Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Alan Mulally said working together was something he loved, although he that he didn’t invent the idea.
“That would be like Al Gore saying he invented the Internet,” Mulally, president and CEO of Ford Motor Company and KU alumnus, said.
Alan Mulally, president and chief executive officer of the Ford Motor Company, gives a presentation about his experiences, engineering and buisiness strategy Monday evening at Lied Center. Mulally is a native of Lawrence. He was impressed by a big crowd at the Lied Center. "I can't believe that you all are here," Mulally said.
Working together was a key focus during Mulally’s speech Monday night at the Lied Center.
In his time as president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Ford, Mulally stressed putting people first and including everyone in projects. Communication was key in this process.
“The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it occurs,” Mulally said. “The fact that you say something and expect them to know what it means; that’s arrogant.”
Mulally said coworkers should share a unified plan that was understood by all. When problems arose, Mulally said he wanted to be around people who found a way to make things work. He said he saw that kind of people at the University.
“There is not an institution in the world that has more motivated, more skilled and neater students than the University of Kansas,” Mulally said.
Mulally grew up in Lawrence working several jobs, starting with a paper route. He then moved to a bag boy position at Dillons grocery store before he was inspired by President Kennedy via television to become an astronaut. He switched from liberal arts classes to aeronautical and astronautical engineering at the University.
“They didn’t tell me to be an astronaut, you had to be perfect,” Mulally said.
He was removed from the space training program because he was slightly color blind.
Upon graduation a KU professor who had just left a position at Boeing recommended that Mulally try to get work there. Mulally was hired and drove his Volkswagen Beetle across the country to Seattle.
Much of Mulally’s speech was a question and answer session because he said he was a “customer-oriented person.”
Mulally said a big issue with the automobile industry was the state of the environment. He proposed a few alternative methods of fuel for the future. One was using ethanol to power vehicles, which is composed of 15 percent gasoline and 85 percent corn. But that technology has problems with the supply of corn.
“If we took all of our farm capacity, we would only satisfy 20 percent of demand,” Mulally said.
Other developing technologies include cars that run on hydrogen and electricity, ideally only releasing water out of the tail pipe.
Although these technologies are being developed by the auto industry, Mulally said more had to be done.
“The auto industry only accounts for 15 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, so the whole country needs to work together.”
Kansan staff writer Joe Hunt can be contacted at jhunt@kansan.com.
— Edited by Darla Slipke
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