Though a lot of people have been asking me, I don’t know if Alan Mulally is in the running to replace Travis Kalanick as the new CEO of Uber. But I do know he would be the perfect guy for the job.
Why?
Two reasons: First, Mulally is just the sort of father figure Uber’s remaining executives need to help them — and their company — grow up. Second, he is a master of cultural change, and Uber’s culture definitely needs to change.
The fact that Mulally, as former CEO of Ford Motor Co., also knows a thing or two about self-driving cars, is a thick layer of frosty icing on the cake.
The best business founders grow up with their companies. That process is not always easy, and often involves a lot of kicking and screaming. But when it happens, the results are often amazing.
Others don’t. And when they don’t, they become a liability and a distraction.
That seems to be what happened at Uber. And that’s where someone like Alan Mulally can make a real difference.
At 71, Mulally would bring some much-needed maturity, wisdom and discipline to Uber. But Mulally also is a tech-savvy leader with the emotional intelligence to check his ego at the door and allow Uber’s wunderkinds to keep on working their magic. He’s already providing that sort of balancing influence on Google’s board of directors, and I am certain he could do the same at Uber.
More importantly, Mulally has a proven track record of saving companies from themselves and transforming caustic corporate cultures into models of teamwork and transparency. He did that at Boeing. He did that at Ford. And many people wanted him to do that at Microsoft.
Mulally could provide that same catalyst for cultural transformation at Uber.
His approach is simple, but powerful. Mulally calls it his “Creating Value Roadmap.”
It begins with a crystal-clear vision of what the company stands for in the marketplace. The next step is to create a simple, but comprehensive strategy for transforming that vision into reality. Mulally’s Business Plan Review, or BPR, process guarantees relentless implementation of that strategy while, at the same time, driving accountability, creating transparency and fostering teamwork.
There are the things Uber desperately needs if it is to successfully steer through the s-curves of its serial crises.
Mulally is certainly not the only leader capable of providing these things, but his approach is proven and his track record is prefect. If not him, then someone like him needs to be in the driver’s seat at Uber.
