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СКАЧАТЬ we were called into the meeting, and they started to give us a hard time. We had nothing to lose. So, assuming I'd be fired anyway, I said to them: “Hang on. You should be embarrassed. This was entirely predictable. You could see it coming, we could see it coming.”

      I actually said, “You could fix this.”

      They said, “What do you mean?”

      For four hours, we stood at two flip-charts in front of this German board and explained to them what we would do.

      And then they told us to leave the room.

      After the meeting was over I phoned my wife and said, “I'm not coming home.”

      “What happened?” she asked.

      I said: “They just made me the managing director.”

      I had a degree in engineering, a few years of experience as a management accountant, and the idea in my head that, if we could recapture the respect, pride and mutual support that I'd seen in my first job, and if I remembered what my dad had achieved, then maybe we could salvage something.

      I started to use these ideas in my first week as managing director of Porsche. I had never run a company before, but I knew we were operating day to day without a clear strategy and we were still spending money we didn't have. In the head office, we employed 260 people, even though our dealers were selling fewer than 2,000 cars a year, and Porsche did all its manufacturing in Germany. In the head office we had our own press office with four staff, an in-house marketing agency, a personnel department. We employed 14 people to develop software, and 12 to do sales planning. On 28 April 1992, I reduced our headcount to 120. We went from 13 departments to 5. It was a dramatic change. Many people told me it was too much change in one go. But the business was failing, so something had to be done to stop the losses, and quickly.

      I had been in the company for four years. I knew every employee. I also knew the wives, husbands, kids and even the dogs of the people we let go. It was awful. I went back into my swanky new office, and I locked the door, and I cried my eyes out. This was a defining moment in my journey. The point when I swore I would never again allow a business to get in so much trouble that I had to make mass redundancies, and I never have since.

      But, in 1,000 days, we went from losing 20 % on each sale to making 20 % on each sale. We went from being effectively bust to being 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.

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