The many careers of Phil Martens at one company: here's how one of the most successful executives in the auto industry achieved success at a company where he once decided he'd never want to work. What he's learned, may help you

Automotive Design & Production, Sept, 2004 by Gary S. Vasilash, Christopher A. Sawyer

PROLOGUE

Phil Martens thinks back some 10 years ago. He was named the chief program engineer responsible for the Panther program at Ford, the program that produced the Lincoln Town Car and Mercury Grand Marquis. "I knew I could do the job." But he was 34. Which caused a bit of a problem. "The average age of a manager working for me was at least 20 years older than I was. These guys were like, 'Why should I take orders from you?'" Yet despite that, Martens recalls, "It worked out great." They delivered. That's not entirely surprising. Martens has an enviable track record. He joined Ford in 1987. In October 2003 he was named group vice president, Product Creation, North America, Ford Motor Company. Sitting in his automotive-model and memorabilia filled office in Dearborn, he still looks far too young to be a top automotive executive. Silicon Valley, yes. Detroit, no. Yet comparative youth notwithstanding, Martens is a man who has shown that he's capable of getting things done.

But note well: Martens admits, "You have to be willing to say, 'I don't know. Let's find out who can help us.' It's"--by which he means operations in the auto industry, but it could be applied to other undertakings--"too complicated. No one knows it all."

He stresses--and if you stop reading after this, you'll get the essence of achieving success--"It's never one person. It has to be a collective 'we.'" But he also acknowledges that leadership means making decisions, being the one who works with the "we" but who is ultimately responsible for what is under-taken.

BIOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND

Martens hails from Buffalo, New York. His father, who emigrated from Germany in 1952, was an engineering prof at the University of Buffalo. Not surprisingly, when Martens graduated high school, he went to engineering school at Virginia Tech. His father had told him that if he was going to pay for college, then his son was going to get an engineering degree because it would lead to a job. "There went my desire to get a BBA and a JD degree and basically make a lot of money being a lawyer," Martens quips. Being from Buffalo, he wanted to go to someplace warmer, so after college, mechanical engineering degree in hand, he got a job with what was then Eastman Kodak's chemical division in Kingsford, Tennessee, which didn't work out well, but which gave him the opportunity to learn about sales and marketing.

Opportunities and pursuing things that are different from the norm--with "norm" being defined as moving forward in a straight line, not divaricating in other directions--are fundamental to Martens's approach.

Next, it was out to (much warmer) Los Angeles, where he went to work for a small company that sold digital control systems for industrial processes. "That was a great experience because I was able to be a jack-of-all-trades." But working for a small company wasn't doing it for Martens, so he moved eastward, to Ann Arbor, to pursue an MBA at the University of Michigan. Not surprisingly, it was at that time that he attained his first association with Ford. He needed to get an internship. He couldn't get on the Ford interview sheet, but he walked into the interview room anyway. After a five-minute conversation, he was offered an internship. While this might seem as though the rest of the story would unfold directly from there, Martens recalls, "At that time I was dead set against a big company." But he had to do the internship for the degree. He did it. The 10 weeks worked out well. "I came to see this as a tremendously competitive industry. I got to see the multifaceted aspects of how difficult the industry is, and I got a real exposure to the quality of the people who were working at Ford."

But he returned to the classroom. When the MBA was in hand, he had various job offers, ranging from investment banking to brand management. And yes, from Ford. "I sat down with the five best offers and included Ford as one of the five. I force-ranked them on 15 attributes. And Ford came out dead last by a wide margin."

Let's repeat that: "And Ford came out dead last by a wide margin."

Enter, again, Professor Martens. His dad told him that he should go to work for Ford, that it was a good company and that his son wouldn't be disappointed with the decision. "That's how I made the decision. All of the metrics said 'don't go.' But it was a decision based on more than metrics."

OPPORTUNITIES & SYSTEMS

Among other things, he recognized that given the scope of Ford--both functionally and geographically--there was opportunity: "It gave one person, if they wanted it, the opportunity to have three or four careers in a lifetime relationship with the company."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Once again that word: Opportunity.

One of the things that Martens says has been a driver to his career--or careers, as it has turned out--is that what's most important is pursuing experiences, not job titles. He says that while people tend to want to get a better job title and the perks that go with that, his approach has been one of learning new things, things which broaden his capabilities. Rather than taking the incremental, linear approach, he's quested after different opportunities, different experiences.