Changing The Way The World Works

If you could look inside the inner sanctum at Ford, what would you expect to see? Anxiety? Panic? Despair?

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The economy, after all, is getting worse not better. Monthly car sales in the U.S. have continued to drop precipitously. Ford has lost market share during the past year and reported $5.9 billion of losses in the last quarter of 2009.

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But if you spend a day with CEO Alan Mulally and his top executives, as I did recently, what you discover is a group of people who are laser-focused, hopeful, proud and incredibly passionate about the mission they’re on – even without retention bonuses or long term incentive plans.

Here are the four reasons I believe Ford is modeling how companies of the future ought to operate:

1. Creating value by valuing people. Alan Mulally is fiercely realistic about the steep challenge Ford faces, but he’s infectiously upbeat about their ability to meet it and he makes the people around him feel good, including about themselves. He truly understands that only positive emotions fuel sustainable high performance and that the more valued people feel, the more they’re freed and inspired to create more value.

2. Transparency rules. My colleague Annie Perrin and I began our day at Ford at 8:00 a.m. by attending Ford’s weekly Business Plan Review, which includes all of its senior executives around the world. Outsiders are regularly invited to observe the meeting. Every executive reports in on any new information that might influence Ford’s overall revenue projections, or any other part of its plan. Mulally operates on the assumption that the truth will set you free, even when it hurts.

3. Personal responsibility. The day we were there, one Ford executive described a significant shortfall on a particular projection. It was the sort of acknowledgement that might have prompted high drama in many boardrooms. In this case, the executive simply went on to list the ways he intended to address the shortfall over the coming days, and invited other suggestions. No energy was wasted in wringing hands or avoiding responsibility or assigning blame. The focus was entirely on solutions.

4. A mission worth believing in. Mulally believes that “to serve is to live” and he has rallied the notoriously factionalized and siloed Ford’s around a shared mission that is simple and compelling: make Ford the leader in quality, safety and fuel efficiency.

Public opinion may not have caught up yet, but the company has made significant progress on each of those fronts. Consumer Reports last month recommended 70 per cent of Ford’s vehicle, for example, vs. 17 per cent of GM’s and none of Chrysler’s. Ford’s cars have significantly improved in reliability and the company has an aggressive commitment not just to hybrids, but also to plug-in electric cars and to equaling or exceeding its competitors in fuel efficiency in all classes.

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In the midst of a perfect storm, Mulally has created a culture in which his team is working together closely to create a new kind of company. When the economic clouds finally do part, these executives have a shared conviction that they’ll emerge, along with Toyota and Volkswagen, as one of the three truly global automobile companies.

I’m not about to bet against them. I haven’t owned an American car in 20 years, but after a day hanging around Mulally and his team, I’m intending to buy a high-mileage electric Ford as my next one. dangers of plavix

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Overheard:

I have a boss who never looks you straight in the eye when you come to see him in his office. He has one eye on his Quotron, to keep track of stock prices. He has a Blackberry on his desk, and each time it pings, which is about every 10 seconds or so, he glances down at it. Half the time, he picks it up and types in a quick response while waving at you to keep talking. I can’t tell you how many times he has said to me, “I’m not sure I got that. Could you say it to me one more time?” He has a flat screen television on one wall, which is always tuned into CNBC, with the volume turned down. Every so often, you can see him looking right past you and squinting at the TV, trying to read the crawl at the bottom of the screen. His assistant walks in every so often carrying a yellow post-it note, which contains the name of someone waiting to speak to him on the phone. More often than not, he takes the calls. If you have something really important to tell him, the only chance you really have is to try to catch him on the way to the men’s room, because at least then you are only competing against his Blackberry – and his bladder.

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Does this feel familiar?

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Here’s a question we’ve all been asking ourselves: How is it that so many ostensibly smart people in the financial world got it so terribly wrong?

Thirty years ago, an ecologist and professor named Garrett Hardin wrote a classic article in the journal Science titled “The Tragedy of the Commons.” His thesis was that individuals, acting in their rational self-interest, may ultimately destroy a limited resource over the long term.

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To illustrate, Hardin used the metaphor of an open pasture – “the commons” – to which herdsmen bring their cattle to feed. The herdsmen understandably want to feed as many of their cattle as possible – or as Hardin put it “As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain.” It all works fine so long as there’s enough grass to feed all the cattle. As demand rises, however, the effects of overgrazing take a progressive toll on the commons, until ultimately they’re destroyed for everyone.

Continue reading ‘Rethinking Self-Interest’

Twenty five years ago, the New York Times Magazine ran an extraordinary article titled “How Do Tobacco Executives Live With Themselves?” by Roger Rosenblatt. At the end, he quoted an executive named Victor Crawford who worked for five years as a lobbyist for the Tobacco Institute and helped defeat a series of anti-smoking bills.

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A smoker himself, Crawford had been diagnosed with throat cancer two years earlier at the age of 59.

Continue reading ‘Our Infinite Capacity for Self-Deception’

Which companies are going survive and prosper in this brutal economic environment? It’s the ones that find a way to clearly differentiate themselves and provide high value.  But value to whom? The obvious answer is clients and customers, but the more fundamental answer is value to employees.

That may seem counter-intuitive. After all, employees don’t have a lot of leverage right now. They’re lucky just to be employed and getting a regular paycheck. Isn’t that enough?

klute movie Well, it depends on what organizations want from them. If it’s simply that they show up to work every day, and put in their hours, then yes, providing a regular paycheck is going to be enough. A paycheck serves our survival needs, which plainly matter. But if what companies want from people is extraordinary performance under very difficult conditions, then it pays to meet their needs more fully.

Continue reading ‘Redefining Value’