Alan Mulally arrived at Ford driving a Lexus, infuriating executives who only drove Ford cars. He forced senior leaders to drive competitors daily, arguing that insularity blinds companies to market shifts and kills them. Without external awareness, you miss what's changing until it's too late.
Chapters
Mulally, when he left Boeing and took over Ford, he did many things right. And he's the brand new CEO, and he drives up on his first day of work in a Lexus, and everybody's incensed. And he says, it's a better car. He's not trying to put Lexus out of business. He's trying to make Ford better. And he said to them, have you never driven one? They're like, no, we only drive Fords. He's like, so you don't even know what you're missing. Like, how can you make a better car if you don't even know what the others are doing? 'Cause I guarantee you they've driven ours, right? And so he then required all of his executives to go drive all of the competitors' cars every single day to work. He bought— he just bought tons of foreign cars so that they would drive them. Otherwise, how do you know? And it's all because of ego, right? Which is, we're Ford, we only drive Fords. And so you're completely oblivious to the world that's changing around you, and you only find out— it's a lagging indicator— You only find out years later when your numbers are in the toilet, your market share is in the toilet, and you're years behind trying to make a better product.
