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Working Together: 12 Principles for Achieving Excellence in Managing Projects, Teams, and Organizations
This intriguing book tells the story of the author's taking the lead in the turnaround and restoration of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, and may have been the biggest test of the "working together" principles and practices.
- GenresBusiness
208 pages, Paperback
First published September 18, 2001
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January 22, 2022There is no future out there waiting to be discovered. We will create the future through our actions.
Ihave always wanted to contribute to something really important and useful for the people of our world.
As Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography, he worked his entire lifetime to master a set of principles, with humility being one that forever gave him difficulty.
For Mulally, the principles are so important that he begins his weekly business plan review meeting by reviewing the principles with everyone present—a practice that he started during the 777 program. He also ends the meeting by reviewing them.
“What were you thinking when the plane left the ground?” His response was sober. “Well, you’re so engrossed in what you’re doing,” he said, “that you really don’t think about risk. You’re just focused on doing your job.” That made perfect sense to me.
did the whole process simultaneously as well as sequentially
He holds BS and MS degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering
As anyone knows who has spent any time in an organization, most meetings are a fate worse than death
I have been completely around the world twice, visited twenty-six countries, and met thousands of interesting people.
I wondered briefly if the birds were an omen.
As one of the Boeing principles says, “We can’t manage a secret.” Get problems out into the open so that they can be handled.
The engine in a car can affect the performance of the whole, although the glove compartment cannot. The glove compartment is like the appendix in the body—an add-on that is not known to have a function so far as the entire system is concerned.
Not only did companies design products in isolation from their customers, but the throw-it-over-the-wall method of doing things means that they didn’t even cooperate internally!
We also find that many employees compete with each other, rather than cooperating, because they view the world in dog-eat-dog terms. It is based on the scarcity principle that dominates economic thinking. At the personal level, the view is that if each individual doesn’t grab her piece of the pie, the other “dogs” will get it, and she will wind up empty-handed. Unfortunately, there is some truth in this, so the belief is confirmed, and it is very hard to convince people that they could be more successful through internal cooperation than through competition. Their competition should be directed at the other organization, not other members of their own company.
She’s not in our group, so we can’t ask her for help.
I wanted to ask, “Who told you that you were competing with each other? I certainly didn’t.”
If you want cooperation, you must reward cooperation, not competition. For organizations that make use of a lot of teams, part of a person’s rewards must come from contributions to the team and part from individual performance.
They created a shift-to-shift competition. They had a round-the-clock, three-shift operation, and they declared that the team (treating each shift as a big team) that had the highest production for the week would be eligible for a prize. The prize was for every member of the team—together with their significant others—to receive a dinner at a prestigious steak house in the area. Apparently this was a desirable award, because things started humming. People on one team soon realized that if they were to misadjust the machines at the end of their shift so that they wouldn’t run well for the team that followed, this would cost the next team precious time resetting the machines, and give the first team an advantage. When management found out what was happening, they had to make a new rule: To be eligible for the award, the team that followed would have to report that every machine ran well when they came on duty.
Ihave always wanted to contribute to something really important and useful for the people of our world.
As Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography, he worked his entire lifetime to master a set of principles, with humility being one that forever gave him difficulty.
For Mulally, the principles are so important that he begins his weekly business plan review meeting by reviewing the principles with everyone present—a practice that he started during the 777 program. He also ends the meeting by reviewing them.
“What were you thinking when the plane left the ground?” His response was sober. “Well, you’re so engrossed in what you’re doing,” he said, “that you really don’t think about risk. You’re just focused on doing your job.” That made perfect sense to me.
did the whole process simultaneously as well as sequentially
He holds BS and MS degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering
As anyone knows who has spent any time in an organization, most meetings are a fate worse than death
I have been completely around the world twice, visited twenty-six countries, and met thousands of interesting people.
I wondered briefly if the birds were an omen.
As one of the Boeing principles says, “We can’t manage a secret.” Get problems out into the open so that they can be handled.
The engine in a car can affect the performance of the whole, although the glove compartment cannot. The glove compartment is like the appendix in the body—an add-on that is not known to have a function so far as the entire system is concerned.
Not only did companies design products in isolation from their customers, but the throw-it-over-the-wall method of doing things means that they didn’t even cooperate internally!
We also find that many employees compete with each other, rather than cooperating, because they view the world in dog-eat-dog terms. It is based on the scarcity principle that dominates economic thinking. At the personal level, the view is that if each individual doesn’t grab her piece of the pie, the other “dogs” will get it, and she will wind up empty-handed. Unfortunately, there is some truth in this, so the belief is confirmed, and it is very hard to convince people that they could be more successful through internal cooperation than through competition. Their competition should be directed at the other organization, not other members of their own company.
She’s not in our group, so we can’t ask her for help.
I wanted to ask, “Who told you that you were competing with each other? I certainly didn’t.”
If you want cooperation, you must reward cooperation, not competition. For organizations that make use of a lot of teams, part of a person’s rewards must come from contributions to the team and part from individual performance.
They created a shift-to-shift competition. They had a round-the-clock, three-shift operation, and they declared that the team (treating each shift as a big team) that had the highest production for the week would be eligible for a prize. The prize was for every member of the team—together with their significant others—to receive a dinner at a prestigious steak house in the area. Apparently this was a desirable award, because things started humming. People on one team soon realized that if they were to misadjust the machines at the end of their shift so that they wouldn’t run well for the team that followed, this would cost the next team precious time resetting the machines, and give the first team an advantage. When management found out what was happening, they had to make a new rule: To be eligible for the award, the team that followed would have to report that every machine ran well when they came on duty.
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