JLR EXECS INSPIRE CONFIDENCE
When the announcement filtered through that JLR had decided to invite us to an event at the Gaydon Engineering and Innovation Centre to hear the latest on the company’s forward strategy, it was difficult for us to contain our excitement, having been long deprived of updates on the company’s bold new electric future.
The idea was to hear from the highest-placed execs, some familiar and some not. First up was Adrian Mardell, CEO since Thierry Bolloré’s departure in November last year.
Mardell is nothing like your usual testosteronedriven CEO, used to besting other thrusters on the way up the greasy pole. He’s more headmaster than industrialist, and when he started to speak, the results of media trainers were pretty obvious. But he spoke compellingly, stressing a career-long devotion to JLR and so often repeating his pride in the company’s recent achievements and forward plans that in the end you had to believe it. And he made sure we all had the financial figures to back it up.
The bravura performance came from a familiar figure, chief creative officer Gerry Mcgovern (above). He is a compelling performer who likes the sound of his own voice – and no disgrace – and he showed every sign of enjoying the talking role he’d had for a year or two. Just like always, when Mcgovern started talking about the differences between Modern and Modernist, and applying them to his beautiful cars, everyone listened.
Jaguar’s new cars are supposed both to take on the highly successful Bentley business and comprehensively outsell it – another big ask. But Mcgovern’s fluent and confident nature made him seem impressively convincing, even to a room full of sceptics.
Then came a parade of experts. Chief commercial officer Lennard Hoornik fleshed out the new ‘house of brands’ strategy; engineering chiefs Nick Collins and Thomas Müller reassured us about the depth of the company’s technical know-how; and a deeply impressive executive director of industrial operations, Barbara Bergmeier, provided an absorbing commentary that led you to conclude that, in production terms, JLR knows what it’s doing. Better still, that its problem-solving abilities are better than ever.
The outcome for us was a reassurance that despite many recent staff changes, JLR has a team that knows what it’s doing and can deliver on all fronts – not, I admit, thoughts I had been thinking three hours earlier.