Richie Cunningham Drives a Ford

Last week, I was invited to attend the American Society for Quality World Conference in St. Louis where I facilitated a workshop with senior quality executives.  I also had a chance to hear Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford, give the keynote address, and I have to tell you, I think this is the guy who may be bringing authenticity back to Ford.

No small feat.  One of the comments I often hear after people have read my book is, “Yeah, I get how small mom and pop businesses can express authenticity in everything they do.”  As proof of this sentiment, several replies in answer to my question, “What are the most authentic organizations you know,” revealed a bias, it seems, to smaller organizations or businesses where consistency about walking your talk seem to be more easily achieved.

But after hearing Mulally speak, and after meeting with some of his top folks and reading up on the company, I’d have to say that I think Ford is, if not completely authentic, then well on their way to being so.  Why?

Some of it has to do with Mulally himself.  Sure, he’s an articulate guy whose company stands alone among the top car companies as the only one that refused government loans in order to ride out the recession.  And under his leadership, they’ve cut costs while increasing market share in one of the toughest economies in decades.  But while he’s clearly driven, smart and well-spoken, he also comes across in person as pretty authentic – kind of like Richie Cunningham of Happy Days fame.  Mulally’s “awe-shucks,” hands- in-his-pockets, laid-back attitude as he strolled about the stage, taking question after question from an audience clearly smitten with this down-to-earth guy from the Midwest, sent the message that here’s someone you can trust.  And when several Ford employees in the audience stood up to thank him for “saving the company,” where many of them, as well as their sons and daughters, had worked their entire careers, it was pretty impressive.  I mean, it’s Ford, after all – a giant company that’s been around for a long time, and has seen its share of trouble through the years.  (One person in the audience recalled that Ford used to stand for Fix Or Repair Daily.  Mulally laughed.)

He seems to be leading Ford out of the automobile wilderness, and he seems to be a guy you’d want to have a beer with.  But he’s also a guy with a vision – or as he puts it in a recent Fortune magazine article, “One team, one plan, one goal.  This is me.  I wrote it.  It’s what I believe in.  You can’t make this shit up.”

 The questions I’m pondering today– Can an authentic leader lead an inauthentic organization?  Does an authentic organization require its leader/s to be authentic?