In chapter 7 we introduced the outward-mindset way of thinking about one’s role and obligations at work (and elsewhere). A hallmark of this way of working is a focus on the needs, objectives, and challenges of those toward whom one has responsibility. Those who work with an outward mindset take responsibility for their impact on the results of their reports, their customers, their peers, and their managers. They hold themselves accountable for their full impact on the overall results of the organization.
As we have observed those who consistently work in this way, we have discovered a pattern—a way of working that such individuals demonstrate. They
1. see the needs, objectives, and challenges of others
2. adjust their efforts to be more helpful to others
3. measure and hold themselves accountable for the impact of their work on others
Engaging in these three steps is a practical approach to implementing and sustaining an outward-mindset way of working. You can remember the pattern with the simple acronym SAM—see others, adjust efforts, measure impact. We capture this outward-mindset pattern in diagram 12 on the next page.
The power of the outward-mindset pattern can be seen in the turnaround of Ford Motor Company, a change that began with the hiring of a new CEO—Alan Mulally.
Diagram 12. The Outward-Mindset Pattern
Mulally spent thirty-seven years at Boeing, where he was instrumental inturning around Boeing’s commercial-jetliner business. A native Iowan with a disarming “aw-shucks” manner coupled with steely perseverance and an innate knack for team building, he was hired as president and CEO at Ford in September 2006. The company was in a desperate state. Bleeding at the rate of $17 billion per year, it put all its remaining chips on Alan Mulally.1
As Mulally soon discovered, no one at Ford felt responsible for the problems of the company. The situation was like what we find with organizations generally—people usually rate themselves much more favorably than they rate their companies. Ford was losing billions of dollars annually while the individuals at the company believed they themselves were performing well.
Mulally brought to Ford the management approach that had been so successful for him at Boeing. He led through a mechanism of two weekly meetings. The first, the Business Plan Review, or BPR, as it is commonly referred to at Ford, is held every Thursday morning. Immediately following the BPR, the leaders reconvene in a second meeting, the Special Attention Review, or SAR, to devise tactical solutions for the issues identified during the BPR.
Mulally trained his executive team to come to the BPR prepared with charts that showed performance against the company plan for each area of responsibility. He had them color-code their charts: anything that was on plan was to be coded green, anything at risk of going off plan was to be coded yellow, and anything off plan was to be coded red. Changes from the prior week were to be coded blue. They couldn’t have anyone else report for them; each member of the executive team was responsible for his or her own part of the business. “This is the only way I know how to operate,” Mulally explained to his team in their introductory meeting. “We need to have everybody involved. We need to have a plan. And we need to know where we are on the plan.”2 Mulally pointed to ten BPR rules he had posted on the wall of the room3:
• People first
• Everyone is included
• Clear performance goals
• One plan
• Facts and data
• Propose a plan, “find-a-way” attitude
• Respect, listen, help, and appreciate each other
• Emotional resilience … trust the process
• Have fun … enjoy the journey and each other
Most of the executives were not very keen on Mulally’s weekly reporting mechanism. One even walked out on the first week’s meeting, chafing at what sounded like an overload of unhelpful weekly meeting prep.4 Dutifully, however, all the team members came the next week with charts prepared. The company was losing money hand over fist, but as the executives presented, each and every chart was coded green.
Why, despite the company’s woeful performance, were all the charts green? Because you couldn’t be wrong at Ford and keep your position. So no one was wrong. The company was underperforming, sure, the executives would privately admit, but I’m not. Jason might be, or Beth, or Ash, but not me. At least I’m performing at a higher level than they are. The situation would be a lot worse if not for me.
Mulally was troubled by the sea of green charts, but he wasn’t surprised by it. He was new, and the team was still unsure about him. He understood that. But he also knew that this couldn’t continue for long if the company was going to survive. He continued his daily work with the team in part so they would know that it was safe for them to present the truth. But when they convened again the next two weeks, the charts were still green. By halfway through the third week’s meeting, Mulally had seen enough. “We’re going to lose billions of dollars this year,” he said, interrupting the reporting. “Is there anything that’s not going well here?”5
His team nervously looked at the boardroom tabletop. No one said anything.
The next week, just before the new Ford Edge was about to ship out of Oakville, Ontario, Canada, a test driver reported a problem on one of the test vehicles: the tailgate had an actuator problem. Mark Fields had a decision to make.
Fields led Ford’s operations in the Americas. Had the company promoted from within, he would have been the new CEO instead of Mulally. So Fields figured that his days at Ford were numbered. With these facts in mind, he weighed his options. The problem on the tailgate may well turn out to be an anomaly, he thought. We could ship and everything would be fine. On the other hand, if the vehicles weren’t fine, it would be big trouble. Mulally was demanding that everything Ford produced be first in class. Shiny new Ford Edges with faulty tailgates would create a very public counterpoint. Not knowing the new boss well yet, Fields knew he couldn’t take that chance. So he would postpone the launch. He had settled it in his mind.
That left a more difficult decision: Was he going to tell anyone about the problem at the Thursday BPR? Again, he weighed his options. We can probably get this fixed and ship the cars without anyone knowing about the issue. On the other hand, what if we can’t? That thought suggested that he tell Mulally and his colleagues the truth. But this kind of transparency wasn’t safe at Ford at the time. Telling the truth, exposing challenges in your area of operations, usually resulted in losing your job. These were hard-charging professionals for whom other people’s mistakes were like chum to sharks. Fields felt like a dead man. If he shipped and the vehicles were faulty, he was a goner. But he was sure that the same fate awaited him if he came to the meeting and, in a final blaze of glory, told everyone that the Edge had a problem.
He thought it over and finally decided that since he was dead anyway, he was going to call it like it was. He prepared his chart. In red.
Fields filed into the room on week four as the only person on the team with a chart that was anything but green. When it was his turn, he tried to be nonchalant. When the Ford Edge chart came up, he said, “And on the Edge, we’re red; you can see it there.”
Silence.
Everyone around the table knew what Mark Fields knew. He was as good as gone.
Everyone except one, and that person started clapping. “Mark,” Mulally smiled as he clapped, “that is great visibility.” Then he turned to the rest of the group and asked the question that was the beginning of their education in the outward mind-set: “Who can help Mark with that?”
At that invitation, a number of Fields’s colleagues jumped in with offers. One said that he had seen that issue on another vehicle and would get that information to Fields immediately. Another offered to quickly get a group of his top-flight engineers to Oakville to help on any redesign that might need to happen. And so on.
Interestingly, in the BPR the following week, Fields was still the only person with a chart that was anything but green. No one was yet willing to follow his lead and give an honest accounting because everyone had expected him to be dismissed after the prior week’s meeting. When he showed up the following week with his Edge chart still red, but moving to yellow, and Mulally still smiling at him, the others began to realize that Mulally was for real. “You aren’t red,” Mulally insisted. “The issue you’re working on is red.” And he wanted them to help each other with the challenges they each faced, something they could do only if they came forward with their challenges. The week after that, the charts around the room had so much red that the meeting looked like a crime scene.6
The team continued to work this way together, regularly reporting on their responsibilities and learning about the challenges their colleagues were facing. “Who can help with that?” was as common a question as the charts were red and yellow. Individually and collectively, team members stayed focused on nailing their own responsibilities and doing so in ways that helped their colleagues nail theirs. They tracked not only what they each did but also their impact on each other and their various stakeholders.
You may know the rest of the story. Working this way together and spreading this helpful, self-accountable ap proach throughout the company, Ford was able to pull itself out of a deep ditch—to such a degree that it was able to get in front of the financial crisis of 2007–08 as the only American automobile manufacturer that didn’t have to take federal moneys to survive. Alan Mulally retired from Ford in the spring of 2014 and joined the board of Google. His replacement at Ford was Mark Fields.
Think about the Ford turnaround story in relation to the three elements of the outward-mindset pattern that we diagrammed earlier in the chapter.
Regarding the first step—seeing the needs, objectives, and challenges of others (and the organization as a whole)—the BPR process itself gave the members of Mulally’s team visibility both into their own contribution to the whole and into the needs, objectives, challenges, and activities of their colleagues. It was up to each person to engage in the process with an outward mindset, which took a while to happen at Ford. Had Mulally not run the BPR process with an outward mindset himself, the process would not have yielded the benefit we are speaking of here. But because Mulally’s mindset was outward in the way he worked with his team and conducted these meetings, that forum offered the Ford team an opportunity to see their own roles in relation to others.
The second step of the outward-mindset pattern is adjusting one’s work to become more helpful to others. This step naturally follows the first. Once the team could see the challenges faced around the table, Mulally invited them to step up and help. “Who can help Mark with that?” was more than a question. It was a statement about how Mulally wanted his people to take responsibility not just for their own part in the overall project but also for their impact on their colleagues’ ability to successfully fulfill their responsibilities.
Lastly, they gathered together each week to see if the help they were providing was making any difference in their coworkers’ ability to get results. This is the third step in the outward-mindset pattern: measuring impact. Mulally’s process gave the Ford team at least a once-a-week way of assessing whether the adjustments being made by those around the room were actually helping. Each week they had the opportunity to assess their impact on one another and the company’s overall results and make necessary adjustments.
The turnaround at Ford depended on the team’s engaging in each step of the outward-mindset pattern: see others, adjust efforts, and measure impact. In the next chapter, we take a deeper look at each of these three elements of the outward-mindset pattern.