly after he ordered the change, three separate executives called him to make sure they had heard right. Says Mulally: "You can't manage a secret."

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To spread his new religion, Mulally has turned the traditional monthly meeting of divisional chiefs into a weekly affair. Every executive has to attend in person or by videoconference. No subordinates can be sent. To ensure focus, the BlackBerrys that used to be common at these meetings are now banned. So are side conversations when someone is talking, even if by video link. But the most radical change is that operating chiefs are now encouraged to bring a different subordinate to every meeting -- a big step at a company where underlings formerly were not privy to sensitive data. Mulally wants staffers to start buzzing about his ideas through unofficial e-mail, blog, and watercooler channels.

He is also taking symbolic steps to treat white-collar and blue-collar employees more equitably. This year many workers on the shop floor will receive bonuses of $300 to $800, based on a new formula that is also being applied to executives. Of course, his popularity with union workers will depend a lot on this summer's contract negotiations with the UAW. The new deal will give Mulally an opportunity to cut his workforce's costly health benefits. That's expected to lead to divisiveness. The arrival at Chrysler of Cerberus, though it increases the competitive pressure on Mulally, may turn out to be a blessing in this arena. Cerberus has sent a message to labor leaders that the old ways of doing business are no longer acceptable. Partially for that reason, the Cerberus deal "is good for us," Mulally says.

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Ford's new CEO is fond of talking about how he is breaking long-standing company taboos, such as the one about never admitting when you don't know something. At a meeting last fall, one of Mulally's operating chiefs chattered on for several minutes trying to answer a question to which he clearly did not have the answer. After the meeting, Mulally asked Fields why the executive droned on for so long. "Because 'I don't know' isn't in Ford's vocabulary," Fields explained.

Now it is. To reinforce the point, Mulally has actually banned the thick background binders executives used to bring to the weekly meetings. That means they sometimes can't immediately summon the necessary details to answer Mulally's questions. That's fine with him: "I know that if they don't have the answer one week, they'll have it next week," he says.

As a longtime observer of the auto industry, David E. Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., is not sure that Mulally will succeed in his mission. But he has concluded that Ford's culture is beyond fixing by anyone who has spent a long time inside the company, or any of the "usual candidates" at other automakers. "Ford employees feel very paternalistic toward Ford," says Cole, "and the only way Bill was going to convince them that the company was truly at risk was by bringing in someone they'd never heard of to break the cycle."

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