Nissan's newest employee, David Champion.
Starting a new job is never easy. You have to find your parking spot, deal with all those employment forms, learn where the coffee machine and rest room are. And there’s the challenge of figuring out the corporate culture.
But there are some other basic rules that might be good to keep in mind as you report for your first day on the job: Don’t embarrass the company. Unfortunately, not everyone has figured that out.
David Champion, the former chief of automotive testing at Consumer Reports, didn’t exactly get off to a good start when word was released he would be taking on a similar role as the inside guy looking at the competition for Nissan, helping the Japanese maker figure out how to improve its customer satisfaction – and do better with reviewers like Consumer Reports.
“It’s going to be, I think, a fun and interesting challenge to really make Nissan stand out from the crowd,” Champion declared. A key role in the new job, he explained in an interview with Automotive News, will be to “help them (Nissan) really target their cars to consumers (and) make Nissan a world leader.” Apparently Champion recognized that Nissan was neither interested in its buyers, nor looking to do well in the marketplace until he came aboard.
No wonder, several senior insiders told TheDetroitBureau.com, we may not see quite so much of the British-born engineer as we did when he was at the non-profit Consumer Reports.
But Champion’s comments were downright mild compared to what Mutsuhiro Oshikiri said about his new employer, Mitsubishi Australia. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, the new CEO bluntly stated, “I don’t know why people buy a Mitsubishi.”
Apparently, no one clued the new executive in about what the advantages of his company’s products are. Perhaps he was too busy filling out those pesky employment forms. “What is the benefit?” he asked his interviewer, noting “I have to find out.”
Oshikiri has only been in his job 10 weeks. Whether he makes it to 11 is a question he didn’t ask. But others are clearly wondering.
Corporations clearly don’t like to be embarrassed, especially not by those who work for them. That’s one reason Honda’s U.S. chief John Mendel said the maker runs an extensive online check on those it’s thinking of hiring. It’s bad enough to discover they posted a picture of themselves sucking a bong on Facebook. But who knows what they might have said about a new employer.
General Motors didn’t have to go to the trouble when it hired Bob Lutz, a decade back. The legendary executive never hid his disdain for the maker, once asserting that the cars it produced were nothing but “angry appliances.” If anything, that only whetted GM’s appetite to bring Lutz aboard. To his credit, he toned down the rhetoric – slightly – when on the payroll, and gets credit for turning out some fine automobiles.
One might expect Champion and Oshikiri have now been told to button their lips, as well.