Everyone Has To Know The Plan
Mulally described how plans for an airplane or automobile could be broken down to constituent parts, and each constituent part was color coded according to status: “green” for on track, “yellow” if problems had emerged for which there was a workable solution and “red” if problems had emerged for which no solutions had yet been discovered.
Color-coding allowed Mulally’s teams to visualize where major projects were having problems and helped to make sure resources were being used effectively.
At Boeing and at Ford, many of Mulally’s subordinates were reluctant to embrace the color-coding scheme—the defense contractors brought under Boeing’s umbrella through acquisitions saw red-coded items as embarrassments.
Propose The Plan With A Positive, Find-A-Way Attitude
When parts of a plan were coded red or yellow, it couldn’t be cause for punishment or retribution against an employee or division, said Mulally. Instead, a red or yellow chart signaled that it was time for workers to roll up their sleeves and try to solve the problem.
Rather than stating and restating the problems at hand, Mulally encouraged employees to propose a plan to address the problem.
Respect Each Other, Listen To Each Other, Help Each Other And Appreciate Each Other
“From a process point of view, this is what we were all going to commit to,” said Mulally. “There’s zero tolerance for violating the process and the expected behaviors.”
Empathy was an expectation for Mulally’s employees—even though both of the major companies he led were concerned with developing machines, he chose to focus on the human element behind the construction of those machines.
Mulally paid more than lip service to this idea—he would put himself in his employees’ and his customers’ shoes by spending a shift working as a salesperson in a dealership.