Principles for Successful Teamwork | Alan Mulally | Knowledge Project Podcast 151

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Values learned at home became a leadership system.

  Growing up with modest means and a lot of love in Lawrence, Kansas, Mulally heard a lesson from his parents each morning. ‘The purpose of life is to love and be loved—in that order.’ ‘Service is to live.’ ‘Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.’ ‘It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.’ The one that shaped him most: working together lets you make the most positive contribution to the most people. Service was also his route to Levi’s and college: TV Guide routes, lawn mowing, and checker at Dillons grocery, where he was the only checker anyone tipped—for asking whether customers had found everything and had their coupons.

• 02

  Live one integrated life, and check it on your calendar every day.

  His parents drew a big circle labeled ‘one life,’ with smaller circles inside for work, family, spirit and community, and ‘life’s work’ (meaning service) underneath. Decide what matters in each circle, then check your calendar every morning and night. Booking a family trip next year doesn’t cover family. At Boeing his assistant put his family-meeting commitments on his calendar, and colleagues knew he might vanish for an hour for a parent-teacher conference.

• 03

  Build a culture of ‘love by design’ on a card everyone carries.

  The principles: put people first and ‘love them up’; include every stakeholder; rally around a compelling vision, comprehensive strategy and relentless implementation plan; set clear performance goals with one plan; and rely on facts and data. Expect the unexpected; follow agreed behaviors such as proposing a plan, a find-a-way attitude, respect and listening; stay emotionally resilient; have fun. There’s zero tolerance for violating the process or behaviors, and if you slip, ‘just say you’re sorry.’ It was the one piece of paper he brought from Boeing to Ford.

• 04

  Weekly business plan reviews with color-coded status make problems safe to show.

  Every Thursday from 7 to 9 a.m., the whole leadership team, worldwide, reviewed vision, strategy, plan and every area’s status. Green meant on plan; yellow, an issue with a solution; red, an issue still being solved. Mulally missed perhaps 10 meetings in years and dialed in from wherever he was. ‘You’re not red; your item is red.’ A red item is ‘a gem’ that lets everyone help. No devices are allowed; open a laptop and the meeting stops. Ford’s new plan cut capacity to real demand, built a full lineup of best-in-class cars and utilities, borrowed $23.5 billion, and ran ‘One Ford’ as a single global team.

• 05

  Consistency is what earns trust in the process.

  An outsider can’t just announce a new culture. For the first few weeks Mulally spent a couple of hours a day answering anyone’s questions about the card, then started the reviews. What won people over was handling every red item the same way, week after week. Discipline about the process and about behavior creates safety. Once leaders trusted that issues would be dealt with together, stress fell, they slept at night, and confidence grew with each solved problem. Within two months, he says, Ford was on its way.

• 06

  Make behavior a choice, and accept either answer.

  When an executive attacked a colleague or showed off with rhetorical questions, Mulally followed up privately and asked what it did to the team. Some said command-and-control had served them well. ‘It’s okay,’ he’d reply, meaning they could choose to leave and still be loved. He asked them to talk it over with family and decide by morning; the team would agree on two or three things to improve. About 80% committed. One rhetorical questioner said she’d been violating her true self for years and became one of the best collaborative leaders he worked with.

• 07

  Leaders facilitate and coach; humility asks three questions.

  With 12 or 13 direct reports covering every discipline, nobody gets left out and the team doesn’t split into haves and have-nots. A CEO once asked if boards would pay him to facilitate; Mulally said they’d pay twice as much for a good facilitator, because knowledge workers know more than the boss. From Marilyn Gist’s work on leader humility come three questions people silently ask: Is this about you or about us? Where are we going? Do you see me?

• 08

  Repeated behavior reshapes beliefs; feedback works when expectations are clear.

  Authenticity is alignment of beliefs, values and behaviors. You can only see behaviors, but acting this way week after week shifts the values beneath. Each year every leader got one or two improvement items through a 360 review. The whole team knew them, so feedback became expected and specific, which Marshall Goldsmith called stakeholder-centered coaching. Once people have worked this way, they won’t tolerate anything else.