All people dream, but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind,
Wake in the morning to find that it was vanity.
But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people,
For they dream their dreams with open eyes,
And make them come true.
âT. E. Lawrence
Dreaming and Believing
When Martin Luther King Jr. stood before the Reflecting Pool in Washington DC on a late August day in 1963, he did not declare that he had a strategic plan. He didnât list a set of key performance indicators or specify any targets for meeting them. Dr. King, as we know from his passionately delivered speech, had a dreamâan improbable dream that his âfour children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.â1 Within just two generations, that dream and all the actions it inspired helped give rise to the first African American president of the United States.
Without dreams, profound human and social change would scarcely be possible. Uplifting organizations and their leaders aspire to and articulate an improbable dream that is bolder than a plan or even a vision, and they inspire others to be part of it. Dreams like Martin Luther Kingâs articulate the possibility of change and insist on its necessity.
Inspiring dreams is one of the very first factors that come into play when creating something from nothing or turning failure into success. Dreams describe an imaginable future to hope and strive toward, a vision that offers something far more desirable than the present state. Dreamers donât pressure people to change against their will; instead, they inspire people to change by eliciting, appealing to, and expressing their ideals, aspirations, and beliefs, so that they might believe in the possibility of unprecedented change.
Dreams are most powerful when they are held collectively by a community, rather than pursued for individual self-interest. The most inspiring dreams are therefore fundamentally connected to improving an entire organization, whole communitiesâeven entire countries. These kinds of stimulating visions add meaning to peopleâs lives and offer hope in the midst of despair. The following three elements of inspiration are especially integral to uplifting leadership and we will see them at work throughout this chapter and those that follow:
- A broad and inspiring dream extends far beyond numerical targets. It doesnât home in on being in the top five, or emphasize vague and lofty goals like being âworld class.â Instead, this kind of dream doesnât only promise to raise performance and increase output; it also strives to change peopleâs lives for the better. It promises to bring them to a better place. This often occurs by inciting social uplift in terms of opportunity, equity, or advancement for those who have been marginalized or discriminated against. In two poor London boroughs that had been dogged by educational failure, the dream in Hackney was that parents would fight to get their children into its schools; in Tower Hamlets, it was that poverty would not be an acceptable excuse for failure.
- The dreamâs inclusive nature expresses a sense of collective identity. This means that the vision doesnât just belong to a few top leaders. Itâs also the property and prerogative of entire communities to which people form deep attachments, from the highest ranking executives to the lowest status assistants, from frontline workers to office staff in the back. The commonwealth at Scott Bader chemicals and resins creates an unbreakable bond of investment and involvement throughout the workforce that joins everyone together with a sense of social responsibility.
- The dream is made up of a clearly articulated relationship between what has been and what will be. Itâs not merely a description that harkens back to the past or looks toward the future, but that shows the connections and continuity between valued heritage and needed progress. This helps people to know where they are going by encouraging them to recall where they once started out. They are reminded what they are made of and where they came from. People in the small and economically depressed town of Burnley, in England, dared to dream that its soccer club could once again play in the top echelon of the English Premier League.
The power of inspiring dreams to raise collective performance and turn failure into success occurs in all kinds of places. One of the least likely junctures is where the rubber really does hit the road: in the auto-manufacturing industry. Yet this is just where weâve found some of the most daring dreams of all. When Henry Ford established the Ford Motor Company, he declared that its purpose would be no less than âopening the highways to all mankind.â2
On a crisp winter evening, the night before the 2009 US Presidential Inauguration, breaking news first reached the Italian City of Turin that would transform the cityâs and the worldâs understanding of its auto-manufacturing industry forever. The Financial Times was the first to report a possible partnership between Fiat Auto and American auto giant Chrysler.3 Just months later, when Chrysler collapsed like a house of cards along with General Motors, the partnership became a reality. By the end of 2013, it was poised to turn into a full merger. On New Yearâs Day, 2014, Chrysler Motors and the United Autoworkers Union became âcompletely absorbedâ by Fiat in a full merger when Fiat bought out the 41 percent share in Chrysler of the United Autoworkers Union Trust.4
Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (FIAT) had come a long way from the brink of bankruptcy in 2004. Founded in 1899, Fiat had built a classic and honorable reputation throughout most of the twentieth century as one of the pioneers of the European car industry.5 For a very long time, it was believed that what was good for Fiat Motors was also good for Italy as a nation. Fiatâs Golden Age had taken place during the 1960s, when the tiny Fiat 500 was a market success and an iconic element in romantic European movies. Under Gianni Agnelli, grandson of the companyâs founder, Giovanni Agnelli, Fiat courted success through a chic sense of 1960s Italian style and quality.6
But signs of a slow decline at Fiat were already evident by the early 1980s. A robust yet overprotected domestic market in which Fiat sales peaked at 59 percent of market share in 1988, and a European market that still held up respectably at 15 percent, masked a host of underlying problems.7 Whereas outsourcing represented only 50 percent of production in 1982, the figure had escalated to 65 percent a decade laterâand similar patterns held for design work. The US market didnât just find Fiatâs boxy vehicles unattractive; they were also unreliable. Warranty repair costs on the 1974 Fiat Strada wiped out all profits on its sales. By 1984, the company abandoned the US market altogether.8
A patrician style of management in this family-run company could no longer adapt to accelerated systems of production and to the increasingly globalized marketing of the modern auto-manufacturing industry. When Gianni Agnelli passed away in 2003, Fiat was in crisis. By 2004, the company had suffered seventeen straight quarters in the red.9 A dizzying succession of four CEOs failed to produce a turnaround. Even the Mayor of Turin felt that Fiat was a âbadly run companyâ that seemed headed for the wreckerâs yard.10
In 2004, Sergio Marchionne was appointed as the first CEO ever to run Fiat Auto without the direct oversight of the Agnelli family. Even though he had no background in the industry, the companyâs problems were glaringly obvious to Marchionne when he took over. He described it as a âlaughing stock,â even a âcadaver.â11 Fiat had an overextended portfolio; its engineering focus had made it unappealing to stylish twenty-first-century consumers; and dealers had a take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward their customers.
Yet somehow, the company had returned to profitability as soon as 2006âand by 2008, before the global economic collapse, Fiatâs bottom lin...
