In this episode, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith discusses the innovation and cultural shifts that Alan Mulally orchestrated as President and CEO of the Ford Motor Company from 2006 to 2014.
Episode Transcript
Introduction
Welcome to The Center for Leadership Studies podcast, an exploration of contemporary leadership issues with experts from a variety of fields and leadership backgrounds. In this episode, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith discusses the innovation and cultural shifts that Alan Mulali orchestrated as president and CEO of the Ford Motor Company from 2006 to 2014. From The Center for Leadership Studies, Here’s your host, Sam Shriver.
Sam Shriver
You were recently identified by Thinker 50 as the number one thinker in the world, correct? And you’re also the number one coach.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
Right.
Sam Shriver
So, as were talking before the interview started, you’ve got nowhere to go but down.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
I may be entered in an intergalactic contest.
Sam Shriver
First off, congratulations.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
Thank you for that.
Sam Shriver
But secondly, with that territory, just like anybody else that’s a big winner, how do you repeat it? How do you keep it going? What are you seeing in organizations and sort of what’s on your horizon to kind of maintain that status, for lack of a better term, or that tremendous influence potential?
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
One of the things that I’m working on is working with my friend Alan Malali, who I consider to be just a spectacularly great leader. My friend Alan was ranked the number three greatest leader in the world behind the Pope and Angela Merkel C of the Year in the United States. And I’ve had the privilege of observing the way he has led people. So he goes into Ford. The stock is valued at a dollar, and he leaves it’s $18.40. I mean, unbelievable turnaround. And he didn’t take any of the US. Government taxpayer money. So just an amazing guy and a 97% approval rating from all employees in a union company. Think about that. A CEO in a union company with a 97% approval rating from the employees. Unheard of, he’s the most respected leader of a big company in the world. Just an amazing man.
And Alan is a believer of Situational Leadership®. Let me tell you how he applies it in a different way because most of the people you’ve been training are first-line, second-line managers, and back to expertise. They have the expertise to do the job, and they are the provider of the leadership. Alan goes in at Ford. He really doesn’t have expertise. He has a lot of expertise as a leader, and he is an engineer. He’s a smart guy, but he had no experience in auto company at all. And he was basically told, you have no chance of success. Well, that was wrong. Everybody that bet on his chance of success made a whole lot of money. Right. He was a fantastic leader.
He could lead any organization, though let me tell you what he’s taught me that is so brilliant and how it connects to Situational Leadership®. Alan’s view is as you go higher and higher up the chain, you’re more of a facilitator, a person who helps people get the leadership they need, not the provider of the leadership. So what he does that’s brilliant is he really encourages people to be honest about their readiness level. Now, you’re an expert on Situational Leadership®. Readiness level is the key driver of leadership style. So he goes to Ford, and they’re top 16 people, five priorities each. Red, yellow, green. Green is I’m on plan. Now yellow is; well, I’m not on plan, but I have a strategy to get there. And red is, I’m not on plan. I have no strategy. So the first meeting, everyone’s green.
So the company is losing, like, 17 billion, and everyone’s on plan. So Alan goes, well, we’re losing $17 billion, and everyone’s on plan. I guess our plan must be to lose at least $17 billion, because we’re right there. We’re on plan.
Sam Shriver
Onward.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
Yeah. Let’s do it again. So finally, Mark Field stands up and says Red. So Alan starts applauding. He says, thank you for having the courage and the transparency to tell the truth. Good. He said you’re not on plan. You know how to get there. And then he said, this is something I’ve never heard a CEO say. It’s okay. You’re not on plan. You don’t know how to get there. It’s okay. Then he said, I’m the CEO of the Ford Motor Company. I know a lot less than you do. That’s okay, too. How many CEOs have you ever heard say that before? Not too many. Yeah, that’s not common CEO talk. Right. I haven’t heard a lot of them say, you don’t know anything, and it’s okay, and I know less than you, and that’s okay. Now, I’m not frequently hearing that one.
That doesn’t pop to mind very often. Right. Then he said, We’ve got hundreds of thousands of people that work here. We can hire outside people if we need to. Let’s just get the help we need. Then Alan said, within ten minutes, the problem is largely solved. Somebody said, Well, I know somebody, or I know somebody. Back to Situational Leadership®. See, Mark Fields was lost.
He needed help. Well, what happened is they found the help they needed, not from higher-ups, but from people at different levels in the company who actually had the expertise to help him. So, from a Situational Leadership® point of view, he wanted to learn. He needed to learn. Alan, as the CEO, couldn’t use a style to and teach him how to do it because he didn’t know himself. What he did, though, as a facilitator, is he facilitated a process so that Mark Fields got the leadership he needed, but it didn’t have to come from his boss.
Sam Shriver
Right.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
So the other thing Alan did, which is brilliant, is the huge majority of leaders in this will immediately start asking questions. Have you thought of this? Have you thought of that? One of the worst things you can do. One of my coaching clients who retired a few years ago was JP Garnier. He was CEO of Glaxel Smith Klein. I asked JP what’d you learn about leadership of CEO Glaxel Smith Klein? He said I learned a hard lesson. And he said, My suggestions become orders. Now, he said if they’re smart, they’re orders. And if they’re stupid, they’re orders. And if I want them to be orders, they’re orders. If I don’t want to be orders anyway, then my suggestions become orders. Well, I said, what did you learn from me when I was your coach that helped you the most?
He said, Before I speak, breathe and ask myself, is it worth it? Is it worth it? Now, let’s go back to Alan and Mark Fields. Mark Fields comes up and says, RIT, if Alan then would say, have you thought of this? There’s a very high probability you know, what would have happened? Aye-aye, sir.
Sam Shriver
Great idea.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
Great idea. The worst of all worlds. One, Alan knows a whole lot less than Mark Fields in this dialogue. So, the idea is probably a bad idea. Two, Mark has no ownership. It’s Alan’s idea. He’s the boss. The CEO told me to do this right. He’s got no ownership. Well, the incredible discipline that Alan has, which I find amazing, is and humility, is fight the urge to give people ideas. If you don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t pretend to be an expert if you’re not.
And it’s perfectly okay to say, I don’t know. It’s okay. And in fact, it’s not only okay, it’s much better. Because if you start throwing out ideas, then what happens is people just run around and do these things, and oftentimes, they make no sense. And back to JP Garney’s comment. Suggestions become orders.
Sam Shriver
Yeah.
It’s interesting because we are at Center for Leadership Studies. We have a model, we built programs around that model worldwide. It’s a trademark copyrighted framework, and we protect that. It sounds to me, though, and I’ve heard many managers say this, executives, Situational Leadership®, it changed the way I manage people. Yes, I went through the program, and that altered as we talk about leadership is an attempt to influence. It helped me parent. It helped me know coaching. It helped me in all different kinds of things. But it almost sounds like what Alan did years later, after he had been through is he was still applying.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
Oh, yeah, definitely.
Sam Shriver
The principles of it’s just kind of like, where are we? What are we doing?
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
What’s the readiness level?
Sam Shriver
Yeah, just putting that in context.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
Well, and creating an environment, which is something you’re doing in your influence program. Creating an environment where people can be honest about their readiness level.
And if you need help, it’s okay to say you need help. If you need direction. You need coaching, you need coaching. You need support, you need support. And you can do it on your own, you could do it on your own. It’s okay to do that, it’s okay for somebody to say, Red, I need help.
I don’t know how to do it. That’s okay. Well, that’s a real breakthrough. One of the worst things a leader can say I learned this from Alan is, I’m sure you’ve heard this. Don’t come to me with a problem. Don’t come to me unless you have a solution. Well, that’s nice. Let’s say you have a problem and you don’t have a solution. Now, I shout at you and say, don’t come to me. So you know what you learn. Okay, I won’t come to you. I’ll hide it. You told me not to come to you.
Sam Shriver
I’m following directions. You’re giving me style one, and I’m compliant.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
I’m not coming to you at all. In fact, the next time you ask, do you have a problem?
No.
What was happening at Ford? No one had a problem. Although they were losing $17 billion, nobody had a problem?
Sam Shriver
Yeah.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
Why? Well, obviously, they’d been trained not to say they had problems. Well, you train people to say they have no problems. They all say green. The problem is, that’s not life. Life is never all green.
Sam Shriver
Far from it. And again, probably has something to do with the reason we’re here together today. But it’s like the portions of the organization that we interact with on a day-to-day basis are drastically different. Similar principles are at play. But when you’re talking to training departments, and you’re positioning Situational Leadership® as a program that can help new managers or second-level managers effectively influence, the single biggest obstacle you hear in many cases is top-level support. That’s what’s going to turn it from a program into a change initiative.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
Right.
Sam Shriver
So it hits me that what Alan did is really there was the language of Situational Leadership® that was permeated the C suite, and it just makes it that much easier to reinforce. You’re going through a program, you’re going to learn some skills. And these are life skills.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
Well, they are.
And again, the key is that philosophy of you are who you are. It is what it is. Don’t hide from it. And it’s okay.
Sam Shriver
Yeah.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
The big breakthrough, it’s okay. It’s okay to need help. It’s okay not to be perfect. It is what it is. And his whole focus is not on looking good. See, so much in corporate life is people try to look good, so they end up with pretense. Pretending to be who they’re not to look good. Well, his theory is we’re here to make cars and sell cars, not to individually show off or look good ourselves. Who cares how we look if we’re going broke? This is not good. This is bad. And how do we turn this around? Well, the way you turn around is you focus on the mission. You focus on what are we really here for? And we’re not really here to show off and prove how smart we are. We’re here to do great work.
Let’s do whatever it takes to do great work. And who cares how somebody quote looks? And what he taught them is once you do great work, you don’t have to pretend to look good. Everybody thinks you are good. Nobody’s going to complain. The stock goes from $1 to 1840. Nobody’s doing a critique. Then it all’s good. It’s all good. Then you don’t have to show off.
Sam Shriver
Yeah. Read his book and heard a lot about him. Read a lot about him. But was Alan always this good?
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
No, he would tell you he got off to a very rocky start. He had a young man work for him and an excessive leadership style one. He said something like, I may have the number wrong. 14 drafts this guy sent him. He corrected them over and over again. Finally, the guy just said, I’ve got to quit. No mas. Nice young man, but you’re driving me crazy here. Really? I’m not sure this is what you’re supposed to do. And he kind of explained what he’s supposed to do.
Okay, so naive. He was not always a great leader. He wasn’t born with this. The idea that leaders are born; somehow you hop out of the womb with all these leadership skills, that seems a little ridiculous. A little ridiculous. People can learn things.
Sam Shriver
It hits me that the process of becoming a situational leader it’s iterative; it really is. It’s about, okay, this didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. And in the parameters we always use in success is to get the job done, scale of one to ten. Effectiveness, more of the engagement piece of it, scale of one to ten. And those two dimensions are always in play. But it is. It’s like people that are serious about becoming good leaders really learn from set. But that didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. What did I learn? How do I adjust? How do I put it in the context, for lack of a better term, of a model, or just what I want to do differently moving forward?
Conclusion
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is one of the world’s leading executive educators, coaches and authors. He’s a pioneer in helping successful leaders get even better. His books Triggers, Mojo, and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Are New York Times bestsellers. Marshall has been ranked by Thinkers 50 as the number one leadership thinker in the world and the number one executive coach in the world. Thank you for listening to The Center for Leadership Studies podcast. Through its innovative leadership development programs, The Center for Leadership Studies has helped millions of individuals across the globe become more effective leaders and has helped thousands of organizations build more productive and engaged workforces. For additional information on our services and products, please visit situational.com or call 919.335.8763. The Center for Leadership Studies, the global home of Situational Leadership®.