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Alan Mulally is Famous for his "Working Together" Leadership & Management System at Ford and Boeing.
Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Company from 2006 to 2014, pulled off one of the most agile, culturally transformative and peer-powered turnarounds in corporate history. It was captured in Bryce G. Hoffman’s book, American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company. It was all based around his “Working Together” Leadership & Management System, a rich example of a peer-powered culture of agility and the One Advantage at work.
I had the opportunity to see it in action before it was implemented at Ford when Alan was at Boeing. I ran the aerospace division of a British public company and formed a strategic alliance with the Boeing Connexion unit of the commercial airplane division of Boeing, of which Alan was president and CEO.
We Wrote and Reviewed a Chapter With Alan About It in Our New eBook.
He took on the agility challenge on the biggest scale possible and his "Working Together” approach is the architecture of an Agile Operating System. It amounted to a Collective Intelligence turnaround. Ford went from being Collectively Unintelligent (to put it mildly!) to being Collectively Intelligent.
"When I reviewed Mike’s chapter about our “Working Together” approach at Ford and Boeing, I immediately called to tell him that it was one of the best descriptions I have read. He really gets it. Our “Working Together” leadership, management system, and its connected culture of love by design creates value for all stakeholders and the greater good. Mike’s concept of “C2C: Conversation-Flow to Cash-Flow” gets to the heart of that challenge.” Alan Mulally, former Executive Vice President of the Boeing Company, CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes and CEO of The Ford Motor Company. Former member of the Boards of Directors of Alphabet and the Mayo Clinic.
He Cracked the Agility Code.
It was a turnaround of C2C: Conversation-Flow to Cash-Flow (and Share-Price!). Alan drove a higher quantity of discussions and decisions across all of the initiatives Ford had in motion or needed to put in motion. He drove a better quality of discovery and dialog among all team members to solve difficult problems. He drove a faster frequency of closed loop accountability to adjust and adapt. He moved the quantity, quality, and cadence of conversation flow onto a whole new trajectory. Soon thereafter, Ford’s cash flow trajectory started to follow. Then its share price trajectory followed, for the whole world to see. He cracked the agility code.
Resulting in a Turnaround of Collective Intelligence.
Alan created the conditions for the beginning of a 5 level reset. It was one of the most agile, culturally transformative and peer-powered turnarounds in corporate history, resulting in a turnaround of Ford's Collective Intelligence from being Collectively Unintelligent (to put in mildly)!
“An intelligence advantage has always been essential for success in business, whether with airplanes, automobiles or technology. That is the essence of the “Working Together” leadership, management system, and its connected culture of love by design that creates value for the greater good, that we used at Ford and Boeing. It is based upon including the Human Intelligence of all of the stakeholders with all of their intelligences, knowledge, experiences, talents, wisdom, positive mindsets, and humility, love, and service. That is the fundamental foundation for our current Collective Intelligence! As Artificial Intelligence emerges mainstream to supercharge our Collective Intelligence, I believe those Human Intelligence foundations will become even more critical. There is nothing artificial about that, so I urge us to evolve some other words.”
Alan Mulally, former Executive Vice President of the Boeing Company, CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes and CEO of The Ford Motor Company. Former member of the Boards of Directors of Alphabet and the Mayo Clinic.
Collective Intelligence = Artificial Intelligence + Human Intelligence
I Invited Alan to Join my Peer Forum One Afternoon
All of the Forum members were wrestling with issues that were holding back the profitability and growth of their organizations, and the discussion that afternoon revealed how similar the agility problems and solutions were between Alan, as CEO of a large company and the smaller company CEOs.
Alan eventually used a flipchart to sketch out the elements of the “Working Together” Leadership & Management System, pointing out its alignment with an agile operating system. The conversation got deep into the challenge of how to incorporate agility and Alan’s management system into organizations.
Agility is "Working Together"
Alan Mulally knew at Boeing and at Ford that there is only one thing that future-proofs a business with the agility required: working together. His “Working Together” Leadership & Management System is the engine room of agility, and its principles and practices are inclusive, putting people first, and respect. A clear vision and strategy are, of course, a part of this approach, and everyone understands the plan. But the approach also defines a culture of skilled and motivated teams with a “find-a-way” attitude of agility in pursuit of a win-win-win equation of profitable growth for all the stakeholders and the greater good.
"Working Together" is Agile
Alan Mulally knew that his “Working Together” approach had an inbuilt agile operating system within it. Central to it was the cadence of the weekly business plan review (BPR) meeting of his entire leadership team, triaging their whole agenda of challenges, problems, opportunities, and solutions, globally and locally. Every leader, every issue, every week, no matter what.
This might be the biggest and best business example ever of a Weekly Scrum Meeting!
Agile leaders know that a matrix of agile meetings is at the heart of a peer-powered culture of agility. It is the traction control system, providing a weekly opportunity to adjust and adapt your triage in synch with the whole team to stay on the same page and keep the chaos organized. Critical to that is the concept of scrum meetings on a daily and weekly basis, which helped plan, prioritize, uncover obstacles, make course corrections, and otherwise keep the process flowing with agility.
The One Advantage is Agile "Working Together"
The only reliable competitive advantage these days is agility with a peer-powered culture, which is what Mulally’s “Working Together” Leadership & Management System is about. A leader fostering “Working Together” must serve as the chief agility officer, holding themselves and their team responsible for following the processes and behaviors that are endemic to this approach. Doing so not only results in identifying and solving issues and improving processes, it adds shareholder value and serves the greater good. This management system works because it is clear, has reliable processes built in, is inclusive, and allows a company to be nimble and adaptive.
At Boeing and Ford, Alan Mulally was a case study of being an agile leadership presence. Progressively during the course of his career with Boeing, he developed skill with and became a model of the five key attributes of agility. The complexity of engineering and project management involved left him no choice. His agile leadership presence positively impacted the trajectory of every program and business he was involved in, and the first day he walked through the door, Ford’s trajectory was also inflected positively.
Read More in our eBook with a Chapter Reviewed by Alan Mulally
Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Company from 2006 to 2014, pulled off one of the most agile, culturally transformative and peer-powered turnarounds in corporate history. Read more about that in our eBook:
"I love The One Advantage as an expression of the “Working Together” approach I used at Ford and Boeing. It is the only competitive advantage you really have." Alan Mulally, former CEO, Ford Motor Company and Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
My Co-authors Jason Richmond, Leo Bottary and I explore how you can introduce a peer-powered culture of agility into your organization. It is your one and only competitive advantage which has any permanence these days. Everything else is increasingly temporary, increasingly quickly, probably bigger, faster and sooner than you think.
That is what Alan Mulally did at Ford. See more References, Resources & Graphics below about Alan Mulally's "Working Together" Leadership & Management System (all provided with permission).
"Working Together" References, Resources & Graphics
The resources below are hosted here with the permission of Alan Mulally
Fantastic Video of Alan Mulally Giving an Overview of his "Working Together" Leadership & Management System
Fantastic Article: A CONVERSATION WITH ALAN MULALLY ABOUT HIS “WORKING TOGETHER”© STRATEGIC, OPERATIONAL, AND STAKEHOLDER-CENTERED MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
