Openness Through Reframing

What Dr. V, Raj, and Kelley have in common is their belief that they can change and learn. This is a growth mind-set, as defined by Stanford University professor Carol Dweck.²⁰ Leaders with a growth mind-set, a key characteristic of wise leadership, believe that their basic qualities can be nurtured and improved through effort.²¹ This malleable and highly adaptable mind-set allows them to stay open to changing contexts and learn what they need to in order to change their behavior appropriately. Leaders who operate without any filters live as if life were a kaleidoscope: they are open to let their perspectives, conditioned by beliefs and experiences, be re-formed not just once but again and again. Wise leaders are open to change because they understand that without personal change, they will get stuck, and they are aware that the context around them is changing constantly. Openness could mean vulnerability for some business smart leaders because they are reluctant to acknowledge that they don’t know what they don’t know. Being open is considered too risky for some functional smart leaders, because they become insecure when they are exposed to new and unknown contexts. But for wise leaders, openness means an opportunity to demonstrate their context sensitivity and gain a new perspective.

You can cultivate openness in a number of ways. Reflection and introspection are critical tools that allow you to become more open to the changing context and balance and leverage your smartness toward serving a higher purpose. When you take time to be reflective and introspective, you will consciously know when to rein in the intensity of your engagement with the world (if you are a typical business smart leader) and when to increase that intensity (if you are a typical functional smart leader). When we can stay mindfully in the present moment and dynamically recalibrate our level of engagement, we become open to all outcomes and carry out our actions with emotional detachment. Staying grounded in the present and maintaining equanimity—a composed, nonjudgmental attitude—in the face of great challenges is a critical capability for leaders whose job is to deal with a multiplicity of issues in a time of increased complexity. Indeed, emotional detachment and equanimity enable leaders to see things as they really are without being clouded by strong emotions that filter their perception of reality, and they take appropriate actions and make wise decisions.

Another way to develop openness is to be intellectually curious. Children are often filled with a sense of wonderment and stay open to and learn from new experiences. Studies suggest that very young children excel at divergent thinking and can easily combine unrelated concepts from diverse domains and come up with unusual solutions in the process.²² Divergent thinking is vital for creative problem solving. Sadly, we mostly lose this ability as we age and fail to nurture this inquiring mind. One leader who has used his intellectual curiosity and boundless energy to cultivate openness at his company is Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Company.²³

Prior to joining Ford in 2006, Mulally spent thirty-seven years at Boeing, which he had joined right after college as an engineer. During his time as a leader there, he led many groundbreaking initiatives, including the development of the Boeing 777, at the time the world’s largest twin-engine commercial plane conceived entirely with computer-aided design and modeling. Mulally is well known for his large-scale project management capabilities and built the 777 working with over twenty thousand suppliers who were providing millions of parts that needed to match precisely to create customized planes one at a time. His remarkable leadership in developing the 777 helped him get promoted to the role of CEO of Boeing’s Commercial Airplanes division.

Ford was in trouble when Mulally took over. The company was losing market share and brand equity and faced deep losses because of increased competition and globalization. At the time, he made a bold but controversial decision to mortgage all of Ford’s assets to secure a $23.6 billion loan, which he said was needed to invest in R&D and serve as “a cushion to protect from a recession or other unexpected event.” This decision was widely criticized and deemed unwise at a time when the economy was doing well. But Mulally maintained his composure and focused on the path that he believed was right for the long-term good of the company. “We have to control our own destiny,” he noted.²⁴

Two years later, at the height of the recession, Mulally’s decision proved to have been wise—for totally different factors. Chrysler and GM filed for bankruptcy and were bailed out by the government, while Ford, thanks to the loan, could weather the recession without taking federal bailout funds.

In addition to a financial investment, Ford had to stop the decline of its market share. Mulally came to recognize that neither a product nor a business model innovation would be able to stem the company’s decline. What Ford needed was a mental model innovation—that is, a fundamental shift in the mental models that its senior leaders used.²⁵

Mulally’s realization was inspired by a chance event. One day when he was walking through the parking lot at Ford headquarters in Detroit, he noticed the hodgepodge of Ford brands that had no common attributes in shape or style. Mulally realized that the time had come for Ford to prune its oversized product portfolio. Fewer brands, he figured, would help it concentrate on improving the engineering quality of a smaller roster of models. It would allow the company to reuse components across brands, reaping big savings on supply chain costs. Mulally also articulated another big benefit of reducing the number of models: “It helps all of our distribution, Ford store owners, suppliers, employees and consumers to know exactly what they’re getting.”²⁶

By reframing focus as a new mantra and helping managers understand that quantity doesn’t always equal quality, Mulally trimmed Ford’s bloated portfolio to about twenty models from ninety-seven. In particular, Ford sold off Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin—all luxury brands that were bleeding money—and pulled the plug on the seventy-one-year-old Mercury line. Instead of gas guzzlers, Ford would focus on smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.

After trimming the product line, Mulally convinced his management team to reinvigorate some older models like the Taurus. The Taurus had been America’s best-selling car in the 1980s, but its poorly designed successors did not impress car buyers. The brand had withered and was eventually discontinued. But Mulally ordered a fully revamped Taurus sedan—one that would be “the coolest vehicle” Ford had ever made—and this new Taurus roared back in 2010 and became an instant commercial success.

Mulally succeeded because he had the capacity to reframe, and he reframed Ford around a unified message that was captured in a new slogan, “One Ford,” which inspired and encouraged Ford managers to work together and focus on making Ford successful. Profits, sales, and share value under Mulally have increased dramatically. In its ads, Toyota now compares and contrasts its cars with Ford vehicles, not those of its archrival Honda.

You don’t need to be the chief executive of a global business to apply lessons from Mulally’s wise leadership at Ford. Wherever you lead, focus on helping people gain a larger and more holistic perspective and lead by example by demonstrating such a broad perspective yourself. In Mulally’s own words, you have to help your team see the bigger picture, as exemplified in this story he once told us: