Autos: Back on the Fast Track

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Eaton, 53, Trotman, 60, and Smith, 55, each spent his entire career within the auto industry. Still, they were unconventional choices for its top jobs. None of them fitted the mold of the clubby headquarters men who filled the executive suites before them. Detroit's three new CEOs have begun to introduce a similar management style into their very different corporate domains. Modesty, humor (especially of the self-deflating variety), open discussion, candor and team play are all in. Pomp, protocol, pretension and paperwork are distinctly out.

Ford, for example, a company traditionally more comfortable with the patrician styles of Ford's own family princes, had never seen the likes of its new chairman. Trotman has forged his career by going against the patrician grain at every opportunity. As a product manager at British Ford in the late 1950s, he made his first mark by taking on the senior engineers to develop its Cortina, which became one of its most successful product introductions ever. Raised in Scotland, the son of a carpet layer and upholsterer and the only non-college graduate to hold the top position, Trotman is better suited and % more polished these days. But he still likes the rough-and-tumble of an honest working-class spat, almost fondly recalling the good brawls in Britain. "The manufacturing guys were terrifying people," he says with a trace of a burr. "They were barons who would throw you out of the plant if you went in there without permission. Literally. So there was always a culmination of salesmanship, pragmatism, persuasion and logic -- but lots of punch-ups, lots of tempers. Oh, yes, absolutely. Lots of it."

Trotman says he hasn't changed much. "I have a very low tolerance when the key issues are being debated," he says. "I don't like mystery. I'd like to have everyone's cards on the table and get dissent and debate out of the way before we move. After that, we go, we don't look back. We all go for it, very straightforward and simple." After being formally named Ford's chairman and moving into the paneled corner suite on the 12th executive floor of the Dearborn headquarters building known as "the Glass House," Trotman turned to his secretary and asked his first question: "Is there a reason why I should ever have lunch in this building?" One of his first executive decisions was to simplify his name: Alexander became Alex, and the middle initial (J.) disappeared.

To understand Trotman's management style, look at the Mustang. To save the company's new muscle car from the scrap heap -- a mission he took on as a personal project -- he allowed free reign to a skunk-works operation where teamwork and cooperation replaced procedures and hierarchies. One innovation that might never have fitted into an organization chart: putting engineers and computer designers into the same test cars just to keep their very different technical worlds focused on the real product. Trotman and other key Ford executives checked up on the Mustang project in after-hours visits by the back door instead of formal briefings.