Alan Mulally - President and CEO, Commercial Airplanes, The Boeing Company

Alan Mulally is executive vice president of The Boeing Company, and president and chief executive officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. He is responsible for all of the company's commercial airplane programs and related services, with sales of more than $22.4 billion in 2003. Additionally, Mulally is the senior executive for The Boeing Company in the Pacific Northwest, and a member of the Boeing Executive Council.

Mulally joined Boeing in 1969 and progressed through a number of significant engineering and program-management assignments, including contributions on the 727, 737, 747, 757 and 767 airplanes. In 1978, Boeing named Mulally as Engineering Employee of the Year, and the National Society of Professional Engineers chose him as Industry Engineer of the Year. The Seattle Chamber of Commerce selected him for its Leadership Tomorrow Program in 1984. In 1985, the Puget Sound Business Journal honored him as one of the 25 business leaders for the 1990s.

Interview:

PRASAD: Tell me what makes you come alive. What makes you who you are? you always remained one of the top people in my mind, in terms of being able to bring your principles and passion wherever you go and produce extraordinary results out of large number of people.

ALAN: I am not sure where I got this, but inside of me is this desire to contribute. Not just to make a difference but to contribute to something that is really, really important. Everything I have done, I have always felt this need, this want, this excitement, to contribute. So whether it was my paper route or whether it was my lawn mowing business, whether it was helping colleagues in trouble when I was growing up, whether it was sports, or it was school, I have always felt I have an opportunity to do more, to contribute more.

I believe that one of the most important things about leadership is to focus on compelling things that benefit a lot of people. Take airplanes, for example.… My passion is that airplanes should get people together around the world --discover how different we are and how very much alike we are. When you look at anything that has beautiful color, or beautiful people or culture or differences, I see more of how we are alike.Because airplanes get people together and if you get a chance to know each other and work together then we find that we have more in common than not. When we discover what is common between us, then we can have peace and economic development possible and that moves us up the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Everybody benefits when economic development takes place and entrepreneurship prospers.

You used the word spirituality (when you came to 777 project review meeting), and I really think there is something in there. For me, in everything I do, it’s got to be the contribution, getting people together, it’s got to be important, it’s got to be meaningful and that is my first filter. And if it is not associated with that then I never would have been interested.

PRASAD: Can you tell me something about your journey? Do you remember any significant events that shaped your life?

ALAN: I was a liberal arts major when I was starting out in college. And John F Kennedy was on the TV one night and he said we are going to the moon. And he said it is bigger than going to the moon. Nobody has gone to the moon and I was very excited. And it was about… we are searching for the meaning of the universe and meaning of life and how did creation happened and we are going to take one step into one little planet that is close… and so we are going to take this first step.

So it was not about going to the moon but it was about what we are going to learn about ourselves. It’s about the boundaries that we are going to push. We are going to learn about ourselves, we are going to learn about technology, it’s going to be large scale, it’s going to take a lot of people’s minds and we are going to benefit. The society will benefit from the reaching out of new knowledge. So in one month, I switched over from liberal arts to engineering. I wanted to be an astronaut. Because the astronauts they wanted were engineers… [they said] we may need pilots and so I went out and got a pilot’s license. I joined the air force.

So I went from liberal arts to calculus, physics, chemistry, quantum mechanics, and it was all so different and I loved it all because it married liberal arts with this global challenge/contribution of going to the moon. I did great in the program, I wanted to be an astronaut… and I found that I had color blindness and could not distinguish shades of grey. They were going to land on the moon that always has grey colors and you have to manually fly and so that might be an issue and I was in a state of despair....

I was in aeronautical engineering and my thesis advisor was the head of aeronautics in Boeing and so he said “Alan Let me show you a different vision, talented people in Boeing are making these planes and these sophisticated planes that take people half way around the world safely” and he said, “You have talent. You could combine the engineering with design and creativity… you like working with people and you could really make a big contribution in Boeing.

It seemed very compelling -- going down that road. And I got here (to Boeing). I got a chance to travel and be in every country. It helped my desire to be one with the world. I know this sounds too corny but then all of a sudden it was like -- my gosh -- it was holistic, it was one life now. I had all these pieces – airplane design, creativity, science, art, physics, people, linking… so it was like I was home. We were all creating this together and always stressed out and I was at peace. I was in the middle of this and [I said to myself] if we get everybody focused, bring together customers, viewpoints from around the world, it will be ok.

PRASAD: So you created an eco system of customers, employees, view points…

ALAN: That is right. It serves me till date as I am never by myself [with everyone together] it’s always ok, we can solve any thing and… we create sophisticated airplanes.

PRASAD: How did you know it? How did you arrive at this knowing, about the holistic living…

ALAN: When you grow up, you put yourself in these categories – work life, personal life, spiritual life, family life, all the things one could worship or discipline and it is kind of like one life and life’s work. (Alan draws four interconnected circles of family life, work life, spiritual life and personal life and writes in the middle “to love – be loved”).

So you want to work with people on something that is really compelling -- then you always have a plan, there is always inclusion, you appreciate each other, customer process (various principles that Mulally uses in managing the project)… you go round and round and enjoy the process. And so it’s all one. I have only one schedule. I have five children and a wonderful wife. Somebody has a soccer game, somebody has a ballet, somebody as a class… so it’ll be like my calendar has 787 design review in the morning and next to it will be middle school soccer in the evening… So I could never say “ Oh Sunday 2 to 3 with the family” because I had to be one step ahead of my calendar. I was going to Japan and my daughter asked “can I go with you?” and on the plane she goes… So it’s all the same all the time and I am ok.

Talking about creativity, in engineering it’s about creating something out of nothing and balancing many, many objectives. That’s why I tell my engineering friends that we look like hunted animals. Because there are so many things that we agonize over and balance… but to stretch yourself, it goes back to the compelling goal that we each have. What was this 787 about…? We need points around the world to be connected now. So we are going to use the best of technology, the best of innovation, and build the best plane that goes to all those points and connec them. It is high pressure but it is exhilarating.

The performance comes from these unbelievable stretch targets we have. We ask ourselves questions like -- what can make the passenger feel better-- what about more air in the cabin, what about a little humidity in an airplane that can go half way around the world nonstop? How do we do that? We think of new materials, new engine, new aeronautics…

I think it is wanting to contribute and wanting to find something big and important to do and marrying these together it is holistic. It’s to be outside (the box), it’s ok to stretch and not quite make it.

PRASAD: What you are saying is that… for you it’s natural. I can feel that this is who you really are. Even fifteen years ago when I first met you and attended your project review meetings you had the same quality and intensity…

ALAN: Have I changed?

PRASAD: No.

ALAN: Well, that is neatest thing. These (principles that I worked with) have got more institutionalized now but have never been a limiter but an expander. PRASAD: I remember that when you were working on the design of 777… the communication between the pilots and the ground for the maiden flight of 777– that was transparent, open to press…

ALAN: You know, there is a movie made by an independent producer for PBS. It has five one-hour segments. It is the number one fundraiser to public television in United States. It captured everything you are describing about being open. When they came to say that they want to make a movie on the making of 777, everybody said that one cannot let them in the meetings and let them show us arguing and debating and what if it broke, what if it didn’t work. Well, if it didn’t, it didn’t. The fact that the camera was on was even a help because nobody is going to [allow themselves] look like an idiot and not be nice. So when the camera was on people were like, “Oh yeah, please share that idea”.

You have to feel comfortable enough where you intentions are noble you don’t have ulterior motives and you are trustworthy. Whatever you are doing, even though it is hard, you are disciplined, you want to know the status of the plane… it is never at someone’s expense, everybody has to feel safe.

PRASAD: Was this kind of awareness of holism, one life, all of it… was it a gradual awakening for you or were there some defining moments in your life ? How did that happen?

ALAN: I had some good examples and I had some examples that I didn’t want to follow. May be the center of it is, whatever religion it is, the center here is (referring to the four circles he drew and what he wrote at the intersection of those four circles) to love and be loved. We are here, two professionals who care, enjoy each other, learn form each other, and we have this hour together. We are talking about important things. We are here and [regardless of] what religion you subscribe to, right now we are here and then we are going to be somewhere. So what is the purpose? Only two reasons I can think of, that is love and be loved, not necessarily in the same order.

So what is it that I am doing? I am loving and getting people together around the world. I am loving creating airplanes. I am loving all these different aspects of my life and then you know what happens? I get the response like you gave me -- You stand up in the middle of a meeting (referring to Prasad’s participation in one of the design meetings for 777), there are like a hundred people there who network around the world and you gave this speech on how what you saw here compares to what you saw around the world. We could have taken notes… we provided you an opportunity and you stood and took that opportunity. Why did you do it? You did it for a higher reason. Because you are going to share what you thought, what you learnt with this team. What were you doing? You were loving what we were doing. And you are sharing with us -- you guys, you are ok… you are better than ok. You need to feel appreciated for that. So everybody thought he is making positive statements about our airplanes? No. Everybody thought he is making a positive statement about us, and the way we treat each other and that is going to carry us through these ‘big deal’ things. You go around that thing… the more you give the more you receive.

PRASAD: I don’t think the usual business CEO or a business executive or an engineer for that matter, would get to this realization! I mean you got there early and you live in an inspired life and you get everybody around you to be inspired worker… so what is you secret? Were there other people who did this for you or were there some incidents that allowed you to open up and see the world differently? Did you experience love from somebody who gave it to you and that allowed you to shift [to] this? How did you get to be who you are?

ALAN: Well, I had unconditional love from my parents. Unconditional. I was more than accepted. I was loved. They were interested in me and they cared no matter what happened. They had high expectations. I always had this inside of me, this love for living. I couldn’t wait for the sun to come up. I don’t know what it is about me but I get a lot of positive feedback for being this way. Everything is an opportunity to me, I want to make a difference, I am nice to everyone and my self worth is high. I am the most excited when I appreciate somebody and I get this feedback that says I really like being that way. I like this feedback. Over the years I just kept responding to people and writing back to them…

By the way, I still write, I still answer to every email. I write notes to people all day long…

PRASAD: I just came out of a two day gathering of technical professionals in your company who attended my ‘our of box thinking’ course and sharing what they learned and how they are using what they learned in their life and work. When I said, “Guys, I know the session is closing at 4, I have to meet Alan Mulally and I am going to check out early”, everybody says, “Please say hi to Alan for us”.

Cheryl, one of the participants, she said, “Alan sent this happy holidays greetings…and I thought -- why not I respond to him.” So she wrote a note to you wishing you happy holidays. It seems that you responded back to her right away and she says she was amazed that you responded to her and she cherished that email. She said “I am one of those engineers, individual contributors -- and my president responds to my email and wishes me individually and that was something very unique.” So you are right. You are living what you are saying about responding to everybody. You are responding to emails, you are making a difference and you are saying your self worth is about appreciating someone else is seeming to appreciate yourself -- it is like a cycle – love to be loved.

ALAN: I think that is right. I answer everyone. Sometimes they email me and say “is it really you? Is there a screener for you?” They can’t believe it’s me. I will say, “It’s me” It’s like, “Ah… and then a human being.” It was like ‘You’ve got mail’! I mean the human being is out there.
PRASAD: Were there some other people in your life… like you said your parents provided unconditional love. Are there other people who inspired you to have this view?

ALAN: It’s like all of the leaders that you saw were making a difference. Kennedy made a difference. It’s not like anyone is perfect… Gandhi… I can remember studying Gandhi. It was like “Wow”. It was everybody that I could find who were dedicated to compelling vision inspired me. Gorbechav was like my hero. And Gorbachav walks away from communism, and the wall come down and now we have airplanes flying everywhere point to point in that part of the world. Kay [my secretary] is an inspiration to me. The way she takes care of every phone call, every person who calls feels so special, she helps people that call up from the factory floor who have an issue and she get them to the right person. Our kids, my wife—they inspire me.

Your work inspires me too. I go on the Internet, I go to your website and you are talking about your daughter learning bicycle, your conversations on practical spirituality, I am inspired. People are looking for peace, they are looking for ‘they’re ok’, they are looking for ‘we can work through this not matter what happened to you, this living is really, really precious and it is really special and you are going to be ok’.

PRASAD: That is wonderful to know. So what would you do differently if you were to know what you know right now?

ALAN: Oh boy! I really was fortunate to learn it younger. I don’t know. I really think it is because I love to live and I love to contribute and all of us want to be around people like that. And I am respectful of other human beings. And I think that I know my life and I want to be associated with other people like that and I move away very quickly if it is not that way. It’s ok, I will not criticize it, but that is not where I want to be. …

Once I went with five employees to a place and all five I have met somewhere along the line and they all had these stories about the way I interacted with them and the way that they felt special and important. I walked away with the feeling that -- my gosh, I can’t do it enough, I got to do more. I don’t know… somehow it is getting to this place where you are comfortable with yourself.

PRASAD: As a leader, you come across lots of things that you don’t know and there are unknowns. How do you go about getting to know them? How do you make decisions?

ALAN: We do everything to include everybody. We develop a plan, we develop performance goals, we know the range, the payload and the technology and all the learning comes from accomplishing the goals. Whatever you dedicate you life to, there ought to be an objective, a vision, a plan, something that accomplishes. Once you get that, once you get everybody doing it, then there is non-stop learning, especially in the creation business. How do we do that? How do we make the airplane fly at forty thousand feet, keep everybody warm at 72 degrees. It’s like every day somebody is going to come up with a piece of creativity.

PRASAD: If you were to tell you grand children 20 years from now about the future and how to cope with it, what would you tell them?

ALAN: It starts with, I don’t know what the spiritual piece is, but it starts with being… treating people the way you want to be treated, making a contribution, finding important things to commit your life to, life long learning and try to learn a new way of everything, I mean the biggest perspective… how is the world doing, the big issues… it is so interesting and then where do you want to fit in, what interests you, what do you care about, whatever you are doing it is going to be important.

Like my daughter, she is graduating from college and she is a writer. We were talking about this and she said I want to communicate the plan, I want to people to know how important it is what they were doing. She took a job at the hospital, Virginia Mason heart institute. So right away she learnt everything she could about the heart institute, and my God they are saving lives, the bypass, the procedure about saving people, she is excited as what they are doing is important so she is using her skills now to bring that alive to share their stories and get everybody get excited about what they are doing and I know watching her… those fundamentals of finding important that you love… she is not going to do it for something else right?, or she will find another one. Because it is what it is that you want to live this to the fullest, you want to be as aware as possible, you want to know as much as you can, you want to learn as much as you can, you want to follow your heart and learn what you want to contribute to, so everything is like an opportunity. Who knows where you are going to get an opportunity to contribute. The fundamental is making a difference and have fun doing it. You only get to do this once, right?

PRASAD: That is true. What is the role spirituality had on you? Are you spiritual, religious?

ALAN: Yeah well, I love Christianity, I love Buddhism. My favorite way to be is, “Life is good, be happy now and let it go” Because it is so. Life is good, no matter what, life is good and be happy now. I am never doing something happy at 4 pm or tomorrow morning. No matter how hard it is, I am happy. I am happy because life is good. I am alive, I am loving and being loved, you can’t make this a terrible movie. And the choices I make, just make it better and better. I mean, I can make choices that are dangerous or I can make choices that build on life is good, be happy now and the best one I have learnt is ‘let it go’. If someone says, “You son of a gun, I can’t stand the way you said that,” --well thank you for sharing. If in an email, the harder and more angry someone is, the nicer is my response.

Somebody wrote “The heat is off my building, I am freezing to death, what are you guys doing about it?” I said “where are you? I want to get the specs straight away.” The guy comes back, “So sorry, is it really you?”

If somebody has a criticism, if you can take it in your stride and you feel it, well you can learn from that. Why would they say that? - I have a problem. Do you need to get angry? What is the choice you have? Why would I get angry? Why do you feel that about me? What did I do to hurt your feelings? If you can’t do anything about it, let it go.

PRASAD: I found, after fifteen years (of my practice) that science and technology will give you the tools, spirituality gives you the meaning. And the business gives you a way to manifest something like planes or profits or…

ALAN: And you pull them together.

PRASAD: You pull them together. So my entire work, I am recognizing that it is the confluence between these three domains… the center of it, there is a way to liberate the potential to ignite the genius within. That is why even in my business card, I put three circles… you put it as four circles, I put it as three circles, that is why I am saying, it is at the center that we find ourselves…

ALAN: I think we are one.

PRASAD: Yeah, I agree. we are one. But I am amazed that you say it being Boeing President!

ALAN: It’s ok to have all the pieces, there are millions of pieces, but there is something about meaning. I think the spirituality is about… that we are human beings and then what is the purpose, and we know that. We don’t have to… we know when we are loved. And we know just looking at people’s eyes you know what they are feeling. If there are contractors on the floor and they don’t want to talk to you… what are you doing? Are you going to go home lie in the bed and say, I beat up five people today? I could never live with myself (that way).

PRASAD: We used to take 20 executives at a time to Dharmashala for transformational leadership programs and some times, we have an opportunity to meet with His Holiness Dalai Lama and have a couple of hours of conversation with him. Once I remember Dalai Lama saying that there are not many people who wake up in the morning and say, “Where can I screw up today, whom do I mess up today?” Very many people look for an opportunity to contribute. But when they are not given an opportunity, some people take it more seriously than others and they may do violence. But nobody wakes up in the morning prepared to do violence. So what you are saying is very aligned with what I heard.

ALAN: When you are saying, transformational leadership, what have you watched when that transformation happens to them?

PRASAD: What I found was that they come to what you are saying at some level. They begin to let go of the resentment or anger or grief and some of them begin to see more optimism, more possibilities.

ALAN: As opposed to holding on to what hurts…

PRASAD: Letting go of resentment, pain or anger or fear. So at some level when transformation happens, they see more possibilities out there. They see more open doors out there. Instead of struggling standing in front of a closed door, saying “ they locked me out,” you turn around from the locked door, then you see that the whole world is a wide open opportunity.

ALAN: What have you seen that enables that to happen?

PRASAD: I found there are two, three things that are critical. One is certain identity that we associate with. It’s like a mindset. If my mindset is like… It’s a zero sum game, there are limited number of things that can be done, and ‘if you take away what I have got, then I have less’, if that is the mindset with which I come with, then many times my approach will be, ‘let me get as much as I can’ or there is a greed that comes, ‘let me take what you have so I have more of it’, so there is poverty mentality.

Like you, I also came from a lower-middle class, poor family. As long as I have that… instead of poorness out there, but poorness in my mind, I look at everything with a poverty mentality. ‘Let me steal this because I don’t have it’ kind of mentality. Many executives I work with and many people I deal with are like -- there is no time (scarcity mentality) or there is no opportunity (pessimistic) or I need to compete so that you have less of it so that I can have more of it…

ALAN: All these resentments…

PRASAD: But once the transformation happens, they begin to look at it and see things bit differently… It is like developing abundance mentality. You must have heard of the story of this pumpkin farmer who gave away half of his winning-pumpkin seeds to his competitors in the neighborhood. So his wife comes and asks him, “Those are expensive pumpkin seeds because they are from the price winning pumpkins, why would you give it all your neighbors who are your competitors?” He said, “Pumpkin farming happens by cross fertilization, we are all in a large pumpkin field. So if all of us start with the best pumpkin seeds available, then once cross fertilization takes place, then whatever I do will grow on top of that best place we began otherwise we will average to a much lesser quality.”

ALAN: So it is about giving away. Because there is more, you create more.

What triggers that transformation, let’s get some R & R? is it the time away, is it meeting the Dalai Lama? is it the reflection? you want to try different ways and let it go?

PRASAD: What I find it, first of all, they are signing up to come to this program and that begins the journey.

ALAN: So they have a desire.

PRASAD: They have a desire. One is the desire or the intention. Second is the openness to explore something that you don’t know. So if I can ask a question ‘what if?’, instead of, ‘I know where you are coming from’, what if you are actually coming from a positive place? Next one is the ‘may be’ attitude. So instead of taking what you say as wrong or right, if I can come with an attitude, ‘may be you are right’, that means I am putting my openness into practice on a day to day basis, and what if you are right, and may be you are right. May be I can learn from you. Just by these two questions, you begin to explore a lot deeper.

Then I found, what I do is work with them to recognize that most of our thinking is coming from an autopilot response. We keep doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. The more intelligent we are, more IQ we have, the less we have the ability to see the non linearity or circularity of things. So what happens is we only think in a linear, consequential fashion, but we don’t realize that there is a gap between cause and effect.

Once you begin to see, when you create that reflection space, when you create that space between all the bad messages that are coming to you, angry messages that are coming to you, and the positive, affirmative statements you are sending to them, there is a gap. That means you are not just pushing back and reacting to their anger, but you are creating a space between their anger and your love. When that space begins to become bigger, when the gap becomes larger, I found, suddenly there is a discontinuity that takes place. They are no longer thinking in an autopilot response, but are sitting back to say, ‘what if I am wrong?’ What if there is an alternate perspective? May be there is hope. And that begins that.

So what I found is, helping people begin to recognize the thought patterns that are coming from the past which is from fear of survival. Second, the heart. I think David Bohm is the person who said, “We don’t have feelings most of the times, we have felts” So just like thinking and thoughts, there is difference between feelings and felts.

How many times you woke up in the morning and you looked at your wife, and said, “am I so grateful to have the wonderful, beautiful woman next to me and trusting me to sleep next to me and trusting me with her life, trusting me with her kids, and keeps serving me in the best possible way that she alone can do and loving me in the only way she knows.” How many times are we in touch with that love? And re-fall in love with that woman again?

ALAN: And again.

PRASAD: Right. So that falling in love again is very different from having the memories of the love. That is where the feeling begins to arise instead of a frozen old memory of love which I had 20 years ago or 15 years ago. So thought patterns are autopilot, feelings are frozen, old memories, and habits are what we do, we keep reacting to the same habits. So what I do is, in my programs or when I am working with people, I help people to begin to notice these three levels – the head, the heart and the body where there is a rigidness and from there help them to become more resilient, more open and let their past bad experiences not freeze them into single mode of thinking.

ALAN: I must feel a new response to a new thought, it must build on itself. I bet you are absolutely right. Thank you for sharing that.

Prasad: Thank you, Alan. I appreciate the time you spent with me. I know how busy you are and you are an amazing person.

Alan: Come back soon and let us chat some more…