Building Leaders: Insights from Wayne Brannon

Speaker A: Welcome to Future Proof, the podcast for founders, marketers and sales leaders who want to scale with clarity. We're all about using AI, strategic growth and actionable insights to drive real results and simplify success. Today I'm honored to have Wayne D. Brand with us. Wayne is the founder and CEO of GR8Road Partners, a uh, strategic advisory firm based in Naples, Florida, focused on business optimization, C suite mentorship and internship, international business development. With over three decades of experience, Wayne has held senior leadership roles at General Motors, including Vice President of GM Overseas Development Corporation and President of Chevrolet Europe. Wayne's expertise extends beyond the automotive sector, bringing deep experience in executive coaching, strategic consulting and emerging technologies. Wayne, uh, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's great to be here, Solomon. We've talked about doing this. I'm glad we're actually putting it together now.

Speaker A: I'm so excited to have the ex CEO of gm, uh, and Cadillac if I'm not mistaken, and so many other roles that you had. Do you want to tell us how you first got into the automotive industry, Wayne?

Speaker B: Well, you, I got it corrected first. You promoted me a little bit. I was the CEO of GM Europe for a while before I left gm and I ran the Chevrolet and Cadillac businesses in Europe. Never, never ran the whole company. Mary, uh, Barra is doing that right now. She's doing a great job, so. Supporting her whenever. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, yeah, I got started in the car business, you know, kind of the old fashioned way. I was born a mile from the plant and I grew up and the General Motors at the time had a great program to put kids through undergraduate school with a co op program. So it was called General Motors Institute. Back in the day it was pretty good engineering school, pretty good business administration, uh, school. And that was a natural for me because my dad was a factory worker and couldn't really afford to put me through college, so I was able to put myself through and uh, then GM sent me on to graduate school and I got an MBA on their dime as well and spent 38 years working with them because, uh, they prepared me for a lot of good things, treated me right, gave me a lot of opportunities. I worked in a lot of different areas, uh, of the company from business planning, strategic planning, market research, and just about every part of the commercial operations of the business you can think of sales, marketing after sales, and ended up doing those kinds of things across 85 countries before it was all done 38 years later. So came by it naturally, had a great career there and still connecting the auto business, uh, with Some of my consulting and coaching work.

Speaker A: That's amazing. When you became the CEO, uh, of Europe, what was the biggest thing that was broken? I mean, every CEO is trying to fix what's broken.

Speaker B: I'm sure lots of people, everything, uh, probably not the answer you're looking at. I mean, we can talk about some of the leadership issues maybe a little bit later in this conversation, but everything was broken at GM because by definition we were in bankruptcy at that time.

Speaker A: I know.

Speaker B: So we were, we were in a position where the government was, was bailing out the company. We had a lot of external help, consultants, government, uh, appointees who were helping us to try to decide how to run the company. At the time I was in Zurich already running the Chevrolet and Cadillac businesses. And we were one of the few business units in the company that were actually still profitable in 2009 and 2010. And what happened during that time is many of the senior executives had the opportunity to move on to other things. And I was really the last man standing in Zurich, Switzerland when the, the business entity that was gm, um, Europe needed a leader. So I was appointed there and came into a situation where we were. You talk about what was broken? Ah, we needed to manage pensions for people who were leaving. The company had been there for 20 or 30 years across 37 different countries with all kinds of regulatory requirements and opportunities for them. And we had to transfer intellectual property from some of the business units that, where it had been to some of the other surviving business units like the Opel business in Russell's Heim and the Vauxhall business in the uk. So it was a very interesting time. I spent most of my time leading that operation over about a year and a half, two year period dealing with attorneys who were helping me to manage my way through what it means to restructure a business and get it prepared for an uncertain future. In terms of when I took, uh, over, it might be a better thing to talk about was when I took over the Chevrolet business in Europe five years earlier, I could chat a little bit about some of the challenges we had there and what we had to address in terms of a leadership perspective and motivating teams and those kinds of things. That might be more in line with what you're looking for.

Speaker A: Right? I mean, I would say what was the biggest thing and the most that you're proud of in your career there?

Speaker B: Well, you know, I think that running the Chevrolet business in Europe was what I was most proud of in my career with General Motors for sure. And there are a Lot of reasons for that. I mean, number one, we actually had a good run for from the time I arrived there. We were able to almost triple the business in five years. And we uh, had a lot of growth in Eastern Europe, especially in Russia, but other parts of Central and Eastern Europe. And we had the ability to kind of rebuild a dealer network that was kind of in shambles and in trouble. Had an opportunity to take a team that was really kind of a ragtag tag team of throw offs from some of the other businesses and build them into a lean, mean fighting machine. I mean these guys were fantastic. I had a team that was, would run through walls for the things we were trying to accomplish. And we, we built, we built a brand based on integrity and based on great American values that Europeans actually embraced and looked for the, you know, the idea of the open road and cool, distinctive Americana and you know, that personal freedom element. And we did some incredible things in the public, uh, relations arena to connect to communities. We, we won the World Touring Car Championship in racing three years in a row against competitors like BMW and others. And we put points on the board with integrity and with excitement and with a brand that, that people just loved. And so that's what I'm most proud of. And there's a lot of elements to leadership, um, you know, uh, requirements that went into that, but that's what I'm most proud of.

Speaker A: In summary, and I know we're going to touch on the leadership part. I do love that because you were the leader of Europe, so how do you build leaders? Because that's what a leader does. You build more leaders instead of managers.

Speaker B: Well, you know, what you have to do is you first have to develop a very clear vision of what the company is trying to accomplish. And then you need to work with your team to put a strategic plan in place that becomes your mission. And everyone needs to understand it and need to understand their role in it. There needs to be clear accountability and you need to, with that accountability, you need to delegate the proper authority so that each one can be successful. And you know, beyond that, I think it's really most important as you coach individual leaders to really get to know them. Uh, and not in a business sense, but in a real caring, personal friendship type relationship where you're not necessarily always friends with them, but you're looking at them deeply enough like you would a friend. What, what motivates them? What, what are their aspirations? What, what's their set of experience and how does that blend together to help them to accomplish their role? In the team, what, what would they like to do in the future and what are they working their, what are their aspirations for themselves and for their family? And through that you begin to understand what their strengths and what their weaknesses are and you begin to lean into their strengths and shore up their weaknesses on a real time basis. And you know, you got to do that by building trust so that they know you have their back, that you know they know that you're concerned about the, the, the clothes that their kids will wear to school next season. You care that much about them and that's when they begin to become a part of something that was bigger than what they thought they would be a part of. And you can be accomplish things in ways that teams normally can't accomplish.

Speaker A: Right. For you to have done the turnaround, you needed to get very clear about their goals and I could see that. And obviously it's all about mentoring and coaching like you said. So what traits do you think that separate sort of the ones that get stuck versus the ones that are. I'm sure you've seen people get stuck along the way.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think people get, I mean, you know, every once in a while there's someone who gets stuck because of a lack of intellect or skill or talent. And that happens, but that's really the exception. Most of the time people get stuck because of their attitude or their perceptions or their expectations being out of alignment with the organization and with what's possible and what's not possible. And so as a leader, I think one of the things you, you, you have to, to do is have tough conversations sometimes with people to, you know, make it clear what you're trying to accomplish and what they could, could do as a part of the organization, what, what part they could play. And then, you know, you need to really ask them if they want to be a part of it and what that would be, what would be required of them and how they would approach it. And more times than not, I think if you're a, if you're a sincere leader and you're treating them with mutual human respect and you're willing to share responsibility with them, people begin to come around, you can grow together. This isn't a, ah, understanding, you know, that people have a bad attitude and you throw them away. I don't believe in that. I believe you take people where they are and you see if it can come together again. Transparency, consistency, constancy, a true belief in the business on the part of the leader and a true, sincere effort to bring them along. To be a part of it. Most of the time you can do that. But that's where people get, get stuck is they just have the wrong idea about what we're trying to do and what we're trying to do or what their role is in doing it. And so, yeah, I would, I would say more often than not, the team reacts to the vision and can see their role in it. If you help them to see their

Speaker A: role in it, it's amazing. Sure, there are some mentors or leaders that influence you. Wayne, you, you became the leader of Europe. Are there anyone that you can remember that you can share or a book or something?

Speaker B: Yeah, the one that comes to, to mind most of all is a good friend of mine who's, uh, passed away now. Ah, Steve Koch. And he, he was a man of incredible brilliance. I mean, intelligent, uh, engaged, passionate. Harvard MBA that, you know, taught Harvard a few things when he went through their program. But most of all, he had a level of integrity that really taught me about what having integrity means. I thought I had integrity. I, I believed that I would always try to do the right thing and treat people fairly. My mom taught me we all put our pants on the same way. No one's better than anyone else. You know, I had some good values and some good upbringing in my Christian upbringing, some good values there. But Steve kind of took things to the next level just in, in terms of his interactions with people and the extent to which he would challenge them, but at the same time he would encourage them and he would build them up. And I would say he was the number one mentor in the organization. And he, he thought enough of me, thank God, that he would drag me along, go into one country or one place, and then he would somehow orchestrate having me join him and help him with, uh, the things he was doing. And what a great friend, a great family man, great man of God. I mean, I can't say enough about him. Don't, don't get me talking about him too much. I'll give tears in my eyes.

Speaker A: I, I know. I can see that. Anyone else that come to mind similar to him?

Speaker B: A lot of people along the way. A lot of people. I mean, you know, I mentioned Mary, who's running a company right now. I got a great deal of respect for her. Uh, she's done a great job with the company in very difficult times and a lot of change. There are other leaders of the company who, who were the CEOs and the senior leadership over the years. I had a great deal of respect for A guy named Fritz Henderson. Fritz still is still around. I'm not sure what Fritz he's doing right now. One of the most brilliant men I've ever met. And I just love to watch him analyze data, bring in information, you know, capture the essence of an issue, and then, you know, bring it to a head, and then let everybody kind of participate in the decision he had already made as he was smarter than the rest of us. But guys like that, you know, really inspired me along the way. And I would say it's rather than one person because, you know, just like you and me, everyone, we're all flawed in some ways. Um, and, you know, but we all have strengths as well. So more than just one person, other than what I mentioned about Steve, my friend, I would say it was more bits and pieces of individuals and the characteristics that I admired. So it was integrity in one place, it was intellect in another. It was a human compassion and perhaps another one. It was inspirational speaking capabilities and another, you know, area. All different kinds of components that, you know, you'd like to think, boy, if I could have a little bit of this, this, and a little bit of that, you can put together a great leader. I. I'd say it this way. Within my coaching curriculum, when I'm working with senior executives and asking them to design the highest expression themselves, one of the exercises we go through is envisioning, uh, the great leaders that we've known in our lives, just like the question you're asking me. But rather than focusing on who they were, what they were doing, or what they accomplished, I want them to focus on the character of leadership that they admired and that they would think that every great leader would need to have those characteristics. So, you know, we get. You get some of the common ones, like, to be a great communicator, to be able to articulate ideas, to be able to see a vision strategically from a set of information and facts, to be able to bring people along and inspire them toward a vision and a strategic plan in or, you know, to be able to manage complexity, to be able to move fast when things are getting bogged down, great solutions on the fly. There's all kinds of characteristics that you start to think about, and then you have some unusual ones. Like one of them that has emerged, and I absolutely embrace and endorse this is just a sense of calm when things are going wrong, you know, and if I think about it, if I am going to look up to a leader, if. If everything goes wrong and there's a crisis, maybe there's a, you know, maybe an emergency situation, everybody's running for the exits. The person who can think about what needs to be done, what's the highest priority in this moment, and who do you direct to do what, what do you do? And how do you structure your actions, your activities, behaviors, in a way that serves the greater good and does exactly what's needed, regardless of what's going on around them? There's. So there's characteristics like that that are kind of fun to explore and to talk about and then to work with leaders to say, okay, you admire that. So I would argue with people that if you admire that characteristic, it's probably. It's really a part of who you are. That's why you admire it. Now, you may not be behaving that way. You may not be expressing that characteristic right now, but the mere fact that we can look up to it and we can aspire to that tells me that that's who you are. And what we need to do is just get the stuff out of the way, get the bad programs that you're running in your head, the characteristics that don't serve you out of the way, and then design that set of behaviors that will drive you exactly toward that ideal self. And we have great fun doing it, but we also have great success by practicing being an intentional leader on the things that you admire in designing the highest expression of who you can be. And it's. It's really a practice of taking all of the great body of work that's out there on leadership. I mean, we can read books, we can watch YouTube videos, we can listen to lectures. I. There's tremendous knowledge, great, great, uh, authors out there, great leaders who we can learn from. And I'd like to say that all of their guidance in terms of becoming a more intentional leader is all like gold. I mean, there's nuggets of gold in all of those things, but putting it all together in a way that fits exactly what you need to work on those things that are really important to get you to that next level. That's what I try to do. Uh, I'm stealing from everyone's good ideas. Well, I've developed a rigorous process and a structure to allow people to integrate that into their lives, to own it, and then to practice it over time so that they can begin to install new behaviors and new ideas about who they are in place of the old ones that maybe weren't so good that they picked up along the way that weren't really intentional. They just learned the behaviors from A. From a friendly. From a movie, maybe from a friend, you know, on this. On the schoolyard or whatever. And it doesn't serve them. So that's what we do. And that is what I found work when I was running businesses, uh, for car companies.

Speaker A: I love that. I think you've shared that with me. And you gave me the analogy of computer programming. You program it the way you want it to work, and you get rid of the programs or whatever it is that isn't serving you well. Uh, and it stuck with me. I was going to add.

Speaker B: Just to add to that, Solomon. I think the. The issue is that it's. It's much more difficult to take a program out unless you have something to replace it with. So that's why we design the best behavior. So if you identify a behavior you don't like or it doesn't serve you, let's. Let's catch a trigger when you start to move into that so that you can not just take it out, but replace it with something better and then run that program. So then what happens is you're getting the practice of running a program that works. And the reason I like to. I use the computer analogy, as you pointed out, is because I think our brain is like a computer, uh, but our mind is bigger. It's a part of our soul, self, and our consciousness, wherever that exists somewhere around us, somewhere in. In God's realm, I don't know. But the mere fact that we have the ability to step outside of our brain and observe what we're thinking and tell it what to think tells me that we're more than just our brain. And that means if it's running a bad program, we can replace it with another one. Because we're really in charge when we choose to be in charge.

Speaker A: Wow. That's deep.

Speaker B: I don't know how deep it is. It works. It works.

Speaker A: I wanted to ask you, as a leader, you just gave me the DNA of a good leader, and I appreciate that. Now, as a leader, you had to make some tough decisions. Do you remember any of them that comes to mind? Like some. I had to do this. How to do that. Thank God you didn't have to do it during COVID but I'm sure there were instances like that.

Speaker B: Lots of tough decisions. Yeah. Yeah. If you want me to recount one, one of the toughest things. When I came into the Chevrolet business in Europe, we had just recently rebranded the vehicles we were selling from Daewoo, uh, to Chevrolet because we bought the assets of the bankrupt Daewoo company a few years prior, and we continued to sell them as day woos for a while. Then there was a brand change just before I arrived. And I was a Chevrolet guy. I'd been a Chevrolet brand manager across South America, Africa, Middle east, that, you know, Chevy through and through. But one of the tough decisions I had was how we should position the brand because it wasn't positioned correctly when I arrived. Okay.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: No, no stones thrown at the people who preceded me. It, uh, was just, it was a very difficult time. And we were, we, we were dealt the cards that we had these products that were day woos and they weren't really, they weren't real Chevrolets in their minds, right? So they, they didn't want to call them Chevrolets, but we rebranded and see, I'd had the experience where Chevrolet meant something bigger than the products around the world in the places where we had sold it. And so. And then as an American, I was thinking about the things I mentioned earlier. You know, the cool, distinctive Americana, the freedom of the open road and all those concepts. I thought that's what really makes the brand special. But I came in and they had rebranded Chevrolet, but they kind of kept the cheap, uh, you know, affordable, you know, car to get you from point A to point B. So it was a very economy vehicle, kind of positioning with no frills and nothing really to feel good about. It's kind of like the car you buy and you bring it home that you have to explain, right? I, I don't think you should buy an expensive product and come bring it home, put it in your driveway and have to explain to your neighbors, well, you know, it's really a pretty good car and it's got great quality. And no, you know, if you buy a, if you buy a Mercedes Benz to take the other end of the spectrum, you drive, you put it in your driveway. You don't have to explain anything. You just get out and you walk in and you're super cool. Right? So. But there's all different, you know, there's all different levels of that, uh, you know, with, with all different types of product, but certainly within the car business. And so my feeling was that we needed to really move to that cool, distinctive Americana kind of flavor and feel. But I didn't want it. I'd been around the world. I'd worked in Africa, lived in Brazil. You know, I'd really seen that, you know, you got to be culturally sensitive, and I didn't want to be the big, brash, loud American that, you know, charges in there and changes the brand to an American brand. So it's really tough for me. So I actually started taking the opposite position with some of my, uh, my uh, colleagues and they got upset with me. No, it is an American brand. That's what people think about, they think about Corvettes, even though we don't sell a lot of them over here, where they think about Tahoes and the big, you know, utility vehicles that we don't really sell over there. And, and then I, I, I argued with the agency and they told me the same thing. And so the tough decision for me was to do what I felt was right, but to make sure I was doing it in line with what the customer really wanted, what the dealers wanted, what my team, the agency could deliver. And we got to that. It was very tough on me because I thought I was perhaps, you know, overstepping my own kind of belief system a little bit. But we got there, we made the decision and we killed it. I mean, everything we went. We found over 600 songs from popular artists in the world that have the word Chevrolet or one of our models in it. And we bought the rights to that music and we did CDs at the time. We had two versions of, you know, Chevrolet, uh, we call the Chevrolet Legends. I mean it was Billy Joel and Sheryl Crowe and Prince and all kinds of music, you know, that you would know. And we pieced them all together into this montage and we gave it out to customers who bought cars. They were in all the dealerships, the music was playing at all our events. I've got two platinum CDs, you know, that are framed right now as a result of that promotion that won a lot of awards. Now my wife won't let me keep them in the house, but they're hanging in the garage just outside. So I mean, but we did other things. We uh, connected with communities and like we wanted to be associated with art, but we weren't a high end brand. So we, we did a. My PR director and his team came up with this brilliant idea to connect to art schools and get young artists to do projects that were related to our brand and then actually use those things in our business. Like for example, one of the artists was designing clothing, a fashion designer. And we let them design the outfits. The winning outfit from all the countries who competed would be the outfits that the models at the Paris Motor show or the Geneva Motor show would wear. So we just connected to the community in such a way. As I mentioned, we won the World Touring Car Championship Uh, three times in a row. Had the, the, the world's number one driver a few of those years as well. So we just put everything we had into that brand, into that business and locked arms and we grew the business. We took a, the business. We didn't, we didn't report the results, but let's just say we were losing, let's say 50 to 60 million plus a year when, when I arrived in the scenes and at the end, we were making more than a billion dollars a year. And even in the times when, you know, not many car companies, uh, in any business were making money in 2008, 2009, 2010, after the financial crisis. So we were really, really proud of what we're able to do. And, and we did it with integrity as well. We, we also had another tough decision, probably giving you more than you want here, but another really tough decision. I came in and one of the other business units, I'll just say it that way, one of the other business units in Europe was really being unfair to our business unit, ah, treating the people badly. They were disadvantaging our product placement in shared dealership, uh, locations. They were doing things and saying things that were true, what wasn't right. And my team, when I arrived there, was retaliating. They were basically going, you know, and fighting against and getting angry. And I sat down at the first staff meeting and one of the tough, tough decision, toughest decision I had to make was right in that very first staff meeting. Maybe it was the second staff meeting, I don't recall, but it was early, very early on. And I heard that. And I said, look, I gotta, I gotta make a statement here. We're not gonna talk about our colleagues that way. These are, these are members of the General Motors family. And what we want for them is for them to succeed. We want them to be profitable. We want their business to flow. We want all of them as individuals to succeed. And so I don't care if they spit in your face, you smile and walk away. Tell me about it. I'll take care of that. Okay? But I don't want any of you retaliating in any way. I don't want you talking bad about them. We're going to lift them up. Even if they tear us down, we're going to lift them up and we're going to work together and we're going to overcome all our deficits regardless of what they do or say. And that was a, uh, that was a stake in the ground on integrity that I felt I had to make. But, you know, I'm trying to build a relationship with my whole team. And I literally told them, I said, if I see that kind of behavior from you or your team, you're not going to be a part of this organization anymore. Wow. Uh, so, I mean, I. I really drew a line in the sand and that was tough, but I felt it was the right thing to do. And you know what, that worked famously. I mean, it just was. It just took a burden off of their shoulders. It freed them up to be themselves and not. Not stoop to the level of being concerned about what someone else was saying. We are in charge of our own destiny. And that's what I kept, you know, encouraging them. We define who we are. We make or break our business based on what we do and what, what we see, not, not based on what someone else does or says. We can overcome any deficits they put in front of us. And so that was a, um, that was a tough decision, but it turned into a great result.

Speaker A: Awesome examples. This is exactly what I was hoping for. Wayne, I appreciate that. Now when you, when you came in, you said for Chevy, the, the brand was positioned incorrectly and it wasn't quite what you envisioned for an American brand. So I want to ask you more of a broader questions. What sort of mistake do brains make, you know, that hold them back similar to what you had gone through? What do you think causes it? And you know, I'm sure you're dealing with businesses today similar examples. This episode is brought to you by ims M. IMS helps companies use AI, modern marketing and proven sales systems to create predictable growth. If you want better leads, stronger positioning, and systems that can scale without complexity, visit ims.

Speaker B: I won't mention the examples of the companies I'm currently working with, but we're actually working on some of those issues. To rebrand, um, the business in a way that serves them better, that actually connects them to customers. Well, the first and most important thing is that some brands are, are not really as customer focused as they need to be. Customer focus is first and number one in marketing and branding. And that's the, that's the first thing I see. And then the second thing that is really more prevalent because I think people understand generally they need to be customer focused. But the thing that I see way too often in branding is focused on their capabilities and their talents and their offer in their branding. Way, way too much. I'll give you an example of what I mean in a tagline example. If you have a tagline like general Electric used to have a tagline, General Electric. We bring good things to life. Sounds good. Makes sense, right? But what do I care if you bring good things to life? What does it do for me? Okay, well then do I get some benefits? So I have to extract some benefit from your excellence, Right? That's one level of branding. And I don't think it served GE as well as what Nike did. What did they do? They said just do it. So that's a customer imperative, right? That's inspiring your customer to be better, to be greater, to be excellent in some way. Because does it say we're great? No. Now we've got Tiger woods and we've got Serena Williams and we've got all these great athletes all around the world who are wearing our brand. So our greatness is kind of given. But we're not talking about us and our capability. Want to talk about our shoes? We don't talk about anything in that moment. We're just saying just do it. You're the weekend warrior who's going to be better because you're standing with a brand who's focused on you. And so I always encourage my, my clients, my colleagues, when they're doing branding, not only have a customer mindset, a customer focus, but then project your brand positioning to be empowering the customer as a customer imperative. Something like with Chevy, we use make it happen. You know, Chevrolet, make it happen, not Chevrolet. You know, we have great cars or you know, we're for the Opal, we, we make cars for the open road. There's a good things you could say, but make it a customer career. And then the third thing I would say that I think brands get messed up with is a really an extension of the second one. They, they want to focus too much on their capabilities. I, if I see another chart deck from a brand that goes through like the first 15 pages of a 20 page deck is talking about all the things they've done, the capabilities they built and all the things that are, you know, in, in their company that make them great. And then you have five charts, maybe with a few customer benefits. The customer benefits are the stars of the show. Right? It's just getting your, your spin on the same thing a little bit differently to, let's, let's lead with the customer, let's give them the features, uh, but only the features with respect to the benefits and make sure that the customer knows what they're going to get, including the support from us and all of the things that we do above and beyond the products and services that we deliver. And those would be the things that I would say are the most important deficits to overcome. And all of those are mindset, really. It's just, uh, mostly it's not. It's not done, you know, maliciously. It's not done out of ignorance. It's just done out of. They're very proud of who they are and what they're doing, so they. They need to talk about themselves.

Speaker A: Somehow they think that that's what the customer is looking for, so they want to prove themselves that we're the right fit, you know?

Speaker B: Exactly. So let's. Let's just take an example. You and I. You and I hadn't met before. We walk into a pub, and you're sitting there having a beer. I come and have a beer and I say, hi, Solomon, I'm really great. Let me tell you about all the capabilities I have. Is that the way we'd build a relationship? No. So I think of branding and business as building a relationship, not as selling somebody something. And I think if you just put that mindset on, building the relationship mindset on your branding work, it'll be a lot richer and a lot more productive.

Speaker A: Love that. I want to switch to that CEO hat one more time. Because you had to evaluate so many opportunities to pursue or not to pursue. Is there anything that you did to evaluate when a good opportunity came and you said, you know what? This is not a good one to pursue. I'm sure you did millions of times just trying to think of how do you evaluate whether an opportunity.

Speaker B: You know, it's interesting that you asked that question, because I, uh, happen to be on another podcast last week, and the. The interviewer asked me a similar question. And what I would say is, the way you do it is that you. You have to first realize you're never going to have perfect information when you want to make a decision. Now. You want to get as much as you can, but let's say in a really successful decision, you have to make, you might have 80% of the detailed information that you'd like to have, but you're not going to have 100%. So even in the best situation, you're going to have 80. But when I think about the difficult decisions I had to make and some things I turned away, some of those things happened during difficult times when we were. When we were absolutely moving fast because velocity was the key for us to keep our business on the road, and we had to make decisions fast. We had to change when we make wrong decisions. So we had to be nimble and, you know, overcome a lot effect. A lot of people aren't comfortable when you move their cheese. Right. A lot of people are not comfortable with change. So you got to overcome that and guide and coach people, but you never have. You don't even have 80% of the information. You're going to have 20% of the information, 30%, 40%, but you got to move, so you got to look at things a little bit different way. So I had a, I, I called it triangulation, but it was really a multifaceted view of a situation and a decision that we use to make decisions whether to go for something or not go for something. And all it meant was, okay, we can't get this information. Is there anything similar to that or anything that we could get that would inform that a little bit so it almost tangential to that issue. And then we do it. And so can we do that over here? Can we do it over here? And we had a multifaceted view of imperfect information that we would, you know, congeal into a consensus opinion by the team. Everyone's collaborating, everyone's working together, coming up with the best ideas they can have about things that might relate to the decision. And more times than not, we came up with a pretty high level of confidence about what we needed to do at that moment with the amount of this information we had. You know, and most of those decisions were around, you know, major things like investments. You know, should we really make this investment in this particular, you know, activity. Those were marketing decisions we were making. Should we, should we be in the Geneva Motor show this year because of the, you know, the cost constraints? That's a huge decision, right? Or decisions about should we participate in a new product program that's happening in North America where the cost of the product might be too high for our markets. We got the shipping and tariff issues to deal with and all of those things. So then you're making a decision about, geez, I'd love to have that as an image product, but boy, would it. Would we really be able to sell any. What would the business case look like? And you know, we're moving fast on those things. We never had perfect information. We use this multifaceted viewpoint triangulation, and we get to an answer and we make the call.

Speaker A: Wow. It seems, uh, very systematic, Wayne. I appreciate that.

Speaker B: Well, you know, it's as systematic as was available to us at the time. We just tried to put as much rigor into the lack of information as we possibly.

Speaker A: Well, you would Never know until you do it.

Speaker B: Right. Right.

Speaker A: You wouldn't know until you bring the product to do it.

Speaker B: And it's amazing what you find. It's amazing what you find that you wouldn't have found if you hadn't looked for forth.

Speaker A: Do you ever use gut feelings as a way to make decisions?

Speaker B: Sure. And in a complete absence of that, uh, but I wouldn't say it's kind of a gut decision.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: As much as it's you, you just fall back on what you know is right. So if it has any sort of a, A, ah, fairness or a moral implication or you know, a, ah, human factor engaged with it. So, you know, many times I felt, you know, that maybe a person wasn't the right person for the organization and probably needed to look for an opportunity outside the company. But I didn't have all of the data on that. I had, my intuition was telling me that. But I, uh, would always try to make the decision based on the right thing to do. The right thing to do is give them a second chance, continue to coach them, look for, look for the reasons why they should stay. Can we support them? Can we move them to another position? Can we give them some support and development? So those are the kinds of decision where if you followed your gut, which could also include some emotions, you might do the wrong thing. So what I tried to do is whenever I was managing without perfect information, I would just re, you know, retreat, you know, to the higher, the higher values that I've been taught over the years.

Speaker A: Amen. Thank God for that.

Speaker B: You know. You know, I'm a follower of Christ as well. So I think if you, if you just try to do the right thing that we've learned, it would be the right thing. You know, treat other, other people with love and respect, be gentle and kind where you can stand up for what's right, but do it in a way that's respectful. You know, it's, it's hard to go wrong. Not everyone's going to admire you for that and everyone's going to love you for that. But I don't think I'd have to put my head on my pill at night and regret anything if I follow

Speaker A: that love that, you know, you said 38 years. Am I right at dad?

Speaker B: Uh, 38 years at GM and now I've been a consultant and coach for 14 years, I guess going on 15 years. And I did work for Volkswagen of America in 2013. I was, uh, an interim CMO for them. Uh, I was doing a project on their marketing and product planning group and the CMO left. And so I was the interim fill in during that period of the project. Fortunately, it was before they had the troubles with Diesel that they called dieselgate. So it was a, it was an easier time at Volkswagen, but a good brand as well. I loved working with them, a lot of good things and a lot of nice people I met there. So it was a, it was a great opportunity.

Speaker A: Are there any lessons from running a large team that guide your work today as you're consulting and coaching entrepreneurs and leaders?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the biggest advice I mentioned earlier is try to teach them to move fast. You know, try to get them to work within the structure of the organization as much as they can. I mean, not to, not to break out. Sometimes you need to ask for forgiveness rather than permission in a big company. But I try not to give my clients that advice because I don't want to get them fired and to be responsible for that. But, but I think you need to be a little bit of a risk taker sometimes and you need to push the envelope on the way the system in the process works. And if you find a bottleneck, you got to break the bottleneck so you can get things to happen. Because big organizations don't move as fast as they need to by design. You know, you, you disperse the authority to act, you know, fairly, fairly finely across the organization as a result. It takes a lot of coordination, a lot of effort. That's a good thing and a bad thing. But I think moving fast is a competitive advantage. So that's the one thing that I, I think I advise them on more than anything else. And, and also to not take things personal. People want to take things personally all the time. Now. Some of the things are, ah, you know, they get, you know, there's insults that get thrown and people backstabbing another person and all that stuff. So I said, look, here's what you do. Never talk about other people in a negative way. You talk about people in a positive way. Great. Don't stand around the coffee machine and gossip. Don't do anything that would move you into an environment where anyone could even imagine that you would be someone who's a negative influence or a toxic kind of, uh, effect having a toxic effect on the organization. Speak positively about other people. You know, feed them with compliments, not insults. If you have to give feedback, give it directly and honestly and apologize for giving the feedback before you give it. And then you, you'll really be kind of on a higher plane. In my business, I have A tagline maybe you saw it, it says the high road leads to a better place. People for me know I've been saying that for 30 years, but I believe it's true. The high road does lead to a better place. It's a better place for you personally. It's a better place for relationships with other people. It's a better place for the performance of the organization, the team spirit and things that can happen in big organizations. And at the end of the day, it's the best place we can be spiritually as well, because we're being TR our values when we walk the high road.

Speaker A: And as you're coaching and consulting, Wayne, how are you leveraging AI or how are these organizations leveraging AI that you're seeing? And what should a business leader do? Figure out how to, how to leverage it in their growth?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a, that's a really good question. And you know, I'm touching it in a number of different areas. So let me just give you one example that I think is true in the, in the car business. Some of the consulting I do still car business. A lot of dealers today, I just saw a report on this. A lot of dealers today of, you know, really engaged AI agents to do the lead response and the customer response for web based inquiries, you know, in written form. So all of the chat capabilities, uh, have really accelerated the, the viability of a dealership's reaction to customers when customers are asking questions, doing inquiries or becoming a lead. Right. One of the things that people don't do very well, frankly is to follow up on, oh, here's, here's 10 leads. People sent emails and so, so let's follow up on those. But machines do it instantly, right? They, I mean they, and what does a customer expect? They expect a fast response. So now they're getting a fast response. It's coming almost, they hit send and then the response is, is there with them. It's given the right advice, it's given the information they need. It by the way, is trained to be friendly and, and build a very positive relationship. And so what we're finding in the consumer research is the consumers are favoring the relationships they have with the, the agents more so than they are with the uh, real folks. Because the real folks are too slow or they're not necessarily as well informed as they need to be. So that's an example where I would say to uh, uh, an automotive dealership and many other types of retail businesses, you can't afford not to put some sort of a chat based response to customers in your website and in your email response systems and in your online chat capabilities. If you don't do it, you're going to be at a competitive disadvantage to everyone else. Else is. So I think that's a real key breakthrough from where we might have thought about what AI is doing now. All that said, uh, I think when customers find out they've been talking to a bot, they, they're not necessarily so happy about it. Some people are, you know, it doesn't matter, but some people, maybe 20% of the people, 30% of the people are a little bit concerned. And of course it's, it's more difficult in the, in the, uh, audio portions of the communications and relationship building, although that's coming on as well. So.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I would, they don't think that you're going to wait to see if AI catches on. It's caught on.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You need to implement it or you're going to be at a competitive advantage. And so, you know, I'm looking also at working with a company that has a really powerful generative advertising messaging capability and that is also really powerful. When you're looking at, you know, you're looking at Google Analytics and you're looking at your search engine optimization results and you're seeing what words people are using and what's really, what's really, you know, kind of gelling and trending with customers. What if you had an AI agent that would look at that SEO output and in real time create messaging that you're pushing out on Facebook and your display ads and all of the things that you're doing on social media, what we're finding is those things are creating results faster than we ever thought was possible. And your advertising is always relevant, it's always trending, it's always answering the questions that people are asking, even if you don't know what they're asking. When you're pushing an ad on social media. So there's, there's so many different places where it's becoming a very powerful influence. Now all that said, you know, AI isn't one thing and people talk about it as one thing. It's thousands of things because it's how you can use the intelligence capability of the machines to be applied to various applications. I kind of liken it to, you know, kind of using the Internet, using connectivity to build applications. The applications do things. This is just a more powerful, you know, engine inside applications. Right. So some of the applications are going to be really, really powerful and some maybe not so much and then there's a whole other realm of, you know, general AI and maybe eventually super AI that's a little bit scary. And that, uh, I'm afraid and my, my belief is that we need to separate the, the AI that's doing important applications to make life better. The, the general AI that may be able to help us with solving things like in cancer research and other things that are going, boy, I wish we had put some guardrails on the, on the whole thing as we're moving towards super intelligence. And I'm just afraid that governments around the world won't do that because of the implications of, you know, power and kind of dance. So we're in for a wild ride over the next 10 years, my friend. And so where it goes.

Speaker A: What sort of clients are you coaching or who would you like to be able to help? Right. What is your ideal customer today?

Speaker B: Yeah, my uh, my ideal customer is are businesses that are big enough that they actually want to hire, you know, know, competent consultants and coaches. So probably 50 million in revenue and up. Uh, I do work with some smaller companies from time to time, but typically that's kind of the entry point up to, you know, up to about a billion dollars in revenue. If you go over a billion dollars in revenue, you go into a lot of the public company spaces. They're hiring Accenture and McKinsey and Bain and you know, PwC and Eny and all those guys. And those guys are kind of like me. I mean, I have similar experience to their senior managing partners and things, but they charge three or four times what I charge. So I try to hit the price point in the mid to large companies, but it really is not industry specific. So I work with healthcare companies, I work with, you know, sporting goods companies, I've worked with, I work with, uh, film companies, I work with, I'm working with media companies, I'm working with car companies, I'm working with products and services that are related to vehicles. I've got a beautiful air filtration, uh, pathogen reduction company I'm working with right now, working in a couple areas of battery technology and working in data analytics with a new product that I'm attempting to launch right now. It's coming out of a major university in Europe. So the waterfront is broad in terms of industry. And I'm looking at it as kind of business issues that are strategic, mission driven, plan operational, efficiency driven and coaching issues that are leadership driven. And I actually like doing both, but I love doing the coaching. Maybe you could hear that from the passion I had on leadership, what I was doing. So it's a, it's a privilege for me to work with people and to touch them in a positive way, attempt to move them to the next level if I can. And I'm very blessed to have had experience in 85 countries, big businesses and small businesses over a lot of years. And I'm happy to share that with folks, regardless of kind of the sector of the economy they're working in.

Speaker A: Where can they learn more about you

Speaker B: Wayne www.greatroad.com But Great Road is spelled G R H R O a D not G R E a T and Also wayne@greatroad.com spelled the same way. G r numeral8r o a d.com love to hear from you.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. I, I've been wanting to do this, so I'm so excited for I finally get to sit down and go over leadership and A.I. uh, and everything in between.

Speaker B: So thanks. You know. You know, I have a great deal of respect for you, Stallman. I love what you're doing on this channel and thanks for letting me be a part of it. Appreciate it.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Future Proof. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe and leave us a review. It will help more leaders find this show. And if you want to see how IMS helps companies grow smarter with AI and sales systems, visit IMS.net as always, thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.