Alan Mulally's philosophy as CEO of Ford was that his job isn't to design, build, or sell cars—it's to have great people; every day he drove to work reminding himself that leadership isn't about him, it's about them.

The consistency and discipline of the working together process is essential to its success: Mulally conducted the business plan review every single week at 7-9 AM with all stakeholders connected globally for 45 years, missing only about 10 meetings, creating a reliable rhythm that allowed the culture to develop because predictability enables trust.

Service to live was the strategy Mulally chose to guide his early decisions, working multiple jobs (newspaper routes, lawn mowing, grocery store) and continuing service work through university and into Boeing to develop capability and character

An integrated life means consciously aligning all domains of your life—work, family, spiritual, community—within a unified whole, using the same core values and principles across all circles, and regularly reviewing your calendar to ensure daily decisions reflect what you truly believe is important rather than allowing one domain to dominate and sacrifice others.

When Mulally arrived at Ford and introduced the working together principles, he spent several hours per day for the first few weeks making himself available to the entire team to answer questions about what the principles and practices meant, because people coming from a command-and-control culture had never heard language like 'People First, Love Them Up' and needed help understanding the shift.

Mulally's parents taught him five foundational life lessons through daily repetition: (1) The purpose of life is to love and be loved—in that order; (2) To serve is to live; (3) Seek to understand before you seek to be understood; (4) It's nice to be important but more important to be nice; (5) By working together with others you can make the most positive contribution to the most people.

Mulally was asked by Bill Ford to join Ford Motor Company, initially declined, but his five children convinced him to accept the role because Ford represented a chance to serve a second American and global icon that needed transformation, and he felt called to help save an important institution rather than remain at Boeing where he was already successful.

The first principle of the 'Working Together Management System' is 'People First—Love Them Up,' meaning that appreciating talented people as human beings, acknowledging their contributions, thanking them, and including them in decision-making is foundational to organizational success because all participants are motivated by feeling valued and seen.

The fourth principle is 'Clear Performance Goals and One Plan,' meaning that most companies fail because they have multiple conflicting plans and people don't know which to follow, so clarity requires everyone to share the data and facts behind their conclusions so the team can collectively turn red issues to yellow to green.

The fifth principle is 'Expect the Unexpected and Deal With It,' meaning the organization must share the reality of its situation every week—both opportunities and issues—so everyone knows what needs special attention and can work together to solve problems, and team members must understand that 'red items are gems' that should be celebrated when surfaced, not hidden.

The seventh principle is 'Have Fun and Enjoy the Journey and Each Other,' meaning that creating phenomenal products and services must be accompanied by genuine enjoyment, daily expressions of appreciation and offers to help, and mutual support, so work becomes fulfilling rather than merely transactional.

The Ford business plan review revealed a critical turning point: after several weeks when all 300 charts remained green despite losing $17 billion, Mulally stopped meetings to ask whether anyone had red items, realizing the team didn't understand that surfacing problems was safe under the new culture—they still operated under the old culture where bringing an issue without a solution meant disappearing.

Following Mulally's applause and the team's immediate offer to help solve the red item (Kuzak offering engineering data, Fowler offering quality expertise, Hendricks offering manufacturing support from Oakville), the issue turned from red to yellow to green in two to three weeks, and the following week instead of all green, the slides looked like 'a rainbow' of colors—proving that the working together process actually worked.

When people repeatedly violate the expected behaviors despite coaching, Mulally gave them a choice: either commit to the principles and practices and work with a coach to improve, or opt out respectfully. He made clear that 'it's okay' to leave means the organization still loves them as human beings (the first principle), but they won't be part of the team going forward.

The Ford strategy consisted of: restructuring to match production to real demand and develop competitive cost structure, developing a new product line (small, medium, large cars and utilities) that would be best-in-class in quality, fuel efficiency, and safety, and taking out a $23.5 billion loan to finance restructuring and refinance product development

When Mulally selected the global leadership team at Ford, he looked at every discipline (engineering, manufacturing, procurement) and chose the best talent from around the world, many of whom had never worked together, and started the business plan review process immediately

Psychological safety depends on both process discipline and behavioral consistency; if someone violates the expected behaviors (going after someone, rhetorical questions, disrespect) and people don't address it, the culture's commitment to safety will erode as people become more cautious about sharing

About 80% of the time, people who said they didn't think they could change decided to commit to the working together system after thinking about it overnight, often because they realized they had been violating their own values for years

A few people who left Ford later approached Mulally asking to rejoin, and those conversations were 'phenomenal,' suggesting that once people experience the working together system and leave it, they recognize how valuable it was and want to return

The working together management system is visualized as a Venn diagram with five overlapping circles: (1) Principles and Practices at the top, (2) Governance Process to the right, (3) Leadership Team at the bottom right, (4) Creating Value Roadmap at the bottom, (5) Business Plan Review to the left, all creating a culture together