People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1 - 48

tiative. Veraldi assembled a cross-functional
team of designers, engineers, purchasing staff,
marketing personnel, and representatives from
manufacturing. This ensured input from the
assembly line, suppliers, and dealers who knew
what customers wanted. Taurus became the
bestselling car in America, at nearly $500 million under budget.
During his career at Boeing, Mulally wrote
an introduction to a book on teamwork
titled Working Together (Lewis, 2002).
Mulally's introduction focused on components of relationships at work: interdependence of task and customer focus; inclusion
and importance of each individual to the
plan; transparency; listening; helpfulness;
celebration; and enjoyment.
Mulally implemented the "Working Together" approach at Boeing. Working Together
requires the leadership team to share knowledge by meeting every week to review their
progress, discuss problems, and decide how
to address their challenges-to think and act
together-as a learning and performance
unit. By 2006, Boeing's commercial jet division was on its way to record sales, revenue,
and earnings. Mulally credited Working
Together for these results.
Mulally's approach of working together and
the weekly business plan review is similar to
Senge's thinking, acting, and playing together. Mulally's approach requires the team, a
learning unit, to use dialogue and personal
connections to fully benefit from informal
knowledge sharing and, in turn, create the
desired results.

Working Together and
the Business Plan Review
Based on his belief that the leadership team
decides the company's direction, Mulally dissolved the FMC strategic planning group a few
months after his arrival in September 2006. As
with his earlier use of the Working Together
approach, Mulally turned the leadership team
into a learning and performing unit. The
weekly business plan review (BPR) was held on
the same day at the same time. Attendance was
mandatory for all senior executives. Each
executive was given a set of slide templates and
expected to fill in the blanks with the real data.

Facilitators
Leaders are often facilitators of the interper48

PEOPLE & STRATEGY

sonal relationships between collaborators. As
facilitator of his first business plan review
with the FMC executive team, Mulally needed to share a vision for the business plan
review process before he could share a vision
for FMC. The BPRs were a significant change
for these executives. As the executives took
their places at the table, Mulally pointed out
the list of 10 rules posted on the walls. He
reviewed the list with the group, placing
emphasis on a few points, such as no side discussions or jokes at another's expense.
After the review of the ground rules, Mulally
presented his first slide with a blue oval
labelled "Vision" in the center. As with the
original goal of One Ford, this vision remains
intact as "One Team: People working together as a lean, global enterprise for automotive
leadership as measured by customer, employee, dealer, investor, supplier, union/council,
and community satisfaction" (FMC, 2014).
The shared vision did not happen immediately, but Mulally was consistent, led by
example, and enforced the ground rules and
the process without exception. A shared
vision generates the will to build capacity for
resilience and deliver superior performance.

What Matters to
Leaders?
Recent research has found that the main
concern of leaders is the personal impact
they make on improved organizational performance (Emmons, 2013). When the FMC
board asked Bill Ford to consider bankruptcy, Ford wondered, "What would Henry
Ford think of his company today? What
would he think of me?" And while Mulally
was flattered by the opportunity to run
FMC, he pondered, "Can I still make a difference, or is it too late?" During his first
month, he presented his plan to transform
FMC and shared the mark he intended to
make. He labeled the latter "Alan's Legacy."
Mulally was well on the way to establishing
his legacy during his first year. He continued
to research, inquire, and reflect as well as
build knowledge-sharing relationships. He
met with engineers, read engineering schematics, visited the product development center, drove different vehicles, called industry
experts, spoke with Ford's financial advisers,
commissioned studies, and read old financial
reports, white papers, and internal studies.
Mulally ate in the company cafeteria and personally responded to emails. He even met
with then-CEO of General Motors, Rick

Wagoner, to ask questions about business
cycles, product strategy, and negotiations
with the United Auto Workers and dealings
with the Environmental Protection Agency.
Mulally saw FMC's inefficiencies as opportunities to consolidate and simplify. When
Mulally reviewed the Way Forward acceleration plan, he noted the plan cut costs yet
neglected the need to make cars consumers
wanted to buy. In the automotive industry, a
successful business model requires lean budgets and strong brands. At FMC, the brands
had lackluster designs and poor quality.
It is not enough to recognize opportunities for
consolidation, simplification, and response to
customer demand. The act of clarifying the
customer value proposition and profit formula is a group, rather than solo, performance. Mulally's team had to determine the
best way to seize those opportunities.
Through the business plan review, the executive team began to share purpose, become

Top 'Must-Dos'
n Learn as much as you can about your
challenge. Talk to customers and
employees on the front line. Seek
information from a variety of sources.
Eat in the company cafeteria.
n Use the framework for asking the
right questions. Make inquiries
based on your research. Reflect by
jotting down your stream of
consciousness on a pad of paper.
n Nurture relationships with connectors,
collaborators, and allies. Learn and
practice facilitation skills. Find
mentors and serve as a mentor.
Assume or assign the role of
disseminator. Narrate the story of
personal and organizational
success.
n Turn your team into a learning and
performing unit. Build capacities for
resilience, organizational health,
and the deliver y of superior
performance. Think, act, and play
together to recognize and seize
opportunities.
n Implement the business plan review
process.

People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1