“People first… Love ’em up” is a phrase that Alan Mulally has consistently said at work for over 30 years. He said it as general manager of the multi-year project to develop the 777 airplane at Boeing, he said it as CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, and he said it as CEO of Ford Motor Company when he led the turnaround that brought it back from the brink of bankruptcy to becoming one of the most profitable car companies in the world. When he retired from Ford in 2014, Alan was mentioned by Fortune magazine as one of the three greatest leaders in the world.
“People first… Love ’em up” is one of the fundamental expected behaviors in the Working Together Leadership and Management System that Alan designed and used at Boeing and Ford. In this article we also discuss a second expected behavior on his list of Collaboration Principles and Practices: Everyone is Involved. These two are important principles in the Collaboration system that connect people and contribute to a culture of connection.
What does Alan mean by these sentences? How can they inspire us to become more effective leaders in our own workplace?
Putting people first
“We use the word Love too limited and must genuinely care for the people we lead,” Alan wrote in a chapter he contributed to The extraordinary power of humility as a leader by Marilyn Gist. “They are not pawns to be used to achieve goals, but people – love them. Show them that they matter.”
Over the past year we’ve had extensive conversations with Alan as part of the research we’re doing for our next book on connection culture. We asked him about the use of the word ‘love’ in the work context. He told us he would tell colleagues, “We are going to create value for all stakeholders and the greater good by working together. That means that you are all very important and we are very happy that you have decided to come and work with us. In fact, we respect you immensely. You are human and you deserve respect and love. This is how we are going to treat you. … We involve you in everything because we respect you. … We care what you think.” In addition to actively and consistently involving people, he talked about thanking them for their involvement, showing you appreciate them and celebrating them.
Putting people first is about welcoming and leveraging the collective efforts of everyone. Alan is a big believer in spreading information widely in all directions. About this he has written: “We must break the assumptions that only people at the top should know and oversee the organization’s strategic efforts. What we actually need is transparency – real openness – about both what we are trying to achieve and how we are doing.” At Ford, for example, Alan’s Working Together system consisted of practices and processes that ensured people across the organization—from the C-suite to the factory floor—were “in the know.”
Alan is a stakeholder-oriented leader and so ‘everyone’ extends beyond the organization itself. He believes that stakeholders’ views should be heard and considered. The Boeing 777 project saw teams working together, and with valuable input and feedback from the airlines, innovating in a number of areas, including wing design, propulsion systems, cockpit and systems, materials and passenger space.
Alan told us he regularly meets with Ford stakeholders to give them updates and get their feedback. This was important. As he wrote The extraordinary power of humility as a leader:
Instead of us deciding what is best [stakeholders] and try to force it on them, we work with them by involving them in the development of the strategy and plan. This means that we discuss our common goals and needs. For example, each country has its own certification requirements for cars and aircraft. These kinds of differences pose a challenge when we do business globally. But by having the humility to engage our international partners in the development of our plan (respecting their dignity as well as their views and systems), we are able to work together on compromises that are acceptable to all parties.
In Alan’s Collaboration system, all affected populations are valued and every stakeholder group must be satisfied. At Ford, this meant customers, employees, dealers, investors, suppliers, unions/councils and the community benefited.
In addition to Alan’s “Collaborative Management System” chapter in Marilyn Gist’s excellent book, The extraordinary power of humility as a leaderwe also recommend reading an interview Alan did with Sarah McArthur Leader to leader entitled “A conversation with Alan Mulally about his strategic, operational and stakeholder-oriented management system ‘Collaboration’.”
How are you?
Alan’s comments raise several issues for leaders and managers:
- Do you really care about the people you have to lead? Do they feel like you care about them? How do you know that?
- Do you regularly express appreciation, thank and celebrate the people you are responsible for?
- Will you show that you care about the people you lead by demonstrating your commitment to creating a smart and healthy organizational culture that promotes connection?
- Do you involve all stakeholders in discussions about what you are trying to achieve and how you are doing it, so that their views can be represented and taken into consideration in the decisions made?
Taking the time to answer these questions and identify the actions that need to be taken can set your team up for a successful year.
Katharine P. Stallard co-authored this article.
photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash
