Carlos Ghosn's official title is CEO and chairman of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, but he's more colorfully known as "Le Cost Killer" and "Mr. Fix-It." He earned those nicknames by rescuing first Renault and then Nissan back in the 1990s. Now he's hoping for yet another turnaround--at struggling Mitsubishi, where Nissan recently acquired a controlling share. A Brazilian-born Lebanese-Frenchman, Ghosn deftly handles the challenges of managing companies on two continents. In this interview, he describes how he does it--meeting with his teams in Tokyo and Paris for a week each month and spending the rest of his time in operations, talking to suppliers and buyers, and looking for new opportunities. In the next five years, he says, "you'll see more electric cars, more autonomous drive, and more connectivity." He's excited about using technology "to make the car an indispensable personal space" and developing a fully self-driving vehicle by 2020. And he's not worried about competition in the electric-car market from companies like Apple or Google: "We have a long tradition of taking technology from the outside and putting it into our products." Ghosn believes the role of a CEO is to be "the guardian of the integrity and sustainability of the company." He sees his most important tasks as selecting the right people and directing strategy. "I want to make sure the Nissan-Renault Alliance continues to be solid," he says, "with good performance and good governance."

When Renault and Nissan entered into a strategic alliance in March 1999, Nissan was in trouble. The Japanese automaker had struggled for 8 years to turn a profit. Its margins were notoriously low, and purchasing costs were 15% to 25% higher at Nissan than at Renault. Adding to the cost burden was a plant capacity far in excess of the company's needs. And the company's debts, even after the Renault investment, amounted to more than $11 billion. Either Nissan would turn the business around, or it would cease to exist. A veteran of turnarounds at Renault and Michelin, Carlos Ghosn was asked by Renault's CEO to go to Tokyo to save Nissan. He faced an uphill battle as a non-Japanese, non-Nissan outsider--and he knew it. In this first-person account, Ghosn tells the story of Nissan's turnaround. He explains how he relied on cross-functional teams. Ghosn also contends that success is not simply a matter of making fundamental changes to a company's organization and operations; the company's identity and the self-esteem of its people must also be protected. But making changes and safeguarding identity is sometimes a precarious balancing act. The key, he says, is to nurture a strong corporate culture that taps into the productive aspects of a country's culture.