Lisa Brankin took the top job at Ford of Britain in late 2020 just as the brand was about to execute plans to willingly give up a market-leading volume position for its car business in pursuit of the profitability that had always eluded it.
While Brankin’s observation that “timing is everything, and I think probably my timing isn’t as good as it could have been…” was said largely in relation to the industry-wide challenges faced at that time (Covid, the chips shortage), it’s just as apt for how difficult a job she was handed compared to her predecessors for Ford no longer being “obsessed over market leadership”.
That road to “managing a profitable business overall” has led to a series of outwardly quite unpopular decisions, not just for Brankin being the bearer of bad news with the demise of the likes of the Fiesta, but in reducing the dealer network from above 300 to under 170 as a result of this shift away from such mass volume, a process that’s still ongoing.
She doesn’t…