Ivan Espinosa had only been CEO of Nissan for a few days when he sat down to design his own management team. His first instinct was to reduce a sprawling set of problems into a handful of concrete priorities. “I knew what had to be done,” he said to Fortune in mid-April, after wrapping up the Nissan Vision Event at its headquarters in Yokohama, Japan. “We put a plan together quickly. It took me about six weeks.”
The Mexican-born engineer had taken the top role at the Global 500 Japanese carmaker during its worst crisis in its 92-year-long history. Espinosa is Nissan’s fourth CEO in eight years; his predecessor, Makoto Uchida, stepped down after merger talks with Honda—at the time, Japan’s No. 2 carmaker—fell apart. Nissan was losing money, losing customer appeal, and losing market share.
