By Tom Grant, Manager, Executive Programs, Leadership Development Center, Ford Motor Company 

Accelerating the growth of future leaders is the focus of Ford Motor Company’s New Business Leader (NBL) program, which reaches some 2,000 managers around the world each year.  Jointly developed by internal and external resources to Ford, NBL had introduced an innovative approach to leadership called the Quantum Idea Project (QIP).   

The Quantum Idea Project is intended to drive revolutionary change in Ford.  In the first phase of the NBL program, participants identify a quantum idea that should help transform Ford into the world’s leading consumer company for automotive products and services.   

In a second phase, the new business leaders form into cross-functional teams to move their fresh ideas into action plans.  To assist this process, Ford executives lead sessions on topics ranging from business acumen and managing change to leadership fundamentals and “Influencing Up and Out.” Participants design a specific plan of action and work on their “teachable point of view” for more effectively advocating it.  

During the final phase, participants devote more than forty hours over a three-month period to implementing the project.  They of course encounter many obstacles to implementation, and in overcoming these barriers they further learn to sharpen goals, surmount resistance, and take corrective action.  The best of their projects are reviewed by Jacques Nasser, Ford’s chief executive, for their company-wide potential.     

Participants in the program receive detailed feedback from peers, subordinates, managers, faculty, and team members on their performance and experience in designing and implementing their project.  They are also mentored by senior managers throughout the program.  While project results are important, the real measure of success is what these new business leaders learn from the experience rather than the success of the projects themselves.   

The New Business Leader is based on precepts that move beyond traditional development approaches.  It features an unique “up and out” thrust requiring every participant to influence those “up” beyond the immediate organization and “out” of the scope of his or her current job responsibilities.  It has also moved from:   

·  general training to a focus on innovative change and entrepreneurial behavior
·   course-content driven to action-initiative driven
·   textbook-rich to feedback-rich
·   classroom-time centered to project-results centered
·   traditional seminar to project workshop 
·   professional trainers to executive mentors  
·   classroom students to change agents