The Four Behaviors of Ford under Alan Mulally

Alan Mulally. Getty Images

Alan Mulally, Ford legend and former CEO was clear and very proscriptive around behaviours both at the senior leadership team level and at Ford during the turnaround in the late 2000’s. Mulally espoused four “Expected Behaviors”:

“Foster Functional and Technical Excellence

Own Working Together

Role Model Ford Values

Deliver Results”

These were the four behaviours he expected all Ford people to embody.

1. Foster Functional and Technical Expertise

¨ Know and have a passion for our business and our customers

¨ Demonstrate and build functional and technical excellence

¨ Ensure process discipline

¨ Have a continuous improvement philosophy and practice”[ii]

As the former CEO of PepsiCo, Roger Enrico used to say, “know your business cold”, Mulally made it known that every employee should understand this point. It’s not surprising why this was the first of his expected behaviours, Mulally, being an engineer himself.

At Ford, you are expected to be really good at your job, and to become the ‘expert’. Coaching Ford executives, I was also struck by this. They take great pride in being experts in their respective fields. In a highly technical field such as automotive, with rapidly changing technology, the only way to stay ahead is to ensure deep expertise is groomed within the company.

2. Own Working Together

¨ Believe in skilled and motivated people working together

¨ Include everyone; respect, listen to, help and appreciate others

¨ Build strong relationships, be a team player; develop ourselves and others

¨ Communicate clearly, concisely and candidly”[iii]

Mulally was not interested in people paying lip service to working together. He wanted people to really get it. Of all the behaviors, this one is probably the most unique.

Working together means several things. Firstly, it means cooperation. Ford people find a way to cooperate to get things done, and find solutions. They go out of their way to cooperate. Remember the example above of people pitching in to support those in the BPR who were in the red? This level of cooperation is exactly what Mulally wanted. He could supplant the stinging criticism of the old Ford, with support and assistance.

In my own work with Ford, the level of natural cooperation always strikes me. In one case, two parties in Ford discovered the conference room was double booked. Both meetings were important and vital to them respectively. Instead of arguing and competing to win the space, the two parties actually ‘worked together’ to find a solution, and another space. These two parties, being from different functions, didn’t really know each other, however there was this natural sense of cooperation and willingness to support.

The other area of working together is collaboration. In my own work with Ford, involving a company wide coaching project, it became apparent that HR needed the advice, opinions, and experience beyond their own expertise. They set up a ‘Consultative Forum’ cut across businesses and functions to act as consultants on the project. This Forum was more than just another cross-functional project. It was a venue in which all contributed with the best of intentions, ‘working together’ to create a successful result.

Working together also means a focus on others, and the team. One of the ten ‘rules’ that Mulally cited above was “respect, listen, help, and appreciate each other”. This certainly applied to all Ford people. However it also extended to suppliers and business partners. I had a personal experience with ‘appreciation’. In 2015, having completed a coaching training for a group of senior managers, I was back in the Ford offices in Shanghai. About 3 months after program completion, in the corridor I bumped into one of the participants, a senior executive in purchasing. He said, “Douglas, I just wanted to tell you I got so much out of the coaching training. I am applying it with my coachees, with great results”. That was one of my best days of the year! For a participant to recognize you months later and go out of his way to show appreciation was the ultimate validation. Upon reflection, I realize it also embodied the Ford spirit to appreciate in a natural and direct way.

3. Role Model Ford Values

¨ Show initiative courage, integrity and good corporate citizenship

¨ Improve quality, safety and sustainability

¨ Have a can do, find a way attitude and emotional resilience

¨ Enjoy the journey and each other, have fun – never at other’s expense”[iv]

We have touched on the importance of Values in a High Performance Team. Just as behaviours are what we can see, values are those deep beliefs that underpin behaviours. Most organizations have developed and perhaps communicated a set of values. However Mulally went beyond that…. he was interested in “role modelling the values”.

In the program I worked on with Ford, I remarked upon the importance placed on role modelling. All executives are expected to be the role models, to walk the talk. They are expected to set an example for others, and especially for junior members of the Ford team. Ford stands somewhat unique in that executives are expected to ‘park their egos’ for the greater good. The old Ford of the early 2000’s with Jacques Nasser at the helm was a different place. It was a Ford of strong command and control and big egos. Nasser ruled with an iron grip in the nexus of control.

The Ford of today is completely different thanks to the example set by Mulally. All are expected to role model the values articulated.

4. Deliver Results

¨ Deal positively with our business realities; develop compelling and comprehensive plans, while keeping an enterprise view

¨ Set high expectations and inspire others

¨ Make sound decisions using facts and data

¨ Hold ourselves and others responsible and accountable for delivery results and satisfying our customers”[v]

At the end of the day, if leaders embody the first three behaviours, but skip the results, the organization won’t be around very long. That's why it is incumbent on Ford people to exhibit the behaviour of delivering results. It reflects a mind-set that we are here to produce results, not just report or talk about them.

Every company culture has commensurate behaviours. Most companies however, don’t spend the time to truly integrate the behaviours in people’s daily working lives. Therefore people’s ‘unconscious behaviours’ become the norm. Mulally did the heavy lifting to ensure each employee could embody the four behaviours, thereby installing a level of ‘conscious behaviors’. When a company can truly imbibe its employees with ‘conscious behaviours’, the impact can be the difference between success and failure, as we see with Ford.

The Ford story is remarkable. It stands out in contrast to GM‘s path during the same period, enduring massive layoffs, and declaring bankruptcy in April 2009, requiring a $33 billion rescue from the US government. At Ford, instead of massive layoffs, morale soared to an all-time high as Ford employees saw their work recognized and found managers increasingly willing to listen to their ideas and concerns. At the gist of this success was a leader who believed in his team, and the power of culture to transform.