When Alan Mulally took over as CEO of Ford Motor Company in 2006, he inherited a company that had lost billions of dollars. To measure progress, Mulally asked his vice presidents and functional heads to come to meetings with color-coded reports: green for good, yellow for caution, red for problem areas. At the first few meetings, the managers showed up with their operations all coded green, until finally Mulally said, “You guys, you know we lost a few billion dollars last year. Is there anything that’s not going well?” With that, one of the vice presidents, Mark Fields, spoke up. The Ford Edge, he reported, was experiencing technical problems and ...
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