Fiat SpA (F.MI) Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne's game plan for the Chrysler LLC turnaround will start simply.

Marchionne will "visit, visit, visit - visit the facilities, the plants, and the people," a Fiat spokesman said by phone from Turin, Italy. "The scope of this exercise is to create a management team that works together, that meets each other, that mingles."

Fiat's own turnaround was based on Marchionne's recognition that the Italian auto maker's senior management was holding the company back by shirking responsibility and not empowering lower-level employees. Through endless staff meetings, Marchionne identified high-potential employees and promoted them.

When Marchionne took over at Fiat in 2004, the company had gone through four CEOs in three years, was losing money and was crippled by strikes. The patriarch of its controlling shareholder, Gianni Agnelli of the Agnelli family, had just passed away. The company was too big for the Italian state or a private investor to save - assuming there had been any takers.

Now, Fiat's revamped model lineup has been heralded as one of the most environmentally friendly in Europe, and Marchionne is seen as one of the world's sharpest auto executives. Prior to the first quarter of this year, Fiat was turning a profit.

Marchionne must prove that he has the mettle to revive Chrysler in much the same way. The Auburn Hills, Mich., auto maker filed for bankruptcy protection Thursday in a plan that will pave the way for Fiat to eventually become majority owner.

Marchionne said Thursday in a statement he will spend "a great deal of time in the coming months" meeting with Chrysler employees and touring its facilities, though Fiat couldn't immediately provide a date for his first visit.

Italian by birth but raised in Canada, Marchionne is reputed to be a tough and demanding boss in terms of setting targets, but with a good eye for spotting talent. He agrees with this assessment.

"My job as CEO is not to make decisions about the business but to set stretch objectives and help our managers work out how to reach them," Marchionne wrote in Harvard Business Review's December 2008 issue, saying Fiat had become a "laughingstock" before he took over.

For example, he cut the time it takes from the drawing board to dealer's showroom for the Fiat 500 - a compact "city car" along the lines of BMW AG's Mini that he calls "Fiat's iPod" - from four years to 18 months. He did it simply by "challenging assumptions" that engineers had about the design and production process, he told Harvard Business Review.

His plan for Chrysler "will be a Xerox" of what he did at Fiat and at Fiat's tractor unit CNH, the Fiat spokesman said. It is still too soon to talk specifics about board nominations, management changes, product launches and the rest, the spokesman added.

Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli says he'll step down once the bankruptcy reorganization is complete, and Chrysler President Tom LaSorda said he'll depart before that. If Marchionne's track record is any indication, he will replace a lot of Chrysler's management.

"At CNH, Marchionne went through the ranks and got rid of any manager he decided was not up to snuff," said a person at CNH who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak. "He has a clear idea of what he wants to do, and he's pretty ruthless about doing it."

Another part of Marchionne's cure for Fiat and CNH was to bring a sharper focus to the groups' brands. That is likely to happen at Chrysler as well.

"I call his technique 'management by stress,' because he sets high goals and his colleagues suffer from a lot of anxiety as they try to meet them," said Giuseppe Volpato, professor of economics and business administration at Venice's Ca' Foscari University and author of "Fiat: A Phoenix In The World Auto Industry."

At Fiat, Marchionne didn't bring in management consultants or outside executives who were his friends. In addition, he didn't fire workers or close plants.

Instead, he poached managers from competitors, boosted the company's marketing department and overhauled its dealer network, according to Volpato's 2008 book on Fiat's turnaround.

Fiat will start out with a 20% stake in Chrysler when the U.S. auto maker emerges from bankruptcy protection. Fiat will get another 15% if it meets certain metrics, including introducing a vehicle produced at a Chrysler factory in the U.S. that performs at 40 miles per gallon, providing Chrysler with a foreign distribution network and manufacturing next-generation engines at a U.S. Chrysler facility.

In addition, Fiat has an option to acquire a further 16%, bringing its stake to 51%, once Chrysler pays off its debts to the U.S. government. Fiat can exercise that option from Jan. 1, 2013, to June 30, 2016.

-By Jennifer Clark, Dow Jones Newswires; 312 750 4135; jennifer.clark@dowjones.com