business plan review ford

How Ford Is Thinking About the Future

by Mark W. Johnson

Summary .   

Dealing with the uncertainty of new, disruptive business models is one of the biggest challenges that faces any large, established company. To gain insight into how to think through these obstacles, the author offers five lessons from Ford’s approach to recent advances in the mobility industry: First, be ambitious with new projects, but don’t over-invest in any one idea. Second, be sure to think not just about the physical functionality of your product, but also about the social and emotional roles it fulfills. Third, constantly examine and update your business model. Fourth, be openminded about creating new rules and metrics for your organization. Finally, to reduce risk, consider building a portfolio of new business models. While there’s no predicting the future, these strategies can position you to take advantage of new opportunities as they emerge.

Everyone’s talking about a future in which vehicles are shared rather than owned, autonomous rather than driven, and where car companies make large shares of their profits on digital “mobility services.” But if you are the Ford Motor Company and face the prospect of investing billions in new technology while your century-old business model is overturned, you might first have a few questions. How are consumers going to react to all of this? What do they really want? How can you tell which opportunities are real and which are science fiction?

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Alan Mulally: The Man Who Saved Ford

Alan Mulally hands us a piece of paper with the points about leadership he wants to cover during our time together.

Chief Executive Officer, Professional Search & Interim

Alan Mulally hands us a piece of paper with the points about leadership he wants to cover during our time together. The note is handwritten and, unusual for a CEO of a Fortune 10 company, he’s drawn a heart around the words Korn Ferry on the note. A heart!

You don’t think of engineers as people who draw hearts on notes and memos, and there is nothing in his 12th-floor office at Ford’s sleek Dearborn headquarters that betrays sentimentality. Engineers are tough-minded analytical types who live their lives curled up on the left side of their brains. And while Mulally is definitely familiar with the left side — bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the University of Kansas and a master’s in management from M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management — he’s also a right-brain guy, a genuine people person.

We, but not Mulally, sometimes forget that the tools of modern companies — computers, management systems, charts, tables, spreadsheets — don’t get things done; people do, which is why his people-person style works so well.

On June 30, 2014, Mulally completed his latest “big thing,” the transformation of the Ford Motor Company from a money-losing behemoth with an iconic legacy, a patchwork of competing (some would say warring) fiefdoms, and a large, diffuse set of brands, into a globally integrated, single-team company with a smaller, more profitable and focused catalog of brands, a set of highly touted processes and 19 profitable quarters in a row. Mulally masterminded this transformation during one of the grimmest periods of global economic and automobile history, in the midst of the worst and longest financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Mulally, who at 68 is ginger-haired and brimming with as much energy as Saudi Arabia, Texas and North Dakota, managed the transformation by getting the best out of the people already working at Ford, not by letting them go. Weeks after he left Ford, Mulally joined the board of directors of Google Inc.

Even before Ford, Mulally’s platform was global, complex and massively capital-intensive. He spent 37 years at Boeing designing, then serving on, every one of its “bet-the-company” airliner programs. He then became lead designer, director of engineering and finally general manager for the 777 — an extremely intricate machine with 3 million parts and a global supply chain. The 777 has been the subject of documentaries, articles and business school case studies because it was the first commercial airliner to be built using computer-aided design techniques. And when he became president and chief executive officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Mulally oversaw an even more difficult project — the design and development of the 787 Dreamliner, the most complex, technologically sophisticated and fuel-efficient jet airliner ever built.

And yet, Mulally draws hearts on his memos.

We met at Mulally’s office at Ford’s headquarters in Dearborn, Mich., just outside of Detroit. It was late spring as we drove through the city of 100,000, and we could not help noticing the thick, green lawns, leafy trees, and wide, uncongested streets. It was an impeccably manicured Midwestern town with a lot of charm. If Henry Ford had not located his automobile company here, it might still be prairie farmland with rows of corn and hay, and milk cows dotting the horizon. But now it is Ford country, and Ford is everywhere.

From where one of us stayed — a hotel built by Henry Ford decades ago and filled with photos from that era — you could see the company’s sprawling engineering and development center and — behind a high fence — one of its proving grounds. From where the other one of us stayed, a more modern hotel from an upscale chain, you could see the company’s headquarters and — if you looked even farther — the old River Rouge Complex. At one time, the complex had been the largest and most integrated factory in the world, with 1.5 miles of buildings. Truck- and trainloads of raw materials would enter the factory at one end, people used to say with only modest exaggeration, and shiny new Fords by the millions would come out the other end.

Mulally, whose roots are in Kansas, another earnest, corn-growing, Midwestern state, presided over the successful transformation of Ford for eight years.

Transforming a legendary company like Ford requires “vision,” Mulally told us in his intense style, sometimes touching our arms or shoulders, and always leaning in to drive home his points. But what does he mean by that well-worn word?

In another handwritten note, Mulally gave us his and William Clay “Bill” Ford’s visions for the company. The notes were surprisingly brief. Bill Ford’s vision was “Great products, strong business, better world.” Mulally’s vision was “People working together as a lean global enterprise for automotive leadership.”

But even more telling, Mulally wrote these words with precise penmanship on an old Ford advertisement titled, “Opening the Highways to All Mankind.” It ran in the Jan. 24, 1925, issue of the Saturday Evening Post , a defunct magazine from a bygone era. That message was the reason Henry Ford started the company, and by placing his and Bill Ford’s words on that sheet of paper, Mulally was demonstrating respect for the man and the sentiment that started it all. Ford was always about producing cars with value for the masses.

It also demonstrates something else. “Leadership is having a compelling vision, a comprehensive plan, relentless implementation and talented people working together,” he said. “People also want meaning. All of us want to know that we are doing great things, that we are touching a lot of people, and that what we are doing is about something bigger than ourselves. The truth is, you can only do that if you are growing, if your margins are improving, if you make products that people want and value, and you do it more efficiently with regard to time and resources than the competition,” he said. Henry Ford couldn’t have provided the average consumer with mobility, thereby changing the world, unless he made a profit. In Mulally’s view, a vision is not a hope. It is an action plan.

Fixing Ford

When Mulally entered Ford’s blue-glass headquarters building for the first time in September 2006, the company was deteriorating rapidly. It was losing money, and some investment analysts and industry pundits wondered whether the company that was the first to harness mass production would be able to remain in business. The company’s debt was “junk,” and its stock, which had been as high as $17.34 in 2004, had fallen to $8.39 when Mulally joined, before plummeting to $1.01 in 2008, as the world plunged into the financial crisis.

On the day he joined the company, the internal forecasts were bleak. “The forecast for profits for 2006, for automotive, was for a $17 billion loss,” he told us. “And at the end of the year, we achieved that loss.”

Mulally does not believe you can achieve greatness or growth simply by cutting costs and streamlining processes. True, you can’t ignore costs and processes, and they have to be tightly managed. But what you really need is to invest in the future. He did this at Boeing, and under his leadership, the commercial airplane division regained its No. 1 sales position for large airliners. Investment, by definition, takes money, which Ford didn’t have. Just as significantly, investment requires focus, especially in times of scarcity. In Mulally’s vocabulary, “focus” means “plan.”

As we sat around a small table in his office, which also had a view of the River Rouge Complex, Mulally explained that he had been methodically studying Ford well before his first day on the job. Part of this was interviewing dozens of Ford insiders, including the board. In addition, he interviewed professionals from the automobile industry, finance, business and consulting. Mulally created summaries of all these interviews and put them in a thick set of binders, which he kept in his office. He used the insights contained in these books, plus “what I learned during my nearly 40 years at Boeing,” to write Ford’s plan.

The plan was about numbers — as all business plans ultimately are — but it was even more about people — what else would you expect from a man who draws hearts? Specifically, it was about getting Ford’s employees — with their reputation for infighting and for sharp elbows — to work together constructively and to help each other. It was about changing how people at Ford interacted.

Mulally called his plan to get people to work together across the company “One Team.” He called the goal of getting people to work together across the company’s vast global ecosystem “One Ford.” Then he set a simple goal for the company. He wanted “an exciting, viable Ford delivering profitable growth for all.”

To accomplish this, he added to the plan a set of behaviors he expected employees to follow, such as “foster functional and technical excellence,” “own working together,” “role model Ford values” and so on. Though these changes would alter the company’s culture, Mulally felt they were needed to make the company profitable over the long run.

Operationally, Mulally explained in his unostentatious office, the plan wiped out Ford’s old fiefdoms and created a new, simplified leadership structure made up of the heads of the company’s profit centers — its major geographies, plus Ford Credit. The leadership structure also included heads of Ford’s 12 functional areas, some of whom, like the heads of communications and technology, had never been part of the leadership. Each of these individuals, plus Mulally, Bill Ford and Mark Fields, chief operating officer and Mulally’s successor, were at the top of Ford’s One Team. With amazing economy, Mulally was able to fit the plan, and some added details, on two sides of a single card, which was given to every employee and to everyone doing business with the company. The plan, along with its expected behaviors, might as well have been carved in stone.The plan began working almost immediately. It did so because Mulally connected it to operational targets dealing with profitable growth. Everything that contributed to, delayed, or cost the company profitable growth was measured, mapped and color-coded — green for projects going well and on plan, yellow for areas needing attention and red for the most urgent situations.

During our conversation, Mulally stopped, smiled slyly and invited us to “see where it all happens.”

Mulally, a compact former gymnast, is in excellent shape. We learned that when he raced us down the 12th-floor hallway to the elevator, and then into a large  conference room with a massive round table suitable for Arthur and his knights. There were video screens on the walls and microphones on the table. This was a room where big things happened. It was where Mulally’s weekly business plan review took place, where the managers at the top of Ford’s One Team got together to make decisions that led to Ford’s 19 consecutive quarters of profitable growth. Though it was empty, you could feel it hum.

A moment later, Mulally whisked us down the hall and into another room, this time a nondescript, barebones conference room almost directly underneath Mulally’s office. In this room, on the walls, were some 320 color-coded charts laying out goals and progress toward those milestones for each profit center and function. Above each set of charts was a photo of the leadership team member responsible for the results. “We are all sitting around the table, and the charts are all color-coded,” Mulally explained. “Can you imagine the accountability? You come to the table and you were red on the launch of something last week, and you say to the rest of the team, ‘I’m really sorry. I was really busy last week. I didn’t have time to work on that.’ The accountability and the responsibility here is to help everybody on the team turn reds into yellows and greens, and to deliver increasing earnings and increasing cash flow every year.”

There was another interesting dimension to these meetings. “We invite guests every week to sit in on the meeting in Dearborn,” Mulally said. “We introduce the guests, who sit behind the team member that invited them, and we ask them for their reflections and thoughts. The guests might be an engineer or someone from down on the factory floor. So, all this data is flowing up, but then all the results are also flowing down. It is going back and forth every week at these meetings. And at the end of the meeting, the comments you hear from the guests make your eyes water. They say, ‘My gosh, this is so big, so vast. We’re in every country. I want to contribute to the plan as soon as I get back.’ I have heard many guests say that.”

Raising money

Mullaly knew Ford needed new products to survive. Its lineup was tired, in places, and some of Ford’s product decisions had been shortsighted, in Mulally’s view. Take the Ford Taurus, a car that revolutionized the automobile design process in the late 1980s when it was developed. When the car was launched, it was to almost universal acclaim and went on to become the No. 1-selling car in the United States.

But the Taurus suffered from a lack of attention inside Ford that resulted in years of uninspired designs. Initially, the Taurus blended rounded edges with sleek styling in a package that was futuristic, aerodynamic, confident and warm. Toward the end, the Taurus resembled an oblong American football, albeit one that looked a little deflated in the middle. Sales plummeted and it became a fixture of rental fleets.

In his first week at Ford, when he was reviewing the company’s product plans, Mulally asked where the Taurus was in the lineup. He was surprised that it had been discontinued.

“Why?” he asked, dumbfounded.

“Well, we made a couple that looked like jelly beans and didn’t sell, so we stopped it,” he was told.

Mulally looked at the product team. “You guys sold nearly 7 million Taurus cars. Talk about a brand!” he said. “Why don’t you just make a new one, and get it going again? How long would it take to make a new one?” The team told him it would take four years. “How about doing it in two years? And make it the best Taurus you can. A brand like that would cost billions of dollars to create from scratch,” he told them.

From that moment forward, Mulally understood Ford’s development of new cars had to be accelerated, a capital-intensive task. In his first weeks at Ford, he understood the company would have to raise money if the automaker was to have a future. “We decided to take out a $23.6 billion home-improvement loan,” Mulally said, joking.

Given his experience at Boeing, Mulally expected that once the loan amount was determined, Ford’s finance team would be able to raise the money. “I said to the team, ‘Good luck. Let me know how it goes,’ and it got quiet. Then I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ And they said, ‘We can’t make this presentation. We can’t raise this money, because we’ve told them all this before — how Ford has a great plan.’ They said, ‘You have to do it, Alan, because you’re the only new model we have.’ So I stood up the next day and presented the plan, and 10 days later we had raised $23.6 billion, based on the strength of the plan we devised to work together.”

The decision to raise $23.6 billion before the onset of the financial crisis was prescient. With its bank account full, Ford had sufficient capital to invest, even as automobile sales collapsed around the world and the capital markets froze during the worst of the crisis and recession. Ford’s domestic rivals, G.M. and Chrysler, hadn’t raised money and were not so lucky. They were forced to go to Washington to ask the federal government for emergency loans. The government granted the request at the cost of filing for bankruptcy, forced reorganizations and the loss of each CEO’s job.

Though few industries have more entrenched rivalries than the automobile business, Mulally went to Washington to testify on behalf of bailing out his biggest competitors. He did it, he explained to us, because the death of G.M. and Chrysler would have meant the demise of the industry’s network of suppliers, which would have severely damaged Ford. The demise of these companies could have plunged the United States into depression.

When Mulally joined Ford, it had dozens of automobile brands around the world, and while not all of them were profitable, they all competed for scarce resources and management time. Buying these brands was part of a plan to create a premium group within Ford, capable of earning premium profits. Unfortunately, the costs were high and the profits never materialized. The brands — Aston Martin, Land Rover, Jaguar and Volvo, plus some other investments, such as Mazda — were an expensive drag on a company, and the decision was made to sell these assets.

Mulally did not regret selling these assets. Once more, his timing was impeccable. Ford sold Aston Martin to an investment group in 2007, and Land Rover and Jaguar to India’s Tata Motors in 2008, just before the financial debacle. The timing of Ford’s sale of Volvo to China’s Geely was not so lucky, since it didn’t happen until 2010. And, while Ford lost money on each of these deals, when measured against the cost of buying the assets in the first place, selling these companies stanched the financial bleeding and added to Ford’s cash reserves.

There was more to the decision than raising cash. “The company had to have focus,” Mulally said. “Can you imagine working on the Ford Fiesta from 8 a.m. to 8:15 a.m., then on a new Jaguar from 8:15 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.? We needed a different plan to be world-class.” Just as importantly, Mulally said, “It was a question of ‘What did Ford stand for?’ What do people think when they see Ford’s blue oval? Do they think of us as a house of brands, or do they understand that they are going to get a complete family of best-in-class vehicles that are also affordable?”

Mulally’s method

Mulally is a leader with a method that works, especially when applied to big projects, like designing and building a new generation of airliners, or transforming a great-but-teetering automaker like Ford.

Mulally’s method is straightforward. It begins with understanding the problem and how it came about, then determining what to do about it. Next, leaders have to “pull everybody together around a compelling vision, a comprehensive strategy and a plan aimed at achieving your goals,” he said. “We developed a plan to go forward, after selecting the entire team of the leaders worldwide and also the leaders with skills needed going across the world,” he said. Once you have the people and the plan, you have to stick with both.

“After a couple of years at Ford, journalists would come in here and ask, ‘Does Alan have a new card with a new plan on it?’ My answer was always ‘No.’ Stick with what works.”

Many companies less successful than Ford, and many executives less successful than Mulally, have written bold, comprehensive plans. But what they lack is a leader who cares as deeply about people as Mulally does. What they don’t have is a leader who draws hearts on his memos and notes.

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Alan Mulally, Ford, and the 6Cs

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, elizabeth haas edersheim elizabeth haas edersheim founder - new york consulting partners, adjunct professor - nyu tisch global school of sports management.

June 28, 2016

Editor’s note: In the “ Becoming Brilliant ” blog series, experts explore the six competencies that reflect how children learn and grow as laid out by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff in their new book  “ Becoming Brilliant .”

When Alan Mulally took over Ford Motor Company in 2006, it was a struggling American icon, a once-great organization that had for too long been living in the past, coasting on its reputation, and avoiding realities.

At its core, this was an organization constrained by bureaucracy and bad habits. Mulally’s leadership transformed Ford’s culture, enabling it to not only pull itself out of the mud but to get back on the road and take off.

How did he do it? Whether he realized it or not, Alan Mulally employed and fostered the 6Cs in his leadership :

• Returning to the founding values. Mulally restored the values—watered down by previous chief executives—that had made Ford a trailblazer in its early years. This created a basis for fresh, purposeful, and honest collaboration.
• Making Ford “one” company. Tearing down Ford’s independent, isolated functional silos helped set the stage for dialogue and open communications .
• De-bureaucratizing through accountability. He recognized that bureaucracy-driven paralysis was a barrier to employee confidence and critical thinking that had to be removed.
• Rewriting the model for Ford’s way of doing business. The old model passively relied on relating to customers through brands and dealers; the new model actively connects employees to customers—building on content to drive creative innovation delivering the very best cars to customers.

Mulally and Ford: The stories and the challenges

In 2006, when Bill Ford tapped Alan Mulally to be his company’s CEO, Ford was looking for an outsider who would challenge the way things had always been done. Ford was losing nearly $6 billion a quarter. Its debt had been classified as junk; analysts whispered about bankruptcy.

After his first day at Ford, Mulally wrote ,“We just need to act on the reality. Then we’ll be back making the best cars in the world.”

Mulally had heard the same comment from both executives and customers: Ford had let itself go. Although the company made good cars and crossovers in Europe, in the United States, consumers thought of Fords as unreliable gas-guzzlers, disparaged them as “Fix Or Repair Dailies,” or didn’t think about them at all. This was the reality Mulally knew Ford had to act on.

Mulally also studied the company’s history. Everything Mulally was learning, concluding, and planning evidenced his own inherent 6Cs skills—with confidence driving the other five.

Returning to founding values: Collaboration

As Mulally examined Ford’s history, he saw that the company Henry Ford founded had changed the world and created prosperity for generations.

He found an ad Henry Ford had placed in 1925, depicting a young couple standing next to their Model T. The caption read, “Opening the highways to all mankind.” Beneath it, Henry Ford outlined his vision:

An organization, to render any service so widely useful, must be large in scope as well as great in purpose. To conquer the high cost of motoring and to stabilize the factors of production— this is a great purpose.

In accomplishing its aims the Ford institution has never been daunted by the size or difficulty of any task. It has spared no toil in finding the way of doing each task best. It has dared to try out the untried with conspicuous success.

At the next board meeting, Mulally presented a slide with the old Ford logo’s blue oval at its center marked “Vision.”  He defined this as “People working together as a lean, global enterprise for automotive leadership.” By leadership, he said, he meant all being viewed as second to none.

And leading by example, Mulally lived collaboratively—he ate with employees in the cafeteria and regularly conversed with secretaries and assembly line workers.

De-bureaucratizing and creating One Ford through communication

Mulally made difficult decisions. He sold off glitzy and high-profile makes of cars, including Land Rover, Jaguar, Aston Martin, and Volvo. He brought back the Taurus — and focused on One Ford.

He also restructured the fragmented organization, integrating the regions and functions making each business unit fully accountable, while ensuring that each key function—from purchasing to product development—was managed globally. This structure facilitated critical and integrated thinking. Mulally wanted to create One Ford to have one team communicating and working together while serving each market in a unique fashion.

Every Thursday, Mulally held his “business plan review,” or BPR. Attendance was mandatory for all senior executives. Each was expected to communicate succinct status reports with a distilled set of tables and charts updating each other on progress toward the company’s goals.

In his first BPR, Mulally stopped the meeting halfway through. “We’re going to lose billions of dollars this year,” he said, eyeing each executive in turn. “Why is every line green? Isn’t there anything that’s not going well here?” The executives later admitted they hadn’t believed Mulally when he’d promised that honesty would not be penalized. That’s why all their lines were green.

Mark Fields, president of Ford Americas at that time, stared at the line for the new Ford Edge, as he prepared his slides for the second BPR meeting. Production had already begun on the car, but a grinding noise coming from the suspension had been reported.

Fields knew that delaying the launch might bring down the as-yet-unfathomed wrath of their new CEO. It was the end of the year, when Ford executives traditionally pulled out all the stops and cut whatever corners necessary to hit their sales targets. But, that was the old Ford.

At the second BPR, Fields’s slide showed red. There was dead silence. “Dead man walking,” thought one of his peers. “I wonder who’ll get the Americas,” another mused. Suddenly, someone started clapping. It was Mulally. “Mark, that’s great visibility,” he said, beaming. “Who can help Mark with this?”

Thus was born new collaboration at Ford, born of honest communication.

When that meeting ended with Fields still in charge of the Americas, most of his peers had reached the same conclusion: They needed to communicate honestly. A week later, everyone’s slides were splattered with more red than a crime scene. Mulally thought, “Now I know why we’re losing so much money! But, they trust me. They trust the process. We finally have it all out in the open. Now we can start fixing it.”

From this point, confidence bloomed, communication flowed, collaboration grew, and critical thinking was unleashed.

Rewriting the model for doing business

Mulally understands that people truly want to come to work at a company they can believe in. He’s given Ford’s employees more reasons to feel good about themselves and proud of their company. He defined a straightforward mission: Build higher quality, safer, more fuel-efficient cars—that employees can rally around. “The more each of us knows what we’re really contributing to, the more motivated and excited and inspired we are,” he says.

The 6Cs and business success

Allan Mulally transformed a dying, hide-bound company into a tougher, more nimble player that embraced the world economy.

The means of achieving this transformation are also simple sounding: collaboration; communication; content; critical thinking; creative innovation; and confidence. These 6Cs may seem obvious ingredients of success, but without a business leader who practices them and facilitates and supports them in others, they are surprisingly difficult to employ. Alan Mulally is one such leader from whom others— from students to teachers to organization members and their leaders—can learn.

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More From Forbes

The simple management secrets behind mulally's ford turnaround.

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If there were a Hall of Fame for business leaders, Alan Mulally would surely earn a spot. Ford Motor's retiring president and chief executive led one of the most successful corporate turnarounds in history, and he did so amidst the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Virtually every time Mulally opened his mouth during the past eight years, he found a way to work in his four strategic objectives, otherwise known as the One Ford Plan:

• Aggressively restructure to operate profitably at the current demand and changing model mix
• Accelerate development of new products our customers want and value
• Finance our plan and improve our balance sheet
• Work together effectively as one team

Insiders, of course, know the plan by heart, because Mulally issued everyone a laminated, wallet-sized copy when he joined Ford in 2006, lest anyone forget what was at stake.

Now, as he hands over the CEO's role to Mark Fields, Mulally says he has no worries that Ford's turnaround will continue. "It's bigger than me," he says. It's the processes, and the expected behaviors."

The "expected behaviors," it turns out, are printed on the back of that wallet-sized copy of the One Ford Plan, and are just as important, he said, as the four frequently cited strategic goals.

"Wherever we are, there's always a teaching moment," he explained. "Someone might have an issue, and everyone slides their card onto the table."

Making employees carry around a list of "expected behaviors" sounds like Ford is treating them like kindergarteners, but you can't really argue with success.

Here, then, is Mulally's basic recipe for management success:

Foster Functional and Technical Excellence:

• Know and have a passion for our business and our customers
• Demonstrate and build functional and technical excellence
• Ensure process discipline
• Have a continuous improvement philosophy and practice

Own Working Together:

• Believe in skilled and motivated people working together
• Include everyone; respect, listen to, help and appreciate others
• Build strong relationships; be a team player; develop ourselves and others
• Communicate clearly, concisely and candidly

Role Model Ford Values:

• Show initiative, courage, integrity and good corporate citizenship
• Improve quality, safety and sustainability
• Have a can do, find a way attitude and emotional resilience
• Enjoy the journey and each other; have fun - never at others’ expense

Deliver Results:

• Deal positively with our business realities; develop compelling and comprehensive plans, while keeping an enterprise view
• Set high expectations and inspire others
• Make sound decisions using facts and data
• Hold ourselves and others responsible and accountable for delivering results and satisfying our customers

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• Forbes Accolades

How Ford Adapted To The Changing Automobile Market

Table of contents.

Over its 118 year history, the Ford Motor Company has led the way in innovative technologies and leading business practices. 

Important stats to know about The Ford Motor Company: 

• Controls 13.9% of the US automotive market share in 2022
• Revenue of $136.3B in 2022  
• Headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan
• Produces over 4 million vehicles each year
• Employs over 182,790 employees around the world
• Ranked #21 in the Fortune 500
• Market value of $54.51 Billion as of Feb, 2023

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The History of The Ford Motor Company

Henry ford’s vision.

The Ford Motor Company has a long history that was inspired by Henry Ford, an Irish immigrant to the United States. Ford realized that the world’s transportation needs were quickly changing at the turn of the 20th century. His first attempt to design and build an automobile was in 1896 when he created his first vehicle — the quadricycle. The vehicle had a simple design with a bench seat for two passengers, a four-horsepower engine, bicycle wheels, and a gearbox with two speeds (but no reverse). 

Henry Ford on his “quadricycle” 

In November of 1901, Henry Ford joined the Detroit Automobile Company, a car manufacturing company, but his time there was short-lived. He left the company the following year. This company went on to become the Cadillac Motor Company (which was later purchased by General Motors). 

The Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903 when Henry Ford used $28,000 of investor money (about $800,000 in today’s money) to open a manufacturing facility. One of the early investors was John and Horace Dodge who would go on to create their own car manufacturing company. Because investors feared that Ford would leave the company like he did the Detroit Automobile Company, a local banker, John S. Gray was chosen as the first president. 

Leadership under the Ford family

Henry Ford did eventually become president and controlling owner of the company in 1906. Ford was directly responsible for the early success of the company including the popular Model T and innovative assembly line processes. He held this position until 1919 when his son, Edsel Ford, took over as company president. 

Edsel Ford was an artist and led the company to change the design of cars from practicality to visually appealing. The newly designed Ford vehicles were a hit with consumers all over the world. Edsel Ford died in 1943 and Henry Ford took back over as president of the company since Edsel was his only son.

Two years later, Edsel’s son, Henry Ford II took over as president and served from 1945 to 1960. The company had grown exponentially prior to his leadership. Henry Ford II worked diligently to solve many problems that plagued the organization. The bookkeeping was a mess and work processes needed to be heavily refined. Henry Ford II took it upon himself to transform the company into the polished and disciplined brand that it is today. 

Going public on the New York Stock Exchange

After a long run as a private (and mostly family-owned company), the Ford Motor Company went public in 1956. Traded under the NYSE stock ticker “F”, the IPO (initial public offering) for Ford was the largest IPO in history at the time ( $657 million worth of stock sold - $28.5 billion in today’s dollars ). 

Early competition

In the early years, the Ford Motor Company had a lot of competition. In fact, in 1920, there were approximately 200 car manufacturers in the United States . The largest companies that Ford was up against included General Motors and Chrysler. General Motors had many brands that proved formidable competitors including Chevrolet, Buick, and Cadillac. While the competition remained fierce, many of the early car manufacturers went out of business. By 1940, only 17 car manufactures remained. 

Becoming an International Brand

The Ford Motor Company owes much of its success to its expansion into international markets. The company was quick to do this shortly after its inception. The first international manufacturing facility was opened in Walkerville (now Windsor), Ontario in 1904. This was built directly across the Detroit River from Ford’s other manufacturing facilities at the time. The Ford Motor Company of Canada was established as a separate company with its own shareholders with the mission to sell Ford vehicles in Canada and other parts of the British Empire.

By 1908, Ford opened its first sales office outside of North America in Paris, France. Shortly after, Ford opened assembly plants across Europe between the years 1917 and 1925 in Ireland, England, France, Denmark, Germany, and Austria. In 1924 and 1925, Ford expanded into South America (Argentina), Asia (Japan), Africa (South Africa), and Australia. 

In 1929, the Ford Motor Company was contracted to set up the Gorky Automobile Plant in Russia which produced the Model A and AA. This helped to further industrialize the country. 

Key takeaways

• The Ford Motor Company’s early success was a result of Henry Ford’s mission to improve the automobile by creating a more durable and accessible version for the Average consumer. 
• For 50 years, the Ford family led the company with each new CEO bringing fresh new ideas. This led to innovation that helped Ford outpace the competition. 
• Early expansion into international markets helped accelerate Ford into an international brand with access to consumers all over the world. 

Cultural and Industry Impacts of the Ford Motor Company

The ford assembly line and manufacturing methods.

One of the most impactful reasons for Ford’s early success was the way they manufactured their vehicles. In the early years, the Ford factory produced a handful of cars each day by assigning 2-3 men to work on a car at a time. The car was built from start to finish. This was the normal manufacturing process of other car companies at the time. 

By 1913, Henry Ford created a new approach to manufacturing by introducing the first moving automobile assembly line where cars would move down the assembly line. Workers would be assigned one or two steps that they would perform over and over. This helped workers become better at their assigned tasks. Cars were produced at a much faster pace. This reduced the production time from 12.5 hours for a Model T to just 1.5 hours. With decreased production times, this new method drove down the cost making cars even more accessible for the average American. 

The moving assembly line isn’t the only manufacturing innovation that the Ford Motor Company has developed. In 1986, the Ford Motor Company introduced automated assembly for some subassembly tasks using robots. This process was initially tested in Ford’s St Louis facility and was a major success. This type of manufacturing is now used at most Ford plants today. 

Shaping the American workforce

The Ford Motor Company has a long history of embracing industry-leading policies in relation to its workforce. Henry Ford understood that in order to remain competitive and producing cutting-edge technology, the company needed to employ the best and the brightest. The monotonous and strenuous work of the moving assembly line created new problems for Ford with an increase in high turnover. 

In 1914, Ford responded by making a move that shocked the public and landed him on the front page of newspapers all over the country. The Ford Motor Company instituted a $5 workday doubling the existing rate of pay of assembly line workers. In addition, Ford reduced the workday from nine to eight hours allowing for the plant to run three equal length shifts (prior to that, the facility only ran two shifts). 

The most significant impact of this change was that the average assembly line worker at Ford could afford to purchase an automobile for their own families. The increased mobility, wages, and leisure time inspired a movement across the country. Many other companies began to follow suit giving the Ford Motor Company credit for the creation of the American middle class.

After the World Wars, the Ford Motor Company made significant efforts to employ many of the veterans who had returned home with disabilities. This move made the Ford Motor Company one of the first to hire workers with physical disabilities. At the time, most companies only hired able-bodied workers. Instead, Ford took a different approach. They not only hired these workers but created work environments that were modified to accommodate those with special needs. 

In 1941, Ford signed a contract with the UAW-CIO (United Auto Workers-Congress of Industrial Organizations) labor union. This contract helped drive better pay, benefits, and working conditions for Ford employees. 

Ford’s impact on the airline industry

Henry Ford understood that the transportation industry wouldn’t just expand on the ground. He recognized that air travel would become commonplace in the modern world. In 1925, the Ford Motor Company created its own airplane design. Between 1925 and 1933, the company manufactured and sold nearly 200 Ford Tri-Motor airplanes (nicknamed the Tin Goose). This model of plane was used by early commercial airlines in the United States. 

To help encourage further development of the industry, the Ford Motor Company provided 35 of the plane’s patents royalty-free including its navigation system (the navigational radio beam). This allowed other companies in the space to further develop aviation technology. 

Supporting the United States during the World Wars

Automobile manufacturing plants were easy to convert into facilities to produce other types of vehicles. In 1918, Ford’s River Rouge Complex began producing anti-submarine patrol boats, cars, ambulances, trucks, tractors, tanks, and airplane engines that would be supplied to Allied troops. As the war came to an end, Ford moved production back to civilian vehicles. 

Unfortunately, peace only lasted a couple of decades. As tensions began to churn again in the early 1940s, the US government began ordering jeeps from the Ford Motor Company. The word “jeep” came from the acronym “GP” which stood for “General Purpose”. 

By 1942, Ford once again halted civilian production of automobiles to support the war effort of World War II. The Ford Motor Company worked with Charles Lindberg, the infamous trans-Atlantic pilot, on the construction of more than 8,000 B-24 Liberator bombers.

In 1944, Rose Will Monroe was working as a rivet gun operator at Ford’s Willow Run facility. She was chosen to serve as the icon to promote the sale of bonds to support the war effort. Her fictional character “Rosie the Riveter” was featured on the iconic “We Can Do It!” posters all across the country. The campaign was a success and is noted as one of the most iconic images from the era.

• Ford’s creation of the first moving automobile assembly line sped up production allowing the Ford Motor Company to produce significantly more vehicles at a lower cost than their competitors. 
• The Ford Motor Company gained a competitive advantage by increasing wages, reducing hours, and improving working conditions. This helped them secure the best talent and improved employee morale and productivity. 
• The Ford Motor Company helped stimulate growth in industries that would purchase Ford products by investing in the development of new technologies. For example, Ford provided free patents to early airlines in hopes they would purchase Ford-built planes.
• Ford produced hundreds of vehicles to support the United States during World War I and II. The government contracts were not only profitable, but Ford became recognized for their support. The war also helped expose the global market to Ford-manufactured vehicles. 

Evolution of Popular Ford Models

The Ford Motor Company has had many major successes in its development of popular, cutting-edge vehicles over its nearly 120-year history. Some of these models have consistently held records for their high sales numbers and groundbreaking innovations. 

• Model T (1908) - The Model T was one of the most successful models released by Ford and demonstrated his vision to make automobile transportation accessible to the average person. Prior to the Model T, most automobiles were considered luxury items. The design was intended to drive down costs. Between 1908 and 1927, Ford sold over 15 million Model T’s. The other challenge that the Model T solved was its durability and easy maintenance. Most other automobiles at the time couldn’t handle the many miles of rough, unpaved roadways. The Model T solved for this using vanadium steel alloy for some of its parts so they would be more durable. 

• Model A (1927) - Ford continued to sell the Model T successfully for 18 years. However, other car manufactures soon caught on to Ford’s manufacturing process and started gaining market share. This pressure from other car manufacturers forced the Ford Motor Company to rethink their design of the Model T. This led to the creation of the Model A. Henry Ford assigned his son, Edsel, to take charge of developing the sleek new design. The Model A was equipped with innovative features like a Safety Glass windshield, industry-standard driver controls, and a fuel gauge. The Model A was produced around the world in plants in Argentina, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Despite the economic challenges of the Great Depression, Ford sold 5 million Model A’s before it was discontinued in 1931. 

• F-Series Pickup Trucks (1948) - During World War II, the Ford Motor Company created a variety of military trucks. Ford recognized that these vehicles which were used to haul supplies to troops all over Europe had a civilian application as well. So in 1948, the company unveiled a new line of trucks. Earlier truck models were simply built on car platforms. This new line would be built on a chassis that was specially designed for heavy hauling. The original line came in eight sizes and weight ratings from the F-1 (0.5-ton capacity) up to the F-8 (3-ton capacity). This gave consumers the option to pick the right truck for their needs. The F-series naming was updated in 1953 to F-100, F-250, and F-350. These trucks remain extremely popular today. Over the last 40 years, the F-series has remained the best-selling vehicle in the United States. 
• Thunderbird (1954) - The Ford Thunderbird was introduced as a direct response to the Chevrolet Corvette. The car featured a sleek design that was very popular, but instead of focusing on power and speed like the Corvette and other European sports cars, they focused on driver comfort. This strategy paid off. Ford sold nearly 25x the number of Thunderbirds than Chevy sold Corvettes. (16,155 Thunderbirds compared to only 674 Corvettes).

• Mustang (1964) - In the 1960s, Ford Vice President, Lee Iacocca, wanted to create a new model targeted at younger drivers who wanted a sporty look but didn’t want to spend a fortune. Developed on a shoestring budget, the Ford Mustang was introduced in 1964 and quickly became an American cultural icon and was featured in movies and songs. Within a few short years, the Mustang became one of the fastest-selling vehicles in history and is still produced today. 

• Fiesta (1976) - The first internationally successful model was the Ford Fiesta. In the 1970s, the oil crisis led to a demand for fuel-efficient cars. Car manufacturers all over Europe began introducing compact model cars including the Fiat 127, Renault 5, and BMC Mini. The company spent $870 million developing the model which was the largest development budget in the company’s history at the time. In the first year of sales, the Fiesta broke the sales record that the 1965 Mustang had set. 
• Escort (1980) - The Ford Escort was originally designed as a small family car in Europe in 1968. It became widely popular especially in the United Kingdom where it was the best-selling car during the 1980s and 1990s. It wasn’t until 1980 that Ford brought the Escort to North America when the company needed a quick replacement for the Ford Pinto. The Pinto had a fuel tank design flaw that led to the death of a few hundred people and created a public relations nightmare for the company.
• Explorer (1990) - In the early 1990s, the Ford Motor Company recognized a growing interest in a new type of passenger vehicle — the Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV). They set out to design their own SUV which became the Ford Explorer. The Explorer became the catalyst for the SUV market and other manufacturers soon followed suit. By the late 1990s, SUV sales exceeded that of regular passenger cars. 

• The Ford Motor Company was able to create many popular vehicle models by paying close attention to what their competitors were doing and what their customers wanted. 
• Ford designed and introduced many variations of its models based on the local tastes and demands of each international market.

Introduction and Acquisition of New Brands

Lincoln motor company.

Lincoln Motor Company was created in 1917 as a luxury car manufacturer. The Ford Motor Company began feeling the pressure of competition from luxury brands like Cadillac and Packard. In September of 1922, Ford purchased the Lincoln Motor Company for $8 million (over $123 million today). Today, Lincoln focuses on a small number of models of luxury full-size sedans and SUVs.

The flagship automobile of Lincoln, the Continental was extremely popular throughout the history of the company. It has been reintroduced and discontinued several times, most recently from 2017 to 2020. 

In 1939, under the direction of Edsel Ford, the Ford Motor Company created the Mercury brand. This was intended to compete with General Motors who produced several mid-priced vehicles including Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick. Mercury was the perfect solution to bridge the gap between the affordable Ford brand and high-end Lincoln cars. 

In 2011, after 82 years of operation, Ford announced the decision to end the production of Mercury vehicles. The company decided to put more focus on the Ford and Lincoln brands. 

The Ford Motor Company has been very successful in many of its ventures. However, the Edsel brand turned out to be a costly disaster. Created in 1956 to help the company gain market share from Chrysler and General Motors, Edsel was hyped as the “car of the future”. Despite millions of dollars poured into fancy marketing campaigns, the final product left much to be desired for the consumer. 

There were numerous complaints about the cars being unattractive and having poor quality craftsmanship. One example was the Teletouch transmission selector, which was a series of buttons placed at the center of the steering wheel to change gears. This odd placement confused drivers and was difficult to operate. In order to move the transmission from park to drive, the operator had to shift from park, to reverse, to neutral, and then drive. The transmission motor also didn’t work well on hills requiring drivers to use the parking brake instead of putting the vehicle in park. 

A scathing article published in a 1958 edition of Popular Mechanics highlighted many of the issues that drivers were reporting including poor welding, power steering failure, a leaking trunk, and a faulty odometer. 

After taking a loss of $250 million ($2.2 billion today), the Ford Motor Company chose to discontinue the brand after only three years in 1959. 

Rivian is an American electric vehicle manufacturer founded in 2009. With the rise of electric vehicles, the Ford Motor Company made a brief investment of $500 million into the brand in 2019. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the company decided to terminate the contract. They have decided to maintain their relationship with Rivian for future potential partnerships, but in the meantime, have shifted those resources to the Lincoln Motors brand. 

• Ford faced many pressures from other automotive companies. They purchased and created new automotive brands like Lincoln and Mercury to give them a wider range of options for their customers.
• Not every new brand was a success. The Edsel brand cost the company millions of dollars and damaged its reputation. 

Innovations Led by The Ford Motor Company

The Ford Motor Company had a hand in creating many new products and innovations throughout its history. In addition to new technologies, Ford also played a part in the creation of new industries and historic events such as the moon landing. The Ford Motor Company created its own scientific laboratory in Dearborn, Michigan in 1951 to perform experiments and research for technology and scientific breakthroughs that could be used both inside and outside the automobile industry. 

In 1932, Ford created the first commercially successful V8 engine. This was a hit as American’s became more interested in automobiles with powerful engines. This engine is still popular today with hot rod enthusiasts. 

Early automobiles had a reputation for being unsafe. Ford recognized this and decided to put a focus on reducing automobile accidents and injuries to help change consumer perception. In 1954, the company began performing crash tests to measure the effectiveness of designs and safety features. Since then, Ford has performed more than 31,000 crash tests around the world. In recent years, Ford has begun using computer-simulated tests in tandem with physical crash tests. This has significantly improved the company’s data and insight on safety testing. 

From 1961 to 1974, Ford owned Philco, a consumer electronics company. Philco was responsible for designing, building, and equipping NASA’s mission control during the Apollo and Gemini space programs. The company also launched a series of communications satellites, many of which still provide data and telecommunications access today. 

In 1970, Ford introduced the three-point, self-adjusting lap, and shoulder seat belts into its vehicles as a standard safety feature. 

• The Ford Motor Company has spent a considerable amount of money on new technology to help it stay competitive. 
• The company wisely chose to focus on developing technology in general and not just the automobile industry. This allowed the company to expand beyond its expertise into industries like aerospace. 

Ford’s Corporate Strategy

The 21st Century has posed many challenges for the Ford Motor Company including the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, to name a few. The Ford Motor Company unveiled a new strategic plan at the end of 2020 (called “The Plan”) that will revitalize the company by modernizing how it operates, simplifying processes, and exploring new opportunities for growth. 

Electric vehicles

Ford Motor Company's strategy to embrace electric vehicles (EVs) is a core component of its commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and aligns with the Paris Climate Agreement's goals. With an enhanced investment commitment of $22 billion through 2025, Ford is expanding its electric lineup to include not only innovative new models but also electrified versions of its iconic vehicles. This includes the Mustang Mach-E, which combines the marque's legendary performance with electric efficiency, and the F-150 Lightning, an electric iteration of America's best-selling truck, reflecting Ford's ambition to meet diverse consumer needs.

Additionally, the electric Ford Focus represents Ford's foray into the compact car segment with electric power, offering a sustainable, efficient option for city driving and daily commutes. Through these efforts, Ford is actively contributing to the global shift towards sustainable transportation, demonstrating its leadership in the automotive industry's transition to electric mobility.

Sustainability

From a sustainability standpoint, the company wants to tackle an impressive list of environmentally friendly milestones. Its mission is to contribute to 11 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). These goals include moving all manufacturing to renewable energy by the year 2035, replacing all plastic vehicle parts with 100% recycled materials, and eliminating all single-use plastics from its manufacturing process. 

Enhanced safety

The Ford Motor Company is dedicated to making its automobiles safer than ever before. With the development of new safety features and self-driving technology, the company wants to create a world that is free from vehicle accidents and workplace injuries. 

• In 2020, the Ford Motor Company unveiled a new plan to revitalize the company as the world economy comes out of the COVID-19 pandemic. 
• The strategic plan focuses on creating a sustainable line of vehicles through the development of new electric cars, trucks, and vans. 
• The company looks to meet sustainability goals set forth by the United Nations and the Paris Climate Agreement. 
• Ford also wants to place a focus on improving automotive safety.

Ford’s Impact of Racing and Motorsports

The Ford Motor Company has a long history of being a part of racing culture since its beginnings. Even before the company was founded, Henry Ford successfully reached a top speed of 20 miles per hour in his quadricycle. In the years following, Ford also won several races and set speed records with his personally designed Ford 999. 

In 1966, Ford captured the world’s attention when three Ford GT40 MK II’s crossed the finish line at the 24-hour Le Man’s race taking first, second, and third place. Not only did this make Ford the first American car manufacturer to win the title, but they also broke Ferrari’s six-year winning streak. Ford went on to take first place in 1967, 1968, and 1969. 

For over 80 years, Ford has been represented in NASCAR races. The first win came in 1949 when Jim Roper won a race in Charlotte in a Lincoln. The following year Jimmy Florian won the first race in a Ford vehicle at Dayton Speedway in Ohio. Since then, Ford-built cars have won more than 800 NASCAR races, second only to Chevrolet. 

In addition to Le Mans and NASCAR, Ford has drivers participating in many other events and races including Formula 1 and the World Rally races. 

For a car manufacturer, being able to demonstrate your vehicle’s performance on a racetrack helps to signify the brand as a well-engineered machine. The more races won in a Ford brand vehicle, the more notoriety the company receives. Key races like the 1966 win at Le Mans are a great way to capture the attention of car enthusiasts everywhere. 

• The Ford Motor Company has used racing throughout its history to demonstrate the power and quality of Ford vehicles. 
• The investment put into developing race cars like the Ford GT have helped Ford capture historic wins that provide exponentially more value from advertising and positive PR. 

Recovery from the Brink of Financial Ruin

Despite having over 100 years of success, the Ford Motor Company hit a rough patch in 2006 and was in a dismal state. The company was on track to take a loss of $17 billion due to falling sales. This forced plant closures and massive layoffs which resulted in Ford buying out 38,000 unionized workers. The Ford Motor Company needed cash but couldn’t get additional financing due to receiving a “junk” bond status. To remain solvent, the company had to mortgage its assets to raise cash. Share prices had plummeted from an all-time high of about $35 in 1999 to $8 in 2006. 

The CEO at the time was Bill Ford, the great-grandson of Henry Ford. He recognized that the company needed a new leader. In a bold move that shocked the industry, Bill Ford convinced the company board to appoint Alan Mulally as President and CEO of Ford Motor Company. Alan Mulally knew very little about the automotive industry. He began his career as an aerospace engineer at Boeing in 1969. Over his 37 years at Boeing, he rose to the position of president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes (a subsidiary of The Boeing Company). He was known for helping to save Boeing from bankruptcy after financial trouble in the late 90s and early 2000s. Bill Ford felt confident that Alan Mulally could do the same for Ford. 

Mulally quickly identified that there were some underlying issues that were resulting in Ford’s stunted performance including a lack of transparency, bad leadership, and a stagnant product line. He openly admitted to the organization that he didn’t have automotive expertise. This helped to drive a culture of more transparency within the Ford Motor Company. Rather than hiding behind inexperience, challenges, or failures, the team began speaking up when they needed help or additional support. 

Mulally also introduced a new approach to meetings. When arriving at Ford, he quickly realized that there were lots of pointless meetings where many topics and issues were discussed but resulted in no action. The normal Ford meetings were replaced with BPR (Business Plan Review) meetings in which leaders would present their 4-5 top priorities with a green, yellow, or red status. This helped the team quickly identify what areas needed the most attention. 

When Mulally announced his plan to the board of directors, he committed to focusing on four major objectives: 

• Aggressively restructure the organization to operate profitably at the current market demand.
• Accelerate the development of new products based on customer wants and needs. 
• Finance the plan and improve the balance sheet.
• Work together effectively as one team. 

The strategy was extremely successful. Not only was Mulally able to turn the company around, but they also avoided needing the taxpayer bailouts that General Motors and Chrysler needed during the 2007-2008 financial crisis. This was a huge feat and boosted public confidence in the company.

• Ford leadership was able to quickly recognize the need for a new CEO to help redirect the company in 2006 when sales began declining sharply resulting in major losses. 
• Bill Ford, the great-grandson of Henry Ford, convinced the board of directors to hire a man with no experience in the industry, Alan Mulally. He understood that experience leading an organization through tough financial times was more important than technical knowledge.
• Mulally’s success was a result of driving a culture change at Ford Motor Company that increased transparency and eliminated counterproductive attitudes and behavior. 

Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways

The Ford Motor Company is a true innovator in the automotive space. Aside from General Motors, no other car manufacturer has seen the levels of growth that Ford has achieved. Much of the success comes from the brilliant leadership of the Ford family that ran the company for over 50 years. Even through tough times, the company has found ways to grow and adapt. Their dedication to being the best helped make Ford the iconic American brand it is today.

 Recap: growth by the numbers

• The Ford Motor Company thrived under the Ford family leadership for over 50 years. Each Ford president (Henry Ford, Edsel Ford, and Henry Ford II) brought new ideas and perspectives that helped the company adapt to changes in the market and competition.
• One of Henry Ford’s greatest successes was the development and refinement of the moving assembly line process. This significantly increased productivity, improved quality, and decreased production costs.
• Few brands have shaped American culture like Ford. The Ford Motor Company is credited with the creation of the American middle class by offering competitive salaries and reduced working hours.
• Ford has created many ground-breaking and popular models including the Model T, Mustang, F-series pickup truck, and Thunderbird. They have been successful at staying ahead of most market trends and consumer demands.
• The Ford Motor Company has been able to grow by not only developing the Ford brand but also building and acquiring additional brands like Lincoln and Mercury to compete in the luxury and mid-price markets.
• Ford ramped up its international reach quickly between 1917 and 1925. Within a few short years, the company was selling cars on every continent.
• The Ford Motor Company has been an innovator both inside and outside the automotive space. They have been dedicated to many forms of scientific and technological research including automotive safety, aerospace, and clean energy.
• In 2020, the Ford Motor Company announced their new corporate strategy – The Plan. The goal is to revitalize and grow the company as it recovers from the challenges of the 21st century including the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The Plan focuses on converting its vehicle line to electric vehicles, tackling environmental objectives, and focusing on enhancing automotive safety.
• As an automotive manufacturer, Ford has a long history of involvement in racing and motorsports around the world. It’s most famous for its wins at Le Mans in the 1960s and success in the NASCAR series. 

Strategic Discipline Blog

Cadence of accountability – how alan mulally rid ford of poor performers.

Posted by Douglas A Wick on Mon, Feb 18, 2019

Do you feel your organization puts up with mediocre performance?

American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company by Bryce G. Hoffman shares insights on how to encourage, inspire, and make your team accountable. Mulally turned Ford Motor Company around using BPR’s (business plan review) and SAR’s (special attention review).

BPR’s and SAR’s are principles, resources, and tools we share with our Scale Up customers.

BPR’s are Scale Up’s Meeting Rhythms. They establish a Cadence of Accountability .

Lack of Leadership & Accountability at Ford

When Alan Mulally met with Bill Ford to consider becoming CEO of Ford Motor Company there were a lot of concerns.

“The operating people are on quicksand,” Ford told Mulally. “I need help.” Mulally realized Ford’s problems were serious.

“This is going to be a culture shock,” Ford cautioned.

The Board’s Expectations

Bill Ford wanted to make sure Ford’s Board of Directors agreed with the decision to hire Mulally. Two board members, Hockaday and Thornton, met Mulally for lunch. They quickly went from skeptics to salesman.

They had one concern.

“Alan, if the board offers you this job and you take it, you need to understand that there are no sacred cows,” Hockaday told Mulally. “Any friends of Bill that are in the wrong positions or you conclude are not the right guys, you can get rid of them—and Bill will confirm that.”

Mulally shook his head. “That’s not an issue, because I’m not going to have to get rid of many people,”

Mulally’s response was worrisome to Hockaday and Thornton. They believed the time had come for bloodletting at the top of the house in Dearborn.

The weakness of Ford’s bench prompted them to look outside the company for a CEO in the first place.

“How do you come to that conclusion?” Hockaday asked. Mulally responded by outlining his system of weekly meetings for them, just as he had for Ford. He told them this approach enforced extreme accountability on a weekly basis. It left no hiding place for those not committed to executing their part of the business plan.

“It’s likely that a lot of people at Ford aren’t used to that, and they will self-select out,” Mulally said. “I won’t have to do it.”

Learn more about Mulally and one challenge he faced in this 2 minute video:

Ford Motors Meeting Week

Mullaly’s first week was “meeting week” at Ford Motor Company.  Each month Ford’s senior executives sat through one agonizing caucus after another, each devoted to a different issue or facet of the company’s operations. There were meetings to discuss Ford’s finances, meetings to discuss sales, meetings to discuss new products.

Since Ford’s executives seemed to like meetings so much, Mulally asked his secretary to schedule one more. When he had them all together, Mulally started laying down his law.

“There are too many meetings,” he told them. “When do you have time to think about the customer?”

Nobody answered.

From now on, Mulally continued, there would be only one corporate-level meeting—his “ business plan review ,” or BPR. It would be held every week on the same day, at the same time, in the same place. Attendance would be mandatory for all senior executives.

“The data sets you free,” he said with a smile.

“We are the decision makers,” Mulally said. “We need to make decisions and not pass the buck.”

Ford executive unwilling, or unable to perform did self-select themselves out.  The result, Ford made a dramatic turnaround, and Ford Motor Company was the only US car dealer not to get a government bailout.

Mulally BPR’s changed Ford’s culture, eliminated office politics. More importantly it created a harmonious culture of accountability. Learn why at Which is Best Individual Meetings or Team Meetings? Personal Story on Accountability.

Strengthen your teams performance and accountability!

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In 8 P’s – A Powerful Way to Discover Strengths, Weaknesses, Trends I shared why this tool is superior to the traditional SWOT, and better then SWT.   Last week I met with a former E-Myth customer to help his business craft a plan for 5-10 years.   More on why the 8 -P’s and what we learned next blog.

Topics: weekly meetings , Cadence of Accountability , meeting rhythms , Meetings a Cadence of Accountability , leadership meetings , Alan Mulally , American Icon

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Management Lessons You Can Learn From Alan Mulally

Harvard Business School professor John Kotter has said that 70% of all major change initiatives fail. With those odds, the deck certainly was stacked against Alan Mulally when he took over Ford Motor Co. in September 2006.

As we all know by now, though, Mulally led Ford from the brink of bankruptcy to profitability, respectability and stability.

In the process, Mulally positioned himself as this decade's ultimate business icon -- the Lee Iacocca of the 2000s.

So why -- and how -- did Mulally succeed where countless others have failed to turn around their struggling companies?

That's among the questions that former Ford executive Gerhard Geyer tries to answer in his new book, "Ford Motor Company: The Greatest Corporate Turnaround in U.S. History."

"It's a fantastic story," Geyer says of Mulally's achievements at Ford.

Geyer believes that Mulally exemplifies the leadership principles outlined in Kotter's book, "A Sense of Urgency."

They include:

• Create the vision -- Mulally and his top brass created the "One Ford" plan, which charted a course for Ford's product development, manufacturing strategy and financial rehabilitation.
• Act with urgency -- Mulally and his team developed the One Ford plan less than two months after Mulally became president and CEO.
• Develop the guiding coalition -- When he created the One Ford plan, Mulally involved all the affected internal and external stakeholders, from the UAW to Ford's bankers and investors.
• Communicate the vision -- "His motto is communicate, communicate, communicate," Geyer points out in the book.
• Generate short-term wins -- The $23.5 billion "survival loan" was a short-term win, Geyer asserts, as was the introduction of several competitive vehicles that "stabilized Ford's 15-year-long decline in U.S. market share."
• Make change stick -- "The One Ford action plan is a permanent institution at Ford Motor Co.," Geyer writes. Mulally told Fortune in 2009 that he has a "disciplined business-review process" in place, and Geyer notes that Mulally is involved in implementing One Ford on a daily basis.

Creativity and Charisma

Geyer, who worked for Ford for more than 30 years, also marvels at Mulally's leadership traits: his decisiveness, creativity and charisma among them.

"Most importantly, he is a collaborator," Geyer tells IndustryWeek. In his book, Geyer notes that Mulally "considers all of his 16 direct reports indispensible."

Ford is coming off its seventh consecutive quarter of posting a pre-tax operating profit, and the automaker in early June said it expects its worldwide sales to jump 50% by the middle of the decade.

Still, Geyer says he has taken some heat from the automotive press for pinning so much of Ford's success on Mulally. But he stands by his assertion that Mulally has been the driving force for Ford's turnaround.

"Here's a man who knew nothing about the auto industry ... coming into a new industry and with virtually the same team that his predecessor had, and he changed the culture and established Ford as one of the more dynamic companies in the world," says Geyer, who speaks with a thick German accent.

"There has to be something behind it, and in my opinion, it is this man called Mulally."

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Former Senior Editor Josh Cable covered innovation issues -- including trends and best practices in R&D, process improvement and product development. He also reported on the best practices of the most successful companies and executives in the world of transportation manufacturing, which encompasses the aerospace, automotive, rail and shipbuilding sectors. 

Josh also led the IndustryWeek Manufacturing Hall of Fame, IW’s annual tribute to the most influential executives and thought leaders in U.S. manufacturing history.

Before joining IndustryWeek, Josh was the editor-in-chief of Penton Media’s Government Product News and Government Procurement . He also was an award-winning beat reporter for several small newspapers in Northeast Ohio.

Josh received his BFA in creative writing from Bowling Green University, and continued his professional development through course-work at Ohio University and Cuyahoga Community College.

A lifelong resident of the Buckeye State, Josh currently lives in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland. When the weather cooperates, you’ll find him riding his bike to work, exercising his green thumb in the backyard or playing ultimate Frisbee.  

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Former Ford CEO Alan Mulally: Running a Business Is a Design Job

Former ford ceo alan mulally is a role model who thinks like a designer..

American Icon : Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company, by Bryce G. Hoffman, is a great business book about one of the best CEOs of all time, in my opinion. It also is the story of a business leader who, as I like to say, thinks like a designer . 

"Running a business is a design job. You need a point of view about the future, a really good plan to deliver that future, and then relentless implementation," Mulally told the author.

If you have optimism, empathy, holistic thinking, collaboration, and an open mind--then you are thinking like a designer. You have a high design quotient (DQ), just as Alan Mulally does.  

Here are five principles for how you can think like Mulally, a designer of business.

1. Think positively.

Mulally's optimism is famous. As Hoffman notes in American Icon, "Clearly Ford faced a long, uphill battle back to profitability--a daunting prospect for everybody but Mulally. Belying the predictions that the harsh realities of the American automobile industry would soon grind him down, he seemed to be having the time of his life." Even in the worst moments at Ford, and it's had more than its fair share, Mulally approached every problem with the belief that a better solution was possible. This is central to thinking like a designer. 

How:  

While it may be true Mulally was born an optimist, two strategic tools made him a positive thinker as a leader. One was his belief in the process, what he calls "emotional resilience" that comes from trusting the process will work. The other is his "find-a-way" attitude" that is about proposing a plan, rather than stating the problem. 

2. Have empathy.

Empathy is putting yourself in other people's shoes to see things from their perspective. When you empathize, you are human-centered. Empathy is not something you can develop and nurture in the safety of your office. You need to get out, meet people, talk to them, and observe them--to take away the layers of hierarchy between you and your customers until you're literally face-to-face with them in their natural habitat.

Mulally did this by working as a salesperson in a dealership. A. G. Lafley, the former CEO of P&G, did it by washing laundry with customers. Empathy building with customers also builds trust, as Hoffman's description of Mulally demonstrates: "A few minutes later, Mulally had made his first sale. In less than an hour, he made two more. Another was pending. It would not be the last time Mulally played at being a car salesman. This was a way for him to see firsthand how Ford's customers approached its cars and trucks. But it also generated a huge amount of goodwill for the company. Everybody who met Mulally walked away an ambassador for Ford. He had that effect on people." 

3. Think holistically. 

Thinking like a designer is about opening your viewing angle really, really wide to see the big picture. It's seeing things from different points of view so that you can connect the dots in new and valuable ways. Gather inspiration and information like a bee pollinating from many flowers.

Mulally cast a wide net to see the big picture--he talked to industry experts, veteran journalists, and even to his competitors (like then GM CEO Rick Wagoner); he read reports, white papers, newspaper articles; he flew to Consumer Reports ' automotive testing division; he talked to customers, dealers, investors, and employees; he looked at Ford's archives for inspiration, as Hoffman describes, "like a miner convinced that the goal was close at hand."

4. Collaborate.

If you want to improve people's lives, you need to collaborate. It is too big an undertaking to pull off alone. Working in silos, in the isolation of the different departments, can lead to serious mistakes that can be avoided through collaboration. The value of helping one another across disciplines, departments, regions is indispensable. Collaboration means design, engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, sales--all disciplines literally having a seat at the table together.

Mulally held a business plan review (BPR) every week, same time, place, and day, with mandatory attendance and where collaboration was not only encouraged but necessary. Holding a BPR, or a variation of it, is a must-have tool for any leader serious about collaboration. As Mulally told Hoffman, "Working together always works. It always works. Everybody has to be on the team. They have to be interdependent with each other." 

5. Have an open mind.

Thinking like a designer is having an open enough mind to imagine the future using what you know today. It's asking "what if" questions to explore what can be versus what already exists.

Despite his incredible success and experience at Boeing, Mulally brought a beginner's mind to Ford. He was unafraid to ask questions like a novice and learn like a student, captured by Hoffman, "Mulally knew he still had a lot to learn before he could finalize his plan, and he threw himself at that task like a senior before finals week." 

After I wrote this post, I reached out to Mulally to ask what he'd like to add. 

"The leader holds themselves and all the participants responsible and accountable for following our agreed-to process and expected behaviors, with zero tolerance for violating either," he told me.

Among his many exceptional leadership qualities, Mulally has an exceptionally high DQ, the ability to think like a designer. You can increase your DQ, too, by building these principles into your leadership skills and by practicing them, bringing everyone together.

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The Turnaround at Ford Motor Company

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Leading Transformation: An Interview with Alan Mulally

A lot of people talk about transformation, but few understand what it looks like and what it takes to be successful more than Alan Mulally, former CEO at Boeing and Ford Motor Company.

To be successful at transformation, you need a great business leader. A leader like Alan Mulally. A former CEO at Boeing and the Ford Motor Company, Mulally has succeeded everywhere he has worked. In 2014, Fortune Magazine ranked him number three on their list of the year’s greatest leaders. From 2010 to 2014, Barron’s included him in their list of the world’s best CEOs. Nearly 10 years after first crossing paths with Mulally, I reconnected with him recently at the Art of Leadership (AOL) conference in Toronto where I had a chance to interview him following his keynote address.  While working for LHH in Detroit, I met with Alan a few times during the economic crisis and turmoil in the automotive industry in the late 2000s. It was there that I saw firsthand the impact a great leader can have in a time of great uncertainty. Years later, his message hasn’t changed very much: keep it simple, be authentic, stick fiercely to your beliefs and employ zero tolerance in the face of dissent. “If you’re going to build a world-class performing organization,” Mulally said at the Art of Leadership conference, “you have to be what you really believe.” Mulally’s beliefs and leadership style were forged over years of careful guidance by his family as he grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, particularly his mother who exposed him to a nearly endless stream of philosophical life lessons that he still draws upon today. Those lessons taught him the importance of lifelong improvement, collaboration and respect for others. His mother’s guidance also drove him to explore his entrepreneurial side early in life. Alan delivered newspapers door-to-door, started a lawn mowing business and worked at the local grocery store. “I figured out that…if I focused on the customer and exceeded their expectations, they’d go berserk. They’d give me tips. It all fit together. I was serving, I was adding value and people really appreciated it.” Those core values, combined with his keen intellect, helped Mulally guide Ford and Boeing through the most turbulent periods in their corporate histories. Following September 11, orders for airplanes dropped precipitously. Under Alan’s leadership, Boeing’s balance sheets were back in good shape by 2006. Based largely on that performance, Ford Motor Company Chairman Bill Ford called on him that same year to help him lead the struggling automaker. I vividly remember when Alan first arrived in Detroit. Ford had lost more than a quarter of its North American market share and was on the verge of reporting a $12.7-billion loss. Everyone from the news media to industry analysts questioned the decision to give an “outsider” the top job at one of Detroit’s Big Three. At the Art of Leadership conference, Alan described his first news conference at the Ford world headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. A local reporter asked him how he could be successful when he really didn’t understand cars. He told the reporter that automobiles are complex with 10,000 individual parts; however, he adroitly noted that airplanes have four million parts, “and it has to stay up in the air.” His critics were quieted. Mulally acted immediately to turn the company around. He sold off Ford’s luxury brands, such as Land Rover, Aston Martin, Volvo and Jaguar. He then turned his attention to renegotiating burdensome union contracts to bring labor costs down. But his boldest moves were yet to come. Facing a cash crunch, Mulally borrowed more than $23 billion to restructure the company and get it back on a growth track. Many considered his strategy risky, but when capital markets dried up two years later following the global mortgage crisis, his decision seemed prescient and saved Ford from having to seek a government bailout. Internally, Mulally faced huge challenges trying to break down Ford’s renowned silo mentality. To remedy this situation, he implemented the “One Ford” plan. A key part of the plan was his mandatory Business Plan Reviews (BPRs). Every Thursday morning, leaders met for two hours to openly review key metrics. The executives were encouraged to work closely together to drive innovation, speak truth and find solutions. Mulally’s One Ford plan and the BPRs are now credited with helping the company find its way forward. Not surprisingly, Mulally’s vision was challenged by some of the longer-serving executives on his leadership team. His solution was to implement twice-yearly performance reviews that measured both technical performance and “working together” skills. Mulally said when he took over at Ford, he found a culture that tolerated bad behavior as long as the technical skills were strong. Once he was in charge, Mulally made it clear that was no longer going to be acceptable. “I said, ‘we have two performance periods and if they don’t make progress … then they’re making the decision to leave.’ And you’d be surprised at how quickly people … move into the light. The ones that don’t [make progress], you still love ‘em, but they’re still making the decision to move on.” During my time in Detroit with LHH, I sat on a board that was chaired by Bill Ford. At one of our meetings, he famously said he believed it was important to “always put people before profitability.” I asked Alan about reconciling this statement in the face of ubiquitous corporate downsizings. His answer was frank: PGA, which translates into Profitable Growth for All.  Certainly, more companies need to consider PGA as they move forward. Today, the average tenure of a company on the S&P 500 is 33 years. This number will drop to 12 years in less than a decade. Sustained PGA is clearly critical to corporate performance over the long term. Given his history of success, it’s not surprising that Alan’s is one of the first names to surface whenever a company gets into trouble. He was recently touted as a possible savior for Tesla, the luxury electric car maker that was plunged into uncertainty because of the erratic behavior of its founder and CEO, Elon Musk. Mulally quickly dispelled the rumor, choosing instead to continue his work as a travelling emissary for accountable leadership.   Mulally’s message was clear to the audience attending the AOL conference, just as it had been to me years earlier when we first met. “People want meaning. They want to be associated with a compelling vision. They want to be associated with something that is really important … it’s incumbent on us to provide that opportunity.”

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Facing $17 billion loss, color-coding helped Alan Mulally turn around Ford

• Updated: Jul. 24, 2016, 2:30 p.m.
• | Published: Jul. 24, 2016, 1:30 p.m.
• David Muller | [email protected]

DETROIT - Alan Mulally arrived at Ford Motor Co. from Boeing in 2006 as the company faced a $17 billion loss and an apparent culture that had a crippling fear of admitting to problems that did not have immediate fixes.

Mark Fields, Mulally's successor at CEO, said that at Ford, you never talked about problems, because it was seen as a sign of weakness.

"And Alan turned that around, and said 'No, that's a sign of strength," Fields said Thursday night as Mulally was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame. He was joined by consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader, legendary engineer Roy C. Lunn, and Bertha Benz (1849-1944), the late wife and business partner of gasoline-automobile inventor Carl Benz (1844-1929).

Taking the proverbial fear-of-failure bull by the horns, Mulally implemented a color-coding system for business plan charts that executive leaders would report on in weekly meetings.

If developments were going well, they'd be highlighted on the charts in green, while new issues would be yellow and problems with no immediately known solution would be red.

"This was very hard for the Ford people," Mulally said in accepting the honor Thursday night. "Because they just didn't do red."

In the initial meetings after the color-coding system was implemented, all of the charts were green. Mulally responded by saying that sure there must be some issues, seeing as the automaker faced a $17 billion loss.

Fields, who was a business unit chief for Ford's Americas operation at the time, had an issue in Canada with the launch of the Ford Edge - a lift-gate actuator on the tailgate wasn't functioning properly. So Fields stopped production, and then in the weekly business plan review presented a launch chart with three columns in red.

"Eye contact goes down to the floor, the air leaves the room," Mulally said, underscoring the fear felt by some of the company officials.

Fields explained that he didn't know what the issue was, but they were working on it, and Mulally began top clap. Then someone else at the meeting said he had a similar issue with another product. And then someones else noted a possible solution. The collaboration got the issue solved quickly, Mulally said.

A few weeks later, the charts presented at the weekly meetings looked like a rainbow of greens, yellows and reds.

"At that moment, we all knew that we were going to trust each other," Mulally said. "We were going to share everything about the plan, and we were going to help each other to turn the reds to yellows to greens."

Of course there were other things that helped Ford weather one of the most trying times in the history of the industry and avoid bankruptcy - the only of the Detroit Three to do so.

The company coalesced around a singular vision, borrowed from straight from the playbook of Henry Ford, Mulally said.

"He laid out a vision to make not only the best cars and trucks in the world, but also to make them affordable so everybody could appreciate the freedom to move around," he said.

The automaker hatched a plan to first reduce production to meet demand. Then it would launch a full range of vehicles under the Ford and Lincoln brands, and offer them globally and at affordable prices. And the company would accelerate development of these new vehicles, despite running headlong into a recession, Mulally said.

"We also agreed that every new Ford and Lincoln vehicle we made would be not just a fast follower, be competitive, but it would be the best-in-class," Mulally said. We also took the point of view that quality, fuel efficiency, low CO2, safety, connectivity and of course affordable would be what peoepl really wanted around the world."

The company approached bankers in New York with its plans and, a week later, had $23.5 billion to work with.

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Mulally left the company in 2014, and joined the board of directors at Google. Ford has since returned to profitability in record fashion . And it has a "fantastic leadership team" in place, he said, sharing the Automotive Hall of Fame recognition with the Ford team, its dealers and suppliers.

"Ford is a magical place," Mulally said Thursday. "The history, the innovation, the contribution to the economy, to safe and efficient transportation, to energy independence, to energy security and environmental sustainability. We want to continue to be part of the solution to those big issues for all of us going forward."

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How to Conduct a Monthly Business Plan Review Meeting

• Vinay Kevadia
• September 25, 2024

When you and your team are on the everyday grind, it’s highly possible to lose track of progress. Sometimes you may even experience stagnation.

That’s when you need a savior, we call a monthly business plan review meeting.

A monthly business plan shows you the actual picture of where you stand and what needs to be done to fix the issues. Reviewing it monthly keeps you up to speed and ready to take on the competitive world month after month!

But the question is: How to conduct a monthly business review meeting?

Don’t worry, in this blog, we’ll tell you why you need such a meeting, how to conduct it, and share a free template so you can get a head start.

Let’s begin.

What is a monthly business plan review meeting?

A monthly business review is a meeting, conducted once a month, where your team gathers to review your current performance against your ideal performance or strategic plan.

The idea behind the meeting? Everyone should evaluate a month’s worth of journey and see if they’re still on track to achieve the strategic targets. If not, they can take necessary measures to keep up.

Why is it important to conduct a monthly plan review?

Here are three crucial benefits of conducting a monthly business plan review meeting:

1. Improves communication. Encourages reflection

In this meeting, all attendees dish out their progress and struggle openly. This does two things:

One, it improves communication, enabling transparency. As a result, your team can learn about the different challenges each one has faced and everyone can butt heads to find solutions.

Two, with everyone sharing their progress and backlogs, it creates the perfect space to reflect on business tasks and performances. In this process, your team can adjust

and re-prioritize anything and everything required to get back on the right track to meet the set business objectives.

2. Promotes accountability

With transparency and reflection comes a sense of accountability for all. The open discussions help employees feel responsible for every activity that brings the business closer to the ideal performance or stick to the strategic plan.

3. Enhances decision-making

By regularly reviewing your business plan, you get a front-row seat to insights that help you avoid costly mistakes or errors that can cause delays. But most importantly, you can identify what works and what doesn’t to make informed choices.

Regular meetings also give you the flexibility to pivot quickly as and when needed.

That said, let’s move on to…

How to conduct a monthly business plan review meeting

Here are some simple steps to follow to conduct a successful monthly business plan review:

1. Prepare meeting guidelines

There can’t be a meeting without knowing when and where it’ll happen, who will attend it, and what will be discussed. That’s why you need to start by preparing meeting guidelines.

Here’s everything you can include in your guidelines:

• Create calendar invites and send it out to participants
• Prepare an agenda so the meeting can start and end at the decided time and no items are undiscussed
• Asking team members to be ready with the numbers and questions (basically come prepared)
• Lay down the rules as to how and when people can share their inputs

2. Actions and outcomes from the previous meeting

This step comes in once the meeting begins. Unless it’s your first monthly business review ever, you have to go back in time and discuss the actions you took in the previous meeting or the results you obtained.

It could be that you had to analyze customer feedback to improve your product or that you introduced a similar feature as your competitor but did it better with a feature launch strategy.

The idea here is to ensure you’ve met all the goals intended for the previous month so you can focus on newer goals.

Once done, you can move on to…

3. Review of business performance

What’s a business review meeting without some business performance review? You can divide the performance based on two broad categories:

a) Reviewing your financial statements

Since it’s a monthly meeting you want to review monthly financial statements such as the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement.

These statements will help you spot any financial anomalies and answer questions like:

• How did you do last month compared to your forecast?
• How did you do compared to the same month last year?
• What is the cash position and cash flow like?
• What does our cash flow forecast look like for the next few months?

You can even compare the actual performance against budgeted targets like revenue, expenses, and profit margins. As a result, you’ll gain insights into where:

• You need to pour in more funds
• There’s a loss
• There’s overspending

The bottom line: reviewing financial performances together will help you spot issues that you may not on your own.

b) Reviewing sales and marketing performance

Yes, it’s all about the money, but it’s also about what makes the money. So start by examining your sales and marketing performance.

Discuss how your actual sales numbers compare with the targets you had set for the month. Doing so should give you insight as to whether your sales funnel is benefiting you. For example how many leads have turned into customers? What stages are deals getting stuck in, and how can you address this?

All this data will tell your team where you stand and the strategies you must adopt to improve your sales game.

Coming to marketing, analyze your marketing campaigns’ effectiveness—meaning, check if the efforts translate into real business value. You can do so by discussing:

ROI (Return on Investment)

Calculate how much you spent for each campaign versus the revenue it generated. You want a high ROI (efficient marketing), rather than a low ROI which signals the need for improvement.

Customer acquisition costs (CAC)

Calculate how much it costs to acquire a single customer via different campaigns and channels—that’s CAC for you. Your aim should be to attain a low CAC to gain a good profit. See if you’ve met this criteria.

Lead quality and conversion rates

Are the leads generated by your campaigns converting into paying customers? If not, you must discuss how to rethink the campaign.

4. Progress on goals and milestones

Next, you want to review the progress toward achieving short-term and long-term strategic goals.

You can do so by identifying any gaps or delays and analyzing their root causes—whether it’s due to resource constraints, market shifts, or operational issues.

Once done, discuss if certain goals need adjustments or if strategies should need refining to ensure alignment with business priorities. This proactive evaluation helps to prevent future roadblocks and keeps the team focused on achievable outcomes.

In short: This step helps check if everyone is on track to meet the set goals so that the business stays aligned with its strategic objectives.

5. Business operational review

In the business operational review, assess any challenges that impacted efficiency over the past month, such as:

• Bottlenecks in production
• Delivery delays
• Staffing issues
• Technological issues
• Workflow process issues
• Supply chain issues

Discuss with your team how these were resolved the last time they occurred and collaborate to propose strategies to address them. You can do so by delegating tasks to fix issues and encouraging cross-departmental input.

This enables smoother operations to achieve business objectives.

6. Open discussion for any inputs or company issues

Lastly, you want to open the floor for anything and everything your team may want to discuss regarding your company. This can be regarding the work, operations, company issues, and obstacles employees are facing that prevent them from achieving set objectives.

That’s about it. You’ve successfully learned how to conduct a monthly business plan review meeting.

Monthly plan review meeting agenda (free template)

Are you ready to create your monthly business plan review agenda but need some guidance? We’ve got you covered! Download our free monthly business plan review plan template PDF and begin your journey now.

This template offers clear instructions and examples, helping you to build a strong and effective business plan meeting agenda. Plus, it’s customizable to suit your unique requirements.

Now that you know how to conduct a monthly business plan review meeting, your business won’t have to face many unforeseen, damaging, or delay-causing circumstances.

Just make sure you have a template in place so you don’t have to structure it every month. Instead, you can focus on the more important task, business review! And if you don’t already have a business plan in place. Don’t worry. Try business planning software like Upmetrics to create one in a jiffy.

Build your Business Plan Faster

with step-by-step Guidance & AI Assistance.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the purpose of a monthly business plan review meeting.

The purpose of a monthly business plan review meeting is to help you and your team identify areas that need improving or adjusting to make informed decisions. This is how teams can stay on track to achieve monthly targets.

Who should be invited to a business plan review meeting?

Invite the senior management, various department heads, project leads, and relevant team members directly involved in executing the plan. Any external advisors like accountants or lawyers who might have crucial insights into the plan’s feasibility.

How do you prepare for a business plan review meeting?

To prepare for a business plan review meeting:

• Create an acceptable agenda to follow
• Put the meeting on the calendar and create invites
• Prepare meeting guidelines
• Keep data (financial, statistical, etc.) ready

What should be included in the agenda for the monthly review meeting?

Your monthly business review meeting agenda should include:

• Dissecting parts of your business strategies
• Reviewing your finances and cash flow
• Making adjustments based on overall performance

What should be done after the business review meeting?

After a monthly business review meeting, here’s everything you can do to ensure that the discussion translates into actionable results:

• Summarize key takeaways and share them with all attendees and relevant stakeholders to ensure alignment.
• Assign action items to team members along with deadlines and track task progress.
• Follow up on previous actions and address any roadblocks that might hinder progress.
• Update metrics and KPIs, and communicate the same with your teams.
• Plan for the next meeting.
• Reflect and improve depending on what worked well and what didn’t.

About the Author

Vinay Kevadiya

Vinay Kevadiya is the founder and CEO of Upmetrics, the #1 business planning software. His ultimate goal with Upmetrics is to revolutionize how entrepreneurs create, manage, and execute their business plans. He enjoys sharing his insights on business planning and other relevant topics through his articles and blog posts. Read more

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-->   UUEE MOSCOW SHEREMETYEVO X V2 DEMO is a new scenery of UUEE Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, Russia, fully compatible with FSX/FSX:SE/P3Dv1/P3Dv2/P3Dv3/P3Dv4. This product is a fully functional DEMO version of the commercial payware product. Most objects are modelled as in the full version but covered with low resolution textures, non-animated jetways and generally much less details. Using this free demo ensures no problems with online (VATSIM, IVAO, multiplayer etc.) flying in case some users use the payware scenery and some don't. Sheremetyevo International Airport (SVO/UUEE) is an international airport located in Khimki, Moscow Oblast.Sheremetyevo serves as the main hub for Russian flag carrier Aeroflot and its branch Rossiya Airlines, Nordwind Airlines or Ural Airlines. The product is equipped with an automatic installer, which means that the scenery will be automatically added to the Flight Simulator Scenery Library. 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Forecast for the next 10 days   Atmospheric phenomena temperature °F RealFeel °F Chance of precipitation % Pressure inHg Wind speed mph Air humidity Night +45° +43° 2% 29.6 5.4 63% Morning +55° +55° 2% 29.6 4.7 62% Day +72° +72° 2% 29.6 9.2 48% Evening +57° +57° 2% 29.6 9.6 51% Night +48° +46° 2% 29.6 7.2 50% Morning +55° +55° 2% 29.6 6.9 51% Day +70° +70° 2% 29.6 11.6 38% Evening +57° +57° 2% 29.5 9.6 46% Night +52° +52° 2% 29.4 11.2 52% Morning +61° +61° 9% 29.4 13.6 51% Day +68° +68° 35% 29.3 15 51% Evening +55° +55° 91% 29.3 15.9 82% Night +54° +54° 78% 29.3 12.3 82% Morning +61° +61° 24% 29.3 11.4 78% Day +68° +68° 66% 29.3 12.5 84% Evening +64° +64° 44% 29.3 15 58% Night +57° +57° 40% 29.4 9.4 94% Morning +59° +59° 43% 29.4 8.3 83% Day +59° +59° 51% 29.4 7.2 88% Evening +50° +50° 56% 29.5 6.5 86% Night +45° +43° 47% 29.6 6 91% Morning +50° +50° 29% 29.6 4.7 95% Day +57° +57° 11% 29.8 6.7 80% Evening +46° +43° 2% 29.8 8.1 77% Night +43° +37° 2% 29.8 8.7 91% Morning +50° +50° 2% 29.7 8.5 77% Day +63° +63° 2% 29.6 9.6 44% Evening +50° +50° 2% 29.5 8.7 65% Night +45° +41° 2% 29.5 7.4 59% Morning +54° +54° 2% 29.5 6.9 50% Day +68° +68° 2% 29.4 8.7 34% Evening +52° +52° 5% 29.5 7.8 73% Night +45° +41° 5% 29.6 6.7 98% Morning +54° +54° 8% 29.6 6.5 77% Day +66° +66° 14% 29.6 7.8 40% Evening +52° +52° 13% 29.6 6.9 92% Night +45° +43° 19% 29.6 5.8 100% Morning +54° +54° 29% 29.7 5.6 79% Day +61° +61° 25% 29.6 7.4 48% Evening +50° +50° 36% 29.6 6.3 84% Weather Forecast 10 days for nearby cities Zagoryanskiy Ivanteyevka Elektrostal Elektrogorsk Day and night temperatures in Chernogolovka for 10 days Interactive graph of the temperature in Chernogolovka for the period 25 September - 04 October . The minimum value of the daily temperature is expected at around +57 °F , the maximum is expected at around +72 °F . At night the minimum temperature will be +43 °F and the maximum +57 °F Weather in large and nearby cities Weather in Moscow +73° Khimki +75° Balashikha +73° Podol’sk +73° Zagoryanskiy +72° Ivanteyevka +73° Fryazino +72° Fryanovo +72° Elektrostal +73° Elektrogorsk +72° Bolshëvo +73° Medvezh’i Ozëra +72° Krasnoarmeysk +72° Losino-Petrovskiy +72° Staraya Kupavna +72° Sofrino +72° Glinkovo +72° Now 17:28, 25 Sept Sunrise: 06:18 Sunset: 18:16 Daylight: 11:58 Moon Phase: Waning crescent Read more about Sunrise 405 IMAGES The New Ford+ Plan Ford Motor Company Business Plan Ford Automobile Strategic Business Model Ford Concept & Analysis Ford Automobile Strategic Business Model Business Strategy FORD Motor Company COMMENTS PDF Leading in the 21st century: An interview with Ford's Alan Mulally At Ford, we have a card with our business plan on one side and the behaviors we expect listed on the other. It is the result of 43 years of doing this. ... 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