Grassroots Leadership - Ford Motor Co.

"The value of learning by doing is great," Friedman says. "People learn more when they're the ones who are pulling in the ideas, the people, and the resources." Every Ford leadership project must also require participants to negotiate the entirety of Ford, "up and out" of their roles and divisions. Every project must force participants to encounter the rest of Ford -- and the rest of Ford to encounter them.

For employees whose entire careers have played out within the shelter of one functional silo, this is a fearsome prospect. Kathy D'Herin, 42, has spent 19 of her 25 years at Ford working in the payroll-services department. (She is currently supervisor of the tax section.) As one of the first New Business Leader participants, she felt challenged by the QIP requirement. When instructors said that her idea didn't take her far enough out of her function, D'Herin says, "that sense of challenge turned into nervousness."

Some projects will hit pay dirt, maturing into truly company-changing events. Bobbie Gaunt, who entered the 1997 Capstone program just as she became president of Ford of Canada, recalls her team's mandate to uncover new sources of top-line revenue growth. "Our big breakthrough was something very simplistic: laying out the value chain, and then looking at our core competencies and where our customers were going," says Gaunt, 53. Her team recommended that Ford enter the parts-recycling business, start a for-profit driver-education program, and develop a chain of branded maintenance and repair shops. The company has done all three.

But most projects won't get nearly as far. The ideas that they encompass will simply be merged into existing initiatives, or will expire without achieving any marked results at all. "In reality, there's no way that a company-changing project should get done by a frontline supervisor in three months," says Joel DeLuca, 51, a former Wharton colleague of Friedman's who helped chart the New Business Leader curriculum. Even ideas that are never implemented, though, help to reset the culture at Ford. The goal, ultimately, is a company whose thousands of leaders, unencumbered by silos, engage continually in quantum ideas that extend throughout the organization.

The Ford program has another core principle: "leader as teacher." "The program makes you a better leader by charging you with the task of developing other leaders," Friedman says. "We teach to learn. By doing so, leaders learn more about the company. What's more, we believe that today's executives ought to take responsibility for the growth of tomorrow's leaders."

The Leadership Development Center is populated by very few professional trainers. Rather, in-house executives lead the BLI cascades and most of the newer initiatives. Nancy Gioia, 39, chief engineer for Ford's Thunderbird program, graduated from Capstone in 1998. Today, she's coaching a half dozen New Business Leader trainees through their QIPs and serving as a client-sponsor for an Experienced Leader Challenge team that's charged with developing ancillary products to extend the Thunderbird brand.

Why does Gioia invest the effort? In part, because it's expected of her. More important, she says, "the networking that the experience promotes is critical to my personal growth. I do a whole lot of learning very quickly, because I'm exposed to new sources of ideas and to new people whom I can bounce my ideas off of. For me, it's sort of like having access to free consultants."

Friedman envisions a vast and dynamic "internal market of mentors and protégés." Executives such as Gioia will serve as models and mentors for future generations. And leaders will teach and interact up and down the career ladder, cross-pollinating ideas and developing networks outside of their normal areas of command. In other words, learning will perpetuate beyond the classroom.

"Total leadership" is another principle behind Ford's programs. "In order for leaders to be effective in their work, we need to integrate the different roles that they play in the world," he says. "Integration makes people more focused, more concerned with results --and more creative, because they draw from different experiences."

On the morning of their first workshop, before they hear about the leadership mind-set or the consumer headset, before they consider organizational politics or finance, New Business Leader trainees are confronted with the notion of work-life integration. Clarify what's important to you as a person, they are told. Recognize and support your whole person. Continually experiment with work strategies in search of greater balance.