The Value of Visibility

Here’s Alan Mulally, the new CEO of Ford Motor Company, highlighting the value of visibility and consistent data in managing an enterprise, the quotes are excerpted from The Wall Street Journal of December 22, 2006.

To set the scene: Mr. Mulally recently took over as CEO of Ford and began implementing weekly Thursday meetings for senior management to get everyone focused on the same goals, track progress, reward success and to keep people accountable.

Visibility Brings Consistency

His first Thursday gathering at Ford went badly, underscoring the challenges he would face. After Mr. Mulally asked each business head to present his results and forecasts, he complained that the numbers didn’t make sense. “Why don’t all the pieces add up for the total corporate financials?” he recalls asking.

“We don’t share everything,” he says one manager replied, explaining that Ford executives ran their units without meshing with other divisions, occasionally holding back some information. Mr. Mulally was floored. The next week, executives came back with complete figures.

By putting all the data in one place, Mr. Mulally was quickly able to see the gaps in the processes they were using to try and improve Ford Motor.  What’s more, everyone else in the room could see it as well.  He pinpointed communication and data sharing as a core problem.
 
Data Can Set You Free

“Data can set you free,” Mr. Mulally tells associates. He prodded executives embarrassed of their results to bring them to the table — and post them on the war-room wall. “You can’t manage a secret,” Mr. Mulally says he tells them.

When one manager offered up the poor performance of his unit, some Ford executives were stunned by Mr. Mulally’s reaction. He applauded, saying: “Great visibility.”

Cultural Challenges

Large scale projects often require a cultural change in an organization.  One of the hardest for people to overcome is sharing data, particularly if they are accountable for what the numbers say. 

Other barriers exists as well, like:

• the effort it can take to gather the data;
• the challenge of making the information a true apples-to-apples comparison and;
• distributing the data to everyone who needs to see it. 

With Mr. Mulally, its a lot easier since he’s everyone’s boss. He can break these barriers and try to institute cultural change from the top of the enterprise.

(As an observation, the impetus for improved visibility or better data collaboration often starts with people who can’t compel managers or executives to show up at a meeting. It’s the people doing the actual work who generally see the need for the adoption of these kind of best practices.)

The Value of Project Management Software

Project management software like Vertabase Pro can help organizations rapidly change their culture and seamlessly move to an environment of greater visibility, information sharing and healthy accountability.  (And you don’t even have to make everyone show up in the same room every week –it can be done via email and the web.)

Collaborative, web project management software centralizes and facilitates the gathering and dissemination of data. Whether that data are raw project performance metrics or customized reports on very specific projects, portfolios or performance data points (like scheduled tasks or resource allocation), it is entered and aggregated in one place.  It can be accessed anytime and the project management software can even send an email reminding people that its time to look at it.

Executives, project planners and managers can keep the enterprise better focused on its goals, track progress of different projects and project portfolios, and maintain a healthy, constructive accountability.

Where Does That Leave Ford?

Nobody can say for sure how this latest turnaround effort at Ford Motor Company is going to end up. But it certainly seems like the new CEO, Alan Mulally, is implementing common sense management practices. These practices can make a world of difference in how to best harness the talent within a company to achieve overall corporate goals.

          

This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 at 11:22 am and is filed under Project Management Software, Workplace, Project Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.