Honoring the Wisdom and Vision of Harold “Red” Poling

When most people hear the word “CEO,” household names like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk come to mind first.

But there are many other notable C-suite leaders. Some, despite shunning celebrity CEO status, brought transformative leadership to the C-suite. As a four-time CEO myself, I have studied my counterparts for decades, and one name stands out: Harold A. “Red” Poling, the former Chief Executive Officer of Ford Motor Company.

Poling may not be a household name in non-business circles, but even the most casual students of business should know his name. Poling served as CEO of Ford from 1985 through his retirement as Chairman in 1993, transforming America’s most famous automaker. Poling was instrumental in making changes that enabled Ford to maintain its status as an independent and successful auto company, while the other “big three” automakers required bailouts and external investors to save them from insolvency.

Red passed away in 2012 at the age of 86, and the New York Times fittingly acknowledged Poling “financial acumen and a low-key leadership style that brought stability during tough times.” In fact, “Red” (as he insisted on being called) was a graduate of the MBA program at the Indiana University (now Kelley) School of Business. I first met him in July of 1993, when I became Dean of the school and he was a member of the Dean’s advisory council. My background was as a CEO of financial institutions, not as a traditional academic, but Red was modest, polite, and welcoming. His input was universally concise but highly impactful.

The reason for this column is simple: Red did something for Kelley and business schools more broadly that continues to have a major impact to this day—an impact on MBA students and casual Forbes readers alike.

What Red did in 1993 was to establish—with a seven-figure gift—the Poling Chair of Business and Government Leadership at IU. In his own words, Red’s goal was to “foster better understanding of the critical interactions between the private business sector and government in matters of public policy that affect enterprise competitiveness and economic growth.” In other words, he saw an opportunity for academia to explore how policymakers affect business leaders, and vice versa—all the more relevant in a presidential election year.

Originally envisioned as a traditional academic “Chair,” the original notion was that the Poling Chair would be held by a full-time faculty scholar with multidisciplinary interests and a national reputation for researching business and public policy. But, as he and I discussed the idea, Red grew concerned that the “half-life” of cutting-edge knowledge and real-world understanding of how policy is made and how it affects business is very short. He began to feel that his purposes may be better achieved by engaging people who were or had recently been in the arena where policies are actually debated, shaped, and put into place.

And so, Red and I jointly decided to start by appointing at least the initial Chair holders as non-academic, non-full time visiting scholars who would reside on campus for periodic windows of teaching, speaking, and interacting in open forums with students, faculty, university leaders, and involved alumni. Red loved the idea, helping foster a special culture of open-mindedness at IU. Just like how he innovated at Ford, Red brought a willingness to engage with new ideas to academia, and therein lies a lesson for all business schools.

Knowing that we needed to turn Red’s unusual format into an obvious win, I reached out to Sam Skinner, who had just finished a stint as Chief of Staff to President George H.W. Bush, after serving as Secretary of Transportation in Bush’s cabinet. Fortunately, Sam loved the idea too and took it on with gusto, teaching seminars, hosting “fireside chats,” and having open conversations. Our second Poling Chair was Evan Bayh, after his final term as Indiana governor and before he began his successful U.S. Senate campaign.

Over the years, Poling Chair holders included former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, the former CEO of Eli Lilly and Company, and others. But what remains most striking to me is that, for 30 years, every single leader from the business and government universes has been welcomed with candid, serious, and respectful dialogue with open ears. Part of this success lies in the Poling format, where lively, unscripted interactions replace canned presentations to retain candor in the moment.

In a world where viewpoint discrimination has become a true blight on colleges and universities, Poling Chair programming continues the traditional ethic for the open, unbiased pursuit of knowledge. Students desperately need opportunities for genuine conversations with leaders who have been “on the firing line” and in the rooms where pivotal decisions are made. They need to learn that what actually happens is very different from the sloganeering and stereotyping that has become the public face of political discourse in 2024.

I give Red Poling credit for steering the ship right at Ford and IU, laying a blueprint of wisdom and vision as the ultimate “pay it forward.” As Kelley’s new Poling Chair for the 2024-25 school year (breaking news!), I look forward to following in Red’s footsteps, contributing to a culture that he helped establish and showing the way forward for other academic institutions.

There is a wonderful “book-end “ feeling to my Poling appointment, having been at IU as a novice Dean when the position was launched in the 1990s. As novelist Thomas Wolfe famously said, “You can never really go home again,” but this feels like an exception. I will try to keep paying it forward.