Page 112 - The Bible On Leadership

98 THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP

❖ If anyone fails to attend the meeting, your supervisor will be
contacted.

Robert Marcell, head of Chrysler’s small-car design team in the early
1990s, was faced with a serious communication and morale problem.
He felt that despite the increasing Japanese domination of the small car
market, Chrysler had the ability to manufacture and market a domesti-
cally made small car. His problem? Many others within Chrysler, in-
cluding his own team, doubted Chrysler’s ability to do this alone and
wanted to partner with a foreign manufacturer.
Marcell could have done a statistical study or issued a dry report on
trends in the domestic and international small-car market. Instead, he
decided to take a more daring and hard-hitting communication ap-
proach. Reasoning that he had to hit people ‘‘where they lived’’ (emo-
tionally and geographically), he prepared a fifteen-minute slide show
that showed pictures of his hometown, a Michigan mining community
devastated by competition from foreign companies.
After each slide of boarded-up schools, the ruins of the town’s iron-
works, and closed churches, Marcell solemnly and simply announced,
‘‘We couldn’t compete.’’ He then observed that the same thing could
happen to Detroit unless at least one car company was willing to re-
enter the subcompact market. He then challenged the group to develop
an American subcompact and went directly to CEO Lee Iacocca to
make a similar emotional appeal: ‘‘If we dare to be different, we could
be the reason the U.S. auto industry survives. We could be the reason
our kids and grandkids don’t end up working at fast-food chains.’’ 13
Iacocca also responded on a gut level (backed up by statistics, of
course) to Marcell’s impassioned appeal. He gave the OK to begin de-
signing and manufacturing the Dodge Neon.
Centuries earlier, Paul was a master at targeting the needs of his audi-
ence; he had to be, since he was so frequently fleeing a city or desper-
ately defending himself from death in the courts. In Acts 22, he finds
himself arrested and surrounded by an angry Jerusalem mob that de-
mands that the soldiers do away with him because he is challenging the
religious orthodoxy prevailing in the city.