We Need Good Leaders Badly! Are You Up to the Challenge?

On September 5, 2006, I was sitting at my desk working. It was the day after labor day. 

The phone rang and the caller announced that he was in the HR department at Ford Motor Company, and he was giving me an advance notice that Alan Mulally, CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, was going to be the new CEO at Ford. “I’m calling you because the book you wrote about Mr. Mulally helped us decide to tap him as our new CEO, and the media will most likely be calling you with questions.”

Sure enough, within an hour after the announcement was made, a reporter from USA Today called. “I understand you wrote a book called Working Together about Mr. Mulally’s management principles,” the reporter began. “Do you think he can run Ford? He’s not a car guy.”

“It’s not about knowing how to build cars,” I replied. “Ford needs leadership, and Mulally is the best there is.” 

Did they ever need leadership! They were losing 16 billion dollars that year. I did the math: that’s $46 million dollars every single day of the year! I can’t conceive how you can lose that kind of money, but Ford was doing so.

And Alan Mulally had the confidence to promise Ford that he would not only stop the hemorrhaging of money but he would make them profitable by 2009, without taking any government bailout money!

He was as good as his word.

By 2009 Ford was profitable again, and Mulally stayed on until 2014, perhaps to prove it wasn’t an accident.

Three years later, his successor was terminated by Ford. He had not sustained the performance that Mulally achieved.

This was not the first time Mulally performed an almost business miracle if such things exist.

Within a week after 9/11 occurred, Boeing lost more than half their orders for airplanes. Through his leadership, Mulally saved them from failure.

And it was all about leadership.

For more than 37 years I have been annoyed to hear managers refer to leadership, communication, and other so-called people skills as soft skills, with the implication that they make no difference to what seems to really count in business—that is, profitability.

Well, I’m here to tell you that soft skills are the ONLY bottom-line skills you have! Your capital equipment won’t make a penny of profits. Nor will your business systems. And that MBA that you may have gotten probably won’t help you do any more than analyze why your business is failing—perhaps with great precision.

But analytical skills won’t grow a business or even help it survive.

Only leading the people who make the equipment run and the systems work will do that. LEADERSHIP SKILLS ARE THE ONLY PROFIT-MAKING SKILLS ANYONE HAS!

Take that to the bank, will you?

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m annoyed at the ignorance of managers when it comes to people. They say people are their most valuable resources. Well, first of all, a person is a human being. A chair or tool is a resource. And there are vey few managers who actually believe that people are valuable. You can tell that by their actions, by how they treat people.

The truth is, there are very few real leaders anywhere any more. And we need leaders. Managers can control budgets and schedules and make plans.

But only leaders inspire.