Management Advice from Alan Mulally

According to Alan Mullay, CEO of Ford, he focuses on four things:

1. We’re here to create a business of serving customers with the best cars and trucks in the world, so where is the world going? Where is the technology going? Where are the customers going? Where is the competition going?
2. What business are we in? What are we going to focus on? What’s going to be our business? Are we going to have a house of brands of vehicles? Are we going to focus on the blue oval? Are we going to be competitive on quality and cost and fuel efficiency? Are we going be best in class? So what’s our point of view about the value proposition of our company?
3. Balance the near term with the longer term. And especially in the environment like we see today, where you absolutely want to keep investing for the future, even though you could invest less and make your business performance look better in the near term. Do we have a plan that works in the near term and also creates value for the long term?
4. The values and the standards of the organization. What are the expected behaviors? How do we want to treat each other? How do we want to act? What do we want to do about transparency? How can we have a safe environment where we really know what’s going on?

Good advice, I think. Check out the entire article at "Planes, Cars and Cathedrals."