'How Do We Break Out of the Box We're Stuck In? '

(Winkler has a purpose statement of his own. So bent is he on reexamination and improvement that he refines the thing 20 to 30 times a year. But over a quarter of a century, the basic conceit hasn't changed much: "To get people to think smarter, in such a way that, through intellectual conversation and larger question asking, growth occurs, so that mankind will benefit.")

The goal of this initial exercise is to start people thinking in new ways, to challenge their old ideas, and to inspire in them some innovative new approaches. In any business situation, Winkler argues, there is a "current view" and there is a "better view." The current view reflects the status quo, the road most often traveled. The better view says that the often-traveled road is just one path in a world of infinite possibilities.

"A paradigm," Winkler tells employees in many of his frequently held breakthrough-leadership seminars, "is a box that limits thinking and constrains growth. There are lots of reasons why we stay in the box, but the number-one reason is fear of failure. To break out of the box, you have to ask questions -- power questions."

Barrett Burns, 55, executive vice president, global risk management, Ford Credit: "I was chief operating officer at Finance One's biggest division. There was one part of the business that really was falling apart. So Don and I visited, and they gave us a presentation. It was the usual stuff. All of a sudden, Don stopped the show and said, 'Give me all the petty cash you have. Let's have a town meeting.' No one said a word; this hadn't been done before. Don said, 'Come on, just ask me questions.' Finally, someone did, and he gave her $5. Someone asked another question, and he gave another $5. A guy asked, 'How come the phones don't work every day?' Don gave him $25. 'Why doesn't the computer refresh our information daily?' $30. He was using the cash as a technique to break down barriers. When it was over, the site manager was upset. Don told him, 'You probably think that I'm going to get mad. Well, I am mad, but not because you have problems. I'm mad because if you don't tell me what your problems are, I can't help you.' And word got around: If you tell Don what's wrong, he'll help you fix it."

What comes after you break out of the box? You translate vision into strategy. "That is the hardest thing to do," Winkler says. It's hard, he says, because the exercise forces people to align vision with practice, to decide what truly is important. What strategic issues prevent growth? How do you begin to address them? Which projects do you set in motion?

Winkler starts a ball in motion by asking everyone in the room to decide, individually, which five strategic issues are the most important. That's difficult enough for most managers. Once that's done, though, the floor is open for discussion and negotiation. Suddenly, individual strategies become the group's concern. Do they jibe with one another? Do they duplicate? Which ones best support the organizational statement of purpose? Which ones are most important?

At Ford, Winkler began gathering his top 100 executives for three or four days each month. At the onset, members of the group identified 1,800 or so projects that had been deemed important enough -- by someone, somewhere, at some time -- to merit attention and resources. 1,800 projects. "I thought, Holy mackerel, no wonder we've got some issues here," Winkler says. "We were doing 50 projects on the Internet alone, and none of the people working on those projects were talking to one another." After four months, the executives had distilled the 1,800 projects to the 84 that were most important.

Winkler's most impressive strategic victory at Ford (indeed, he says, the biggest win of his career) was born of a similar "family meeting," as he calls them. Both Ford Credit and Ford Motor were looking for ways to address cooperatively their slipping share of auto financing and their anemic overall car sales. Winkler and Lloyd Hansen, Ford Motor's controller for North America, gathered a task force off-site.

Lloyd Hansen, 52: "This meeting started differently from most. Don had the room set up like a party, with hats and whistles and a banner that read, 'Congratulations! 2002 Reunion.' As people came in, Don and I shook their hands and congratulated them. This was a reunion, two years from now, of our group, and we were celebrating our success. Then we started talking to one another about what we had accomplished. And, of course, that led to ideas about what it was we really wanted to accomplish now. When it was done, there was a pretty clear vision statement. Then we asked, 'If we're going to accomplish this, what four or five key areas do we need to go after?' "