• The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Friday, December 22, 2006 12:15 PM

Ford's new CEO Alan Mulally last week led company directors to a secret war room where color-coded pages containing charts, graphs and lists of Ford products and markets are mounted on all four walls. "This is 'The Plan,' " he said.

There are also photos of Ford executives in charge of various divisions, to show who is accountable. Declaring "data can set you free," Mulally has prodded Ford unit heads to meet with other divisions, share information and post their results on the war room wall. "You can't manage a secret," Mulally told them.

Pages are coded in red, yellow and green, indicating the severity of the problems. Red-coded charts show Ford's plunging U.S. market share, its North American financial forecast and its material-cost disadvantage. Yellow charts show Americans' move away from SUVs and trucks. Green charts show Ford's effort to cut nearly half its 82,000 North American factory workers through buyouts.

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