por Who is Robert James Eaton?
Robert James Eaton (1940) is a businessman who was president and CEO of Chrysler Corporation from 1993 to 1998. His approach to business management and his point of view on teamwork not only turned around the companies in which he has worked during his life, but has overlapped with the management of companies around the world.
His theories and methods not only work to create a good work environment, they also launch companies to success, as was the case with Chrysler. At first, he was considered a weak, indecisive and even somewhat soft manager, but time showed that he knew what he was doing very well, and for this reason he has become one of the highest paid executives in the world.
Biography of Robert James Eaton
Childhood
Robert James Eaton was born in Buena Vista, Colorado, although he grew up in Arkansas City, Kansas. He went to the University of Kansas where he graduated with a BS (Bachelor of Science) as a Mechanical Engineer in 1963.
After graduation, he began working at General Motors, one of the United States automobile factories, based in Detroit. Ten years later, after his good work and not going unnoticed, he was promoted to chief engineer of the new General Motors models that would have front-wheel drive.
In 1982 he was promoted to vice president of advanced engineering and later named president of General Motors in Europe. Although Eaton was still in the United States, he was ultimately responsible for all operations carried out at the company’s European headquarters, which included making various trips from one side of the Atlantic to the other.
Eaton at Chrysler
This was a highly responsible position that Eaton was performing masterfully, something that reached the ears of Lee Iacocca, the CEO of Chrysler. Iacocca was about to retire and needed to name a successor, and although he was tasked with doing so, his decision gave rise to misgivings.
First, because Chrysler was General Motors’ biggest competitor, and, on the other hand, because there were three names that sounded like possible successors to Lee Iacocca: Fred Miller, Gerry Greenwald and Robert Lutz.
However, Robert Lutz soon felt like the winner of this competition, as Miller showed no interest in this position, while Greenwald accepted an offer as president of United Airlines pilots.
But Lutz’s illusions would quickly collapse when the news broke that it would be Eaton and not he who would succeed the businessman who had managed to relaunch the company.
Even so, Eaton was able to win over Lutz, and they later worked together to form a team that would take Chrysler to the highest point it had ever been.
Your technical skills at Chrysler
In addition to being known for his conceptual techniques which we will discuss below, his technical skills were crucial in getting Chrysler to the pinnacle it is at even today.
For example, an occasion is known in which the second majority shareholder of the company, the Armenian billionaire Kerkorian, put on the table a Takeover Bid.
The aim was to take over the company or add representatives to the Board of Directors who favored him. It could be said that it is something similar to a coup in a government, but on a small scale.
Despite the fact that it was a difficult situation, Eaton knew how to face it very well and succeed. They signed a five-year peace agreement in which Kerkorian promised not to want to take over the company in a hostile way or to increase his participation.
In exchange, Eaton offered him a seat on the board, opened a share buyback from which Kerkorian would profit, and made small changes to the bylaws that he himself suggested.
His conceptual techniques
Eaton was a very different leader than Lee Iacocca was. From the first moment he was reliable, accessible and insightful, having an internal point of view, of teamwork.
He managed to create a work team that collaborated together and did not compete with each other. He didn’t need a secretary to answer the phone, and he often wandered into the offices of managers and workers to chat with them and get to know them better. His secret to success, without a doubt, was empathy.
Relationship with workers
Although the workers were a bit confused at first, Eaton’s sincere interest in them soon earned him their trust. And not only did he settle for doing it himself, but he taught the rest of the managers to be more accessible to gain the trust of the workers.
His concept was clear: a company works because of good management, and a good manager has to earn the trust of his workers, because without them, neither the manager nor the company are nothing.
It is much better to have a single team than a team against each other. The good atmosphere created by these methods led to the development of one of the company’s best-selling cars, the Chrysler Neon.
Eaton encouraged managers and managers to allow workers to express their opinion to questions such as: «What really worries you about this matter?», «What solution would you give?», «How do you think it could be improved?» .
Earning trust was vital for them to feel comfortable expressing what they really thought. In 1997 the magazine Forbes awarded Chrysler as the company of the year for being «intelligent, disciplined and intuitive», as their pages quoted verbatim.
Other professional achievements
After finishing his time as CEO of Chrysler in 1998, James Eaton obtained different highly valued and well-paid positions, such as:
President of the National Academy of Engineering.
Director of Chevron (oil company).
Member of the Board of International Paper (the largest company of its kind in the world, with more than 56,000 employees).
Trustee of the University of Kansas Foundation.
Robert James Eaton’s conceptual techniques did not seem well accepted and made him look soft, an adjective that, as his career shows, has nothing to do with him.
References
Dyer, JH How Chrysler created an American keiretsu. Harv. Bus. Rev.
Benson, JA, Thorpe, JM Chrysler’s Success Story: Advertising as Anecdotes. J. Pop. Cult.
Business changes. Thesis. Recovered from uson.mxdigital.
Robert James Eaton. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org.
ROBERT EATON MV060. Recovered from elmundo.es.