Sergio+Marchionne+105


 * Sergio Marchionne ** Innovative Manager and CEO

** Introduction ** Sergio Marchionne was born on June 17, 1952 in Chieti, Italy to Concezio and Maria Marchionne. When Sergio was fourteen, his family moved to Toronto, Canada and because of this, Marchionne has dual citizenship in Canada and Italy. Marchionne earned his degree at the University of Toronto, his MBA at the University of Windsor and his law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. He began his career as an accountant at Deloitte & Touche and then moved to Group Controller and Director of Corporate Development at Lawson Mardon Group, all located in Canada. Marchionne’s next career move brought him to Glenex Industries where he was the Executive Vice President. He then moved to Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer at Acklands Ltd. Marchionne’s career went on to include Vice President of Legal and Corporate Development and Chief Financial Officer at Lawson Group and Chief Executive Officer at Algroup. Marchionne also worked at Lonza Group and SGS Group of Geneva where he was Chief Executive Officer and soon became Chairman of the Company. Marchionne began his career at Fiat as a member of the board of directors in May of 2003 and then was appointed CEO in 2004. Marchionne is very widely known for transforming Fiat into one of the fastest growing companies in the auto industry. In 2009, Marchionne formed an incredibly important alliance between Fiat and Chrysler that will forever be important in history. In 2009, Sergio Marchionne also became the CEO of Chrysler replacing Robert Nardelli. Chrysler had just recently declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy and in only two years time, Marchionne has the company profitable again. In Marchionne’s career he has been slightly controversial in a few of his statements the most well known being his statement that the interest rates on the loans to bail out Chrysler were much too high and completely unethical. Here is a [|link]to various articles in Bloomberg regarding Sergio Marchionne.

Our group has chosen to focus our project on Sergio Marchionne, because he is an influential leader who has learned how to successfully bring two companies back from destruction. Marchionne was able to bring both Fiat and Chrysler up from the bottom and continues to bring in a greater profit every year. Sergio Marchionne is also a leader in not only our country, but many others including Italy and Canada. Due to his dual citizenship in these countries, he has been able to cross the cultural divide and become a worldwide figure.



**Motivation** Sergio Marchionne is a phenominal motivator. When he first arrived at Chrysler in 2009, he transformed the company from a highly bureaucratic company to a looser, more free flowing company. In an interview with a recent Chrysler Intern named Jenny Dodge, she spoke of longtime Chrysler employees explaining their experiences with the takeovers of Chrysler by Daimler, Cerberus and now Fiat. The employees had spoke of meetings where only senior leaders were allowed to speak their ideas, having others in fear of speaking their ideas or thoughts due to fear of losing their jobs, with the takeovers by Daimler and Cerberus. Now these same employees speak of a more employee-friendly atmosphere, where employees of any status are open to share ideas and work together with other employees of any status. Jenny even notes that as an intern, at times she was asked for her thoughts and ideas on certain issues (Interview). This has caused for more creativity throughout the company, allowing for the remaking of sixteen models in the Chrysler line-up, including the most awarded SUV ever; the 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee (JDPower). The looser office feel has caused for a greater sense of job enrichment for the individual worker striving toward a common goal for the company. These changes in the work atmosphere are direct links to Sergio Marchionne's motivational techniques. Marchionne implements many of Fredrick Herzberg's hygiene factors, which focus on what drives job satisfaction for employees, in his attempt to motivate his employees. The main hygiene factors Marchionne focuses on are; achievement, recognition of achievement, responsibility, and growth (ORGB).

In the interview with Jenny Dodge she spoke of an address directly from Sergio Marchionne, to the more than eleven thousand employees at Chrysler Headquarters in Auburn Hills Michigan. (Marchionne's speech pictured below) In this speech, Marchionne spoke on the repayment of government loans and the current turn around by Chrysler. He focused on thanking all of the many employees who stayed with Chrysler through the merger, in times that were tough for all, and all of the hard work that was put in by each individual employee to bring the company back to profiting. His speech sparked pride, lit a fire under all employees to strive to better their work and returned an optimistic mentality into the work place, where there had just previously been no reason for optimism. Jenny reflected on the speech as "awe inspiring" and "a clear distinction that Chrysler was putting its heart back into their work." (Interview) This example of his speech demonstrates how he recognizes his employees achievements and manages energy in the work place rather than time. This is a highly effective motivational strategy, because this furthers the empowerment of employees causing for increased output and a better mentality throughout the work place.

Marchionne's motivational techniques have been very successful. Since he has taken over as the CEO of Chrysler, sixteen Chrysler vehicles have either been completely redesigned or newly produced. Many of these have won many awards, including; 2011 Jeep Grand Cheerokee, 2011 Dodge Dakota, 2011 Chrysler Town and Country, 2011 Chrysler 300, 2011 Dodge Challenger, 2011 Dodge Durango, 2011 Ram 1500 and 2011 Dodge Charger and more (JDPower and Autopacific). These many awards reflect Marchionne's hands on managerial style and commitment to his employees. Marchionne's hands on style is demonstrated by emails he sends out to all of his employees at Chrysler Headquarters every two weeks on happenings within the company (Interview). Overall Marchionne's leadership has brought Chrysler back to prominence in the automotive industry.

Sergio Marchionne is a motivated leader who isn’t afraid of lateral movement within a company. Marchionne shows his motivation by moving from one position to another, looking for new challenges. His willingness to alter his location and duties illustrates his extraverted personality. Not only is Marchionne well rounded in the business world, he also holds a degree in undergraduate philosophy from the University of Toronto. This passion for academia shows that he wants his employees to see the world as a whole and to be incredibly motivated.

Marchionne is not only incredible motivator, but he also has extreme pride in his work. Marchionne took on the CEO position of Fiat because of his pride for Italy. He identified that the Italian company Fiat was in trouble. He thought it was his responsibility as an Italian to revitalize the brand and save the company. As a result of this, Marchionne went back to the basics and revitalized the styling of the Fiat brand. He used his motivational techniques to propel Fiat (filled with relatively young employees) to the standard of quality and service that it had been known for in the past. BusinessWeek notes, “Above all, he empowered a talented young team, clearing the way for them to fix what ailed Fiat” (Edmondson). Marchionne's ability to identify talent within his company and bring them to their full potential is astounding. Marchionne identified that negative attitudes are contagious and more likely to produce self-fulfilling prophesies. Identifying this problem helped Marchionne evaluate and restructure Fiat’s vision and goals.

Then, in 2011, Marchionne moved to Detroit: A bold move for the current economic state of the domestic car market. He saw it as another opportunity to revitalize the Chrysler brand as CEO. Long-standing brands such as Pontiac were suddenly struggling and eventually dissolved. Still in the early part of his tenure, Marchionne will try to implement similar strategies to Chrysler that succeeded with Fiat. Here is a [|link] to a YouTube video in which Sergio discusses the status of these companies. Sergio Marchionne has one of the most unique personality types of any CEO around the world. When he works, he sometimes will shield himself from the public, months at a time. Then he will be out and about, he will generally say what he thinks and stirs things up. Because of his success and unique personality style he is becoming one of the most influential and interesting CEO's during this time of recession.
 * Personality Type **

With Marchionne having such a unique personality, I would put him under two different categories of the Big Five Personality Traits. Sergio Marchionne would fall under openness to experience. Marchionne fits all the main characteristics; he’s very creative, curious, and cultured. On Business Excellence Partners Blog, one of his managers revealed an encounter with him. It took place back when Sergio was CEO with SGS, taking place among business executives during a seminar that they were having for the company. The man who was running the seminar for the company (the blogger), went on to explain that even though he only met Sergio for a couple of hours, he was so inspired by Marchionne that he wanted to do business and work with Sergio after his experience. The blogger described Marchionne from this personal experience as: business savvy, no bullshit, risk taking, and believing in his co-workers. He also discussed how he made business executives “look outside the box” and challenge the status quo to improve the organization and the company. This experience shows a real life example of the leadership qualities of Sergio Marchionne and how he incorporates it into his company’s mission.

The other category he would fall under in the Big Five Personality Traits would be Extraversion. He has been known to be very assertive and sociable with employees at all level of the company’s chain. For example, before he arrived at Fiat, business executives would not communicate with each other directly, instead would just communicate amongst each other through their secretaries. Marchionne was said to be shocked and perplexed when he arrived at Fiat. Now the environment at Fiat is more of a Collegiate Style, where he’s more open to talk to employees and managers directly and vice versa. Marchionne deals with situations/issues in person whether it’s a top executive, manager, or lower level employee. At Fiat he even moved his office down from the penthouse to the same floor as the Engineering Department, in order to be more social and in touch with his employees. As a leader Sergio Marchionne can be described as being gregarious, assertive and sociable, integrating his philosophy into a more positive and efficient work environment. His many positive personality traits has made him a successful and influential CEO in the world. Here is a YouTube clip where Marchionne discusses Chrysler and where it is going in the future [|link] **Values**

Sergio Marchionne showed through his actions and words that he values social respect and achievement. He completely turned Fiat around bringing the company from on the border of bankruptcy, to a company that embodies 5% of Italy’s GDP.(Fiat’s Turnaround) By taking over a another company on the verge of bankruptcy and full of discouraged employees he showed that he exhibits responsibility, courage and intelligence. Marchionne is not even a car engineer, he is a lawer and an accountant (Gumbel). It takes great intelligence and courage to completely take over a company, or two, which are barely hanging on and make those companies into something profitable. His background did not pertain to the jobs at hand but he knew that he could do them. Taking over a company in which you know nothing and is on the verge of bankruptcy takes guts. Chrysler thought that everything around them was an external locus of control; they were losing a billion dollars a month and spinning out of control before Marchionne stepped in. (Berman).

"There's not a guy in the auto industry who thought we could do this," says Marchionne as he was about to release Chrysler's new product line (Whoriskey). Here Marchionne's behavioral intentions are measured by his statement. This seems like an extremely positive statement in which Marchionne has a positive attitude. It's as if all of the other auto companies doubted Chrysler except Marchionne. It would be impossible to turn around an auto company with a bad attitude. He showed the company that they determine their own fate. Also, he moved the CEO's office from an isolated tower to four floors above Chrysler's engineering building. (Rattner) That was a simple, smart and easy decision. He did many little things like this to change the company around. Marchionne went and improved Chrysler's product line. (Rattner) Now Chrysler can say that they paid $7.6 billion back to the U.S. and Canadian Governments. (Wayland) Marchionne has completely turned two companies around and he is now respected by many, now thats an achievement.



**Video Project Part 2** media type="youtube" key="Ouh5xO3WDsk" width="425" height="350" ** Video Project Part 3 ** media type="youtube" key="iEYg1BZDzdw" height="315" width="560" align="center"
 * “We attribute to this car a great part of our ambition and our efforts to win new customers,” - Sergio Marchionne **




 * Reference List: **

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