Ford Company CEO: Alan Mulally - Case Study Example

FORD COMPANY CEO: ALAN MULALLY of the of the Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Case Introduction: 3 0 Big Five Personality Dimensions and their influence on Alan Mulally: 3 2.0 Leadership Style of Alan Mulally: 5 3.0 Change methods of Alan Mulally: 6 4.0 Indicators of Evidence-based management: 7 Conclusion: 10 References 11 Case Introduction: Allan Mulally entered the Ford Group as its CEO in the year 2006. When Alan Mulally took the responsibility of Ford, the company had faced a loss of $17 billion and the succeeding years also seemed dim considering the recession (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). The role for Alan Mulally was challenging as the business process was already failing to keep up with the market competition and Mulally held the responsibility of gaining back the trust of stakeholders and regain the position of market leader for Ford. With a transparent leadership and thorough communication with the employee base of the firm, Mulally made it his aim to unite the huge workforce of 205000 employees clear (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). Revolutionary changes were imitated in the work place, management process, work structure, planning and decision making processes by ex-Boeing executive that helped Ford in shaping a sustainable growth curve for itself. Many changes has taken place since the given case study was developed including the retirement of Alan Mulally as the CEO of Ford on July 31st where Mark Field entered and took on the tough job. These changes and updates will also be considered in the solution process for ensuring accuracy. 1.0 Big Five Personality Dimensions and their influence on Alan Mulally: Big five personality dimensions are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism and together they form the fiver actor model. These personality traits are primarily used for assessing the nature, behavior and activities of an individual and justify them (Adair, 2010). The first element of the five factor model is openness which can be observed highest in the behavior and activities of Alan Mulally. Table 1: Big five personality dimensions Personality Traits Description Openness Adventurous, curious, intellectual, creative, experimental, original and ready to accept new ideas Conscientiousness Systematic, disciplined, target oriented, dependable and organized Extraversion Social able, social, outgoing Agreeableness Trustworthy, friendly, kind, sensitive and emotional Neuroticism Temperamental, anxious, moody, authoritative and change resistant (Source: Hughes & Beatty, 2011, p.43) Openness reflects the ability to accept and appreciate new events or occurrences and also highlights an adventurous nature in an individual. Alan Mulally’s activities reflected a hint of openness from the beginning, the changes implemented in the work process of Ford and taking risks by experiencing with old products such as the re-launch of Taurus (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). Also the step taken by the Ex-CEO of Ford reflects his ability to take up new challenges and adventurous nature (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). According to Adair (2010), one of the key traits of openness is that individuals are innovative and creative; they tend to go after an idea and refuse to accept failure as a result. This relentlessness often helps them in developing new magnitude to an existing concept or thought. Also, Mulally has been marked as a good listener by Bill Ford and states that his ability to listen and understand the concerns of employees ensured a continuous support from both ends (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). One of the primary accomplishments of Mulally was to amalgamate the operations of the company globally and ensure an unified effort for regaining the leading position among American automobile firms. Mulally was also very clear about developing a transparent communication system in order to reduce the misunderstanding among the internal functional departments of Ford which helped them in organizing the efforts of various divisions of Ford and provide a positive outcome. 2.0 Leadership Style of Alan Mulally: According to Yan (2011), leadership style of a person is not reflected by their achievements but their activities and the route to success. Considering this statement as the benchmark for measuring and analyzing the leadership style of Alan Mulally, transformational leadership can be identified as the dominant leadership style of Alan Mulally. The growth of Ford as a single business unit was the result of his relentless methods of pursing the organizational goals (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). Adair (2010) mentioned that a transformational leader not only ensures success but also develops a sustainable method for repeating the results. It can be noticed that Mulally introduced many changes in the organizational structure and culture of Ford. However, Mulally also ensured that the employees are motivated and encouraged to share a mutual vision of growth and prosperity which created the platform for working together. Focusing on the specific activities or missions of Mulally, developing a single working unit by combining all the Ford employees was a key step taken. Apart from this, Mulally also had an excellent risk identification technique and foresight which helped the company in being an early entrant in emerging markets after the global financial meltdown of 2007-08 occurred (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). Mulally was sure about launching smaller cars in emerging markets where population growth rate is high and space is limited. He also assessed that technological significance was one of the key factors in creating a sustainable chain sales process in the era of technology. Leaving the specifications of Mulally’s work behind, only the results he achieved signify him as a transformation leader who changed the future of Ford during his span as CEO. Another important aspect of Mulally’s leadership was to create a balance in the work place. According to Yan (2011), transformational leadership often can result in a chaotic environment in the work culture of the firm. However, Mulally was confident about keeping things in control when it came to decision making, his urge for creating a compromising and understanding employee base has helped him in creating a loyal workforce for Ford. 3.0 Change methods of Alan Mulally: Alan Mulally took over the responsibility of CEO of Ford when the company was facing a loss of $17 billion. After assessing the condition of the organization, he brought in two main changes in the work process of the firm. The first change was to create united workforce for the company and develop a joint effort for growth (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). The second change was made in order to support the first step of Mulally, which was to create a network of communication within the company and reduce any sort of miscommunication and misunderstanding (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). The development of the business was not only based on apt decision making capabilities of Mulally but it also reflected his skills of change management. In an interview, Yan (2011) reflected that from the very first day, Mulally was focused on bringing together the Ford employee base which also created barriers such as personal rivalries among the top managerial board, language and cultural diversity within the work place, differences in visions of the employees and managers, etc. Thus, Mulally created the communication plan for ensuring that each individual is aware of the status of the company in respect to their strategy of growth and can contribute accordingly (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). Apart from this, Mulally regularly held employee meetings for keeping in touch with the employees and also assessing the problems faced by them (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). This also helped Mulally in motivating the employees and develop a sense of belongingness and self-esteem. From the above discussed changes and their methods of implementation, it can be gathered that Mulally focused on psychological aspects of rewards rather than the materialistic terms for gaining the vote of support from his employees. The focus on the emotional content of the employees also resulted in creating a long-term relationship with the employees of the firm and enhances their performance and productivity. Thus, Alan Mulally utilized communication and participation to ensure change management and also helped the employees to cope up with the changes in the structural base of the organization. 4.0 Indicators of Evidence-based management: Before joining as the CEO of Ford, Mulally was engaged in a thorough study of the company. He created a detailed research including the past and present activities of the company and also assessing the possible scopes or opportunities for Ford to gain back its position in the world automobile industry (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). This research framed the base for each and every decision made by Alan Mulally, he also included his experience gathered from his previous company Boeing for making the strategic decisions for Ford. Some of the directly related evidence based managerial decisions of Mulally includes the decision to reduce the number of products from 97 to 40, creating variety in their product base and developing cars of small, large and medium sizes based on the market requirements, focusing on quality rather than quantity, etc were all developed on the basis of Mulally’s analysis (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). Based on his decisions, Mulally also created specific details of the expected employee behavior and distributed it among the workforce. This was a direct message from the CEO to each and every employee of the company which boosted up their morale and enhanced their performance in the coming years. Considering the most valued decisions of Mulally, developing the communication and collaboration among the work force has been one of the most commonly used techniques for ensuring sustainable growth. Researchers such as, Hughes & Beatty (2011) and Yan (2011) always maintained their view that team work brings in new opportunities and possibilities for the employees of an organization. Mulally knew that individual effort was not enough to bury the losses faced by Ford however he also considered the value of individual contribution towards a common goal. In the words of Hughes & Beatty (2011), developing a shared vision among the employees of a firm is not only effective for the manager but it also ensures mutual opportunity for growth of all. 5.0 Assessing Alan Mulally in context of the elements of communication openness: Figure 1: Elements of Communication Openness (Source: Hughes & Beatty, 2011, p - 59) The above given diagram reflects the elements of communication openness. By understanding the relationship between the various variables of the model, the communication process of an individual can be judged. The development of communication in an organization is based on both the sides reflected in the diagram. Alan Mulally formed an open approach of communication from the beginning of his days at Ford. Furthermore, as studied earlier Mulally wanted complete commitment from his employees and preferred to keep them informed of his decisions and planning process (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). The development of communication network within the organization reflected his trust among the employees and also showed his fearlessness in revealing the strategic decisions of the organization to the workforce. This created a loyal workforce for Ford and also contributed in increasing the employee productivity. Mulally made communication and unity the key agendas of the work place creating a supportive work culture that helped in accomplishing the goals set. As the employees were well communicated regarding their work designs and descriptions, the plans goals were also revealed in a strategic manner. With each level of accomplishments, the employees were provided access to recognize the next step for growth (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). This also added the aspect of curiosity among the employees and kept them attached to their work process. Alan Mulally always tried to communicate in a simple manner reducing complicacies in language, business semantics and noise. Bill Ford also highlighted Mulally as one of the most simple and driven persons. The simplicity in the methods of Mulally was useful in the scenario of Ford as Mulally had already established the culture of “no secrets” and thus complicated language or plans were not suitable for the work process. Conclusion: Alan Mulally is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated leaders in the modern day corporate history. His activities brought back a company from going down to become one of the top brands in the world. Analyzing the behavior, leadership, managerial and communication traits of Mulally reflected a common feature of openness to accept challenges and listen to new ideas. However, it was also noticed that Mulally being a transformational leader did not create chaos or confusion in the work culture of the organization rather created a team culture which supported the vision of Ford. Alan Mulally after completing his successful run as a CEO in July 31st 2014 has left behind a trail of success for his successor Mark Fields to continue the growth and improvement of Ford Motor Company. References Adair, J. (2010). Strategic Leadership: How to Think and Plan Strategically and Provide Direction (3rd ed.). London: Kogan Page Hellriegel, D., & Slocum, J. (2011). Organisational Behaviour. Canada: Cengage Hughes, R. L., & Beatty, K. M. (2011). Becoming a Strategic Leader: Your Role in Your Organizations Enduring Success (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Yan, J. (2011). An Empirical Examination of the Interactive Effects of Goal Orientation, Participative Leadership and Task Conflict on Innovation in Small Business. Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship, 16(03), 393–408. Read More