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DETROIT -- For a guy who took a job he says he didn't really want, William Clay Ford Jr. is acting as if it's the job he always craved.

"I've been CEO for about 10 weeks and I've been pleased with the progress we've made," Ford said Friday just before he told his employees one-tenth of their jobs would be cut as part of a restructuring plan.

After deposing former president and CEO Jacques Nasser on Oct. 30, the 44-year-old Ford quickly set out to repair relationships with dealers and employees, and improve quality and productivity. He slashed 5,000 white collar jobs, shook up top management, and settled several class action suits filed by employees who said an evaluation system discriminated against older, white male managers.

When the great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford became chairman in 1999, he remained largely out of the spotlight, overshadowed by the more flamboyant, hard-charging Nasser.

Ford appeared content to tend to his role as chairman of the board of directors, pursuing his interest in environmentalism and his side job as vice president of the other family business, the Detroit Lions football team.

He let Nasser run the show -- and, eventually, the gantlet -- during the height of the Firestone tire controversy. Nasser, not Ford, was the front-man in defending the company's best selling sport utility vehicle, the high-profit Ford Explorer, when its safety came into question.

But when the company -- once thought to be in a position to overtake General Motors Corp. as the most profitable car company -- started seeing diminished earnings, market share, quality and employee morale, Ford decided to pull rank.