Sent to GMU September 27, 2007. The results of three SMT Interactive Management Workshops held during the periods: Workshop 1 (30 May, 12-13 June 2003), Workshop 2 (30 October (2 hrs), 7 November and 12 December 2003) and Workshop 3 (9 January and 16 January 2004) were instrumental in big budget decisions at Ford Motor Company. This folder of documents has to do with when Warfield was helping Scott Staley working on a proposal. Scott was trying to get his money to lead the design for creation of a fuel cell vehicle at Ford Motor Company. The papers in the folder do not form a report or document and of course since the topic was company confidential material there are no manufacturing or technical details. Instead, these papers are unsorted materials, merely evidentiary of Warfield’s involvement in the planning stages. The folder include records of phone calls and emails as well as some of the workshop planning papers which Scott sent to Warfield. Scott ran Interactive Management sessions on several occasions with Ford personnel, to help him prepare his proposal. From his Dearborn location, Scott would call Warfield periodically. Warfield, in Florida, would make suggestions and the two would talk about the work in each of workshops and about what Scott was going to continue to do and what he was going to do next. I remember Warfield explaining to Scott on the phone the importance of using only one page to present the budget proposal to upper managers. Scott had to summarize the workshop results and get the key information all on one page. It was very difficult. Then, Warfield told Scott, you attach a larger longer detailed report for the manager’s further reading. And you also have ready a third even longer, even more detailed report if managers ask for more information. There were many phone calls. Finally, one of the phone calls to Florida was when Scott told Warfield what had happened. Ford managers approved the proposal. It must have been a pretty convincing proposal, because the approximate amount of money involved was $78 million for 4 years of work. Scott got promoted to director of the Fuel Cell project and helped develop the Ford Edge Concept car which appeared in 2007. The new type of car is not yet in full manufacture and you can’t buy one yet. But working models are now operative and at least thirty of these Hydrogen powered cars are being driven around the country today.
r.w. circa 2000
