the most profitable car company in the country. We went from having three years of inventory to having one year of forward orders. The teams' work drove the company from position 32 (out of 32) to first position, for two consecutive years, in the UK national dealer satisfaction survey.
Adrian remembers the struggle, but like me he remembers an incredibly tough period with affection:
“It wasn't a nightmare, it was quite the opposite. Even though we had lost so many people, the remaining team was utterly engaged, completely committed and they would fight like dogs to make sure the business would come back. We had one mission, we had to make it work. So it is still one of the most enjoyable times I've ever had at work.”
The lesson this experience taught me was that dreams can come true – but first of all, you have to know what that dream is.
Abandon 3 % Thinking
Apple's famous “Think different” advertisement claimed: “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the only ones who do.” When Rob Siltanen, the young copywriter who thought up the line, presented it to Steve Jobs, he hated it. But, when he thought longer about it, Jobs realized it was “a brilliant idea”.1
It's not just a brilliant idea, it's an inspiring way to live and work. It's not just about making new things, it's about finding entirely new ways to think about what you do, or the service you deliver.
When I meet teams for the first time and ask them where the business is heading they often start the conversation by telling me something like “We want another 3 % market share.”
I say: “I have no interest in that.”
And they say: “Why not?”
“Let's get better first, and bigger will come,” I tell them. When you focus on getting better at what you do, you will win your 3 %, the next 3 %, and the 3 % after that, because you're building improvement that is sustainable. You can do this only by thinking differently. The alternative is that you chase a number. You might get there once, but just by picking this number and aiming for it, you have compromised your dream. Let's rebuild what we do, I tell them, and that commitment is far more effective than chasing 3 %.
For example, Paul Polman took over as CEO of Unilever in 2009, and a year later created the company's “sustainable living plan”. His idea was that Unilever could make the planet a better place. It is halving its environmental impact, will soon draw all of its energy from renewable sources, and is introducing products that help a billion people in poverty live healthy lives. He decided the business was too focused on short-term performance, so he stopped issuing quarterly reports.
Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, used to make YouTube videos to help tutor his cousins. When he noticed that thousands of other kids were watching them, he quit his job at a hedge fund to found his company, saying: “We have a mission for a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.” Today, Khan Academy provides free tutorials to more than 40 million kids around the world, and has been called “the future of education” by Bill Gates, who is one of his financial backers.
You want to build teams that do extraordinary things. That doesn't happen by accident, so the team need to be committed to the goal. As the leader, their commitment begins as your commitment. And for you to be committed, you have to be truly committed to something bigger than yourself, and something that is worthy of your commitment.
Daring to dream has five elements:
Dreaming breaks rules When you dream, you throw off the constraints that you, and others around you, have lived with. No successful dream is small. You embrace a creative future, and the future is unknown. Most limitations are self-imposed. Choose to take them away.
Dreaming is big Many people around you will encourage you not to rock the boat. Too much of our time is spent creating small plans, with meaningless goals. It doesn't matter if they succeed or fail, because they change little. Your dreams will have consequences.
Dreams give us purpose When we dream of a different future, science tells us that we are more likely to achieve our goals.
Dreams inspire change Not all dreams are good, and not all dreamers are leaders. Your success as a leader depends on your ability to take a dream and make it work.
Dreams give you passion If indecision stops you from doing great work, they will help you to make decisions.
Unfortunately, in many businesses the first reaction to difficult times or challenges is to cut costs and lay off staff, instead of saying, “How do we use our resources better? What could we do that's different?” Controlling cost is important (remember, my first major task as a manager was firing half of Porsche's workforce), but it can only ever help your business to survive for the short term. In my experience, it will never change the organization's effectiveness, or allow it to transform and grow to become world class.
Your Learning Starts Now
Why do we need to “dare” to dream? Because the moment you take that first step, as you open your mind to what's possible, you realize that you're stepping into the unknown. It doesn't matter if you are the CEO or the receptionist, daring to dream is risky.
You may have experience, qualifications, competence and an imagination. But you are about to create something new, and you don't know how it will finish, or what will happen next. If I join a new department or company, even as CEO or Chairman, I begin as a learner. That's what I was at Porsche and have been in many businesses since. Knowing next to nothing can be an advantage, because you are looking at your job with a fresh pair of eyes. It helps you ask why. Others around you will tell you that their experience tells them your dream isn't possible. Remember: it is possible to know too much.
At Porsche, we had no choice but to start again. The business was on life support, and our dream wasn't complicated. The next stage of my adventure would be different: could I apply the same approach to a business with thousands of employees and revenues of £3 billion a year, which almost no one believed needed to change?
CHAPTER 2
BUILD BELIEF
Your dream is only as good as the people who believe in it. If you want to create change, then you cannot do it alone, or against the will of the people who work with you. But creating shared belief is never straightforward, especially if some of the team members you are asking to change like the status quo.
In this chapter, we will look at what happened in the job I did immediately after Porsche, when I moved to the position of CEO of BMW GB, and discovered that success can be as big an impediment to culture change as failure.
Finding a sense of shared purpose in a business that previously had treated strategy as a sort of optional extra helped to create growth that was far in excess of what anyone expected.
Rejecting the Status Quo
In 1994, the British car manufacturer Rover Group plc was acquired by BMW, the German luxury car manufacturer, in a negotiation that took only 10 days. BMW paid £800 million for a manufacturer that it hoped would create economies of scale, as it became involved in mass manufacturing. BMW considered that, until it sold 1 million cars a year, it could be vulnerable in the future. I had always admired BMW's engineering and business, and I thought of Tom Purves, who had risen from an apprenticeship at Rolls Royce to run BMW's business in the UK, as a mentor.
Tom was an experienced, skilled leader who had overseen BMW GB's steady growth. He had been assigned to Rover to represent BMW's interests, and one day in 1996