Understanding EV Startups & Industry Dynamics with Larry Burns

[Transcript]

[00:00:08] Jan Griffiths: Welcome to the Automotive Leaders Podcast, where we help you prepare for the future by sharing stories, insights, and skills from leading voices in the automotive world. With a mission to transform this industry together. I'm your host, Jan Griffiths, that passionate, rebellious farmer's daughter from Wales with over 35 years of experience in our beloved auto industry and a commitment to empowering fellow leaders to be their best authentic selves, stay true to yourself, be you, and lead with Gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership. Let's dive in.

This episode is brought to you by Lockton. Lockton redefines business insurance and people solutions with a personal touch. Their global team of 11,000 is driven by independence, not quarters, to tailor success for your business. Discover the Lockton difference where your goals become their mission. Independence it's not just how you think but how you act.

Get ready to join a conversation with a man recognized as a major voice and influencer in the world of mobility. What could possibly qualify this man to hold that title? Well, let me see. He was the Corporate VP of R&D for General Motors from 1998 to 2009.

He was a consultant to Waymo, Google self-driving cars from 2010 to 2022. He now advises organizations on the future of mobility, and his client roster is impressive. It includes clients such as Goodyear, Peloton, AVL, Hess, and Booz Allen, to name but a few. He also has authored two books, Autonomy: The Quest to Build a Driverless Car and How It Will Reshape Our World and Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century. I believe he has a unique perspective. Having lived in both worlds, legacy automotive and the startup environment of a tech-type company, he is Larry Burns. Join us as we explore what's in the EV startup DNA that enables success. What is that secret? And what is it about our legacy automotive culture that holds us back? Why can't we design these cars fast enough and cost-effectively? What wisdom does Larry have to impart on leadership in the Tier one and OEM space as we all wrestle with the massive transformation in this industry? Larry, welcome to the show.

[00:03:05] Larry Burns: Thank you, Jan. It's great to be with you.

[00:03:07] Jan Griffiths: I'm going to go straight in and ask you this question, Larry, that's on everybody's mind.

And that is, why is it the traditional OEMs struggle so much with EV design and innovation? Let me give you an example of that in action. I recently interviewed Alisyn Malek. Alisyn started her career back in 2008, working on an EV for General Motors, and we still can't get the thing launched and making money properly. So why is it, Larry? With your background and the work that you've been doing with your clients, you are in a unique position to answer this question. Tell us.

[00:03:52] Larry Burns: I think it's really important, Jan, to look at traditional auto companies through the over a century-old history that they've had. They have a long legacy of designing and engineering, and manufacturing vehicles around a DNA that was grounded in the combustion engine with human-driven vehicles. The energy source was oil, gasoline, and lo and behold, it was a successful journey from when Henry Ford transformed the industry in the early 1900s through into the 2000s. But the fact is electric vehicles — and I would add to that connectivity as well as the potential for autonomous — is simply a different design and engineering DNA. And so, I think the short answer to your question is legacy auto companies, big mature auto companies, have a legacy of know-how. They have a legacy of how they do their work. They have a legacy of stakeholders. It's not just the automotive OEMs. It's The unions, the employees, the states that they operate in, the governments, and on and on the list goes on in terms of the stakeholders, the suppliers. And over that over century journey, that pie of value creation and profit has been divvied up among all of those different players. And there's not a lot of extra margin to go around. So along comes some players with a totally clean sheet. And I think if you said, I'm going to design an automobile from scratch today, you would start with a skateboard platform, and you would pay very, very attention to the electrical controls and software architectures so that all of these devices on vehicles could talk to each other in essence. I also think you would pay very careful attention to the design of the vehicle from a thermal management standpoint. I think you would just take a very different approach. So, it's hard when you have 1 foot on the dock and 1 foot on the boat, the dock being the historic auto industry with this historic design DNA and supply base and the boat being this future. It's really, really hard, especially as that boat starts pulling away from the dock more, to deal with that challenge. I think it's these legacies. And embedded in that legacy are obviously cultures and behaviors that shape how companies do business. And don't forget, these are very, very big enterprises, very big organizations with huge global footprints. Tens of thousands of parts that need to be designed, engineered, manufactured, sourced, put into cars. And then you have the dealers who have a big play in this. So, I think that's where the challenge is. It's the legacy.

[00:06:35] Jan Griffiths: What is it about Tesla, BYD, these companies that are starting with a clean sheet of paper, what is it about their DNA that allows them to move so quickly and to nurture this innovative type culture?

[00:06:55] Larry Burns: Well, I think leadership plays a big role, and obviously, I have to give credit to Elon Musk and his team for having the vision and determination to take Tesla through what really was a very long journey. When they did the roadster, it was a fascinating small vehicle, but it certainly wasn't something that was going to appeal to a large market. They're very, very smart to go after the Model S segment, where there were price points that people would pay a huge amount of money to buy their vehicle. But what impressed me is how quickly the Model S really became the dominant vehicle above $80,000 in the world. I think it's this: starting from a clean sheet of paper, having impassioned leadership that has a vision, but then being able to architect the design and then just keep learning. And I think if you study a Tesla in a little bit more detail, you realize, for example, the amount of wire on the Model Three is far less than the amount of wire on the Model S. So, the learning that they've had, and then the approach they're taking right now in terms of perhaps molding some major parts that have to be today in the industry put together as individual parts, those are big ideas. So, it's getting out ahead of your competition through learning cycles. And if you do that and you get four or five cycles ahead of everybody else, you're hard to catch. In China, it was just a totally different footprint. I think you can't judge China without thinking about cities, a lot of cities with over 20 million people. And they were going from walking in bicycles to their first automobiles. So, the BYD Seagull, for example, is a beautiful electric vehicle with a very low price point, with a 30-kilowatt-hour battery. And that is really at the sweet spot of the China market. In the United States, unfortunately, I think our OEMs are trying to replicate what they have success with today, which are large pickup trucks and large SUVs, and they're trying to get the range and the power that they've had on the combustion variants of those embodied in an electric vehicle. And that's led to really big batteries, 150 to 200 kilowatt-hour batteries, which weigh on the order of 2000 pounds. And those batteries weigh more than the mini EV in China, the battery alone. So, I think we're a little bit trapped in trying to chase a customer and market segments that have been defined by the history of the industry. Chase that into a world which is pivoting to this new DNA. And I think you really need to pay attention to the Chinese EVs because of their design and their technology and their quality, and China's determination to take those around the world.

[00:09:46] Jan Griffiths: I'm curious as to what you think; what sort of leadership behaviors do we need to undo and unlearn? There's a lot, right, Larry? I mean, you and I both know there's a lot of them out there. But if you could name two or three of these leadership behaviors that drive our culture in traditional legacy automotive, what are some things that we need to undo?

[00:10:12] Larry Burns: Well, we certainly can't keep judging everything on quarterly returns. You're not going to go from not having an EV to having an EV that's selling at hundreds of thousands a year that makes money. This is a really complex business that allows, that requires learning. Simple example is anti-lock brakes. GM put anti-lock brakes as an option on a Cadillac One model when they launched it. It wasn't until ABS 6, the sixth generation of analog brakes, that you had it on all of the Chevrolets. And Jan, that comes from learning. You get the first generation out there. It has a value proposition on a price point. If there's enough reception, it motivates you to go to Gen 2, which is usually lower cost and more valuable, which gets you to Gen 3, Gen 4, and Gen 5. And you can see that journey again with the Teslas. You can see that journey and the growth of the Chinese auto industry. So, I think thinking big and starting small, and learning fast is critically important. So, you know how to scale smart; I learned that from my friend, Chuck; he's a blogger with Forbes, and he's written some great books on innovation. So, I didn't coin those terms. I'm borrowing them, but I think it's a very powerful way to think about the future. I also think you need to target what I call the market tipping point. That's that magic moment when the value exceeds the price, so you know people want it. And the price exceeds the cost, so you know you can make money on it. So many times, the business case inside an auto company will be based on some forecast of volume. And you don't know that number with certainty. And what you have to do is not target an econometric forecast of the industry but target what has to be true for a product to tip in the marketplace. And what do you have to embody in that, in terms of value proposition? And then I think you can get it right. So, I would like to see that focus a bit more.

I think much of what we're talking about here today, Jan, is inevitable. Yes, battery electric vehicles are hitting the wall a little bit, but it's the fastest-growing segment in the US industry. The media tends to run or report it as negative. I see that as an encouraging sign. And I also see hydrogen and fuel cells coming in to play along with the batteries. That will get us there. So, I think electrically driven vehicles are inevitable because Einstein taught us that the best design is the simplest one that works. And these are very simple products once you get the supply chain and everything right. So, if that's an inevitability, you got to get in front of it, but you don't do that by betting the farm. You've got to do that by learning. And stick, stay the course with those learning cycles. Where you really become vulnerable in the industry is when you get behind. I'll give the example of hybrids when I was at General Motors; Toyota launched the Prius, that Prius that they brought to market had a couple learning cycles in Japan already. So, I think it was a Gen 3 Prius that they brought to California. And then, they had a couple of learning cycles before GM, Ford, and others said, "Maybe we should do something with hybrids." Jan, we were so far behind at that point in time that no matter how good the hybrid was that General Motors brought from market. We couldn't penetrate the Prius brand equity and the Prius leadership position. So, if the auto companies believe electrically driven vehicles are inevitable, they've got to get in front of that with learning. If they believe, like I do, that autonomous vehicles are inevitable, you've got to get in front of it by learning, and you can learn from your Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS); you can learn your way in that direction. But to stand there and say, "I don't think all autonomous vehicles are ever going to happen," and manage your company accordingly is just too risky if something appears inevitable. I haven't been told by any of the cutting-edge experts that I've worked with on autonomous vehicles, the real leaders on the edge of knowledge creation, I haven't been told by any of them that 'I don't think they can get this job done.' So, it's inevitable, Jan. I can't predict when. You've got to focus on 'do unto yourself before others do unto you.' And I think the US auto industry leadership has had a bit of a challenge with that. Either they're making too big of a bet. 'I'm going to turn my entire portfolio onto electric vehicles before I've learned what I needed to learn about my battery manufacturer.' Or they've been in denial too long and they can't get back in the game and catch up.

[00:14:53] Jan Griffiths: You focus a lot on learning and learning environment. But our beloved auto industry is not known for allowing the creation of this safe space to learn, to fail, to trial things. Are there any companies out there that you've worked with that have done a pretty good job of carving out a special place, a special environment for these innovative ideas to thrive?

[00:15:24] Larry Burns: Absolutely. I had the privilege after General Motors teamed with Carnegie Mellon University and won the DARPA Urban Challenge, and then I left GM in 2009, in that timeframe from the fall of 2007, when the race took place in 2009 when I left GM. Google created Google self-driving cars, and it was Google X. Google self-driving cars resided in, and Google X's culture was one of celebrating failures. Every week, they would bring in some part of Google X and find out, 'Hey, what didn't go well this week?' They'd literally clap when someone would have the courage to stand up and say, 'This didn't work.' And then Google's self-driving cars became Waymo, and Waymo is tenured to believe in terms of transparency. I advised them for 11 years, so I know them well, but they've really stayed the course with their safety priority as safety is the overriding priority. You can see that throughout that organization. I think they've done a better job than the other AV players or most of the other AV players on transparency and built the relationships they needed to build with the regulators. But there's been a lot of failures along the way, a lot of things that they've tried that haven't worked, but they're still standing because they've learned so much. And you have to fail to learn. I wrote a book called Autonomy and dedicated it to the engineers who make what's possible real. That's why I dedicated my book to our engineers. And engineers make what's possible real through learning. That's what we do as a living. And so, you have to have a learning culture, but at the same time, out of fairness to the auto companies, these are safety-critical products. You can't expect your customer to be your test engineer. You can't expect, like sometimes people do a software, they'll bring their beta version of software out and let the customers help them make it better when you've got, you know, 4 or 5,000 pounds of mass moving at 70 or 80 miles an hour, you really need to know what you're doing on these safety-critical systems. So, just out of fairness to the auto industry, risk aversion is ingrained. So, I don't want any of your audience to think that what I'm talking about here is simple. It's a very, very complicated, sophisticated business. And even Tesla has been on a very long journey to get to where they are.

[00:17:53] Jan Griffiths: I agree with you; our legacy in the auto industry is not all bad. We understand safety-critical items like nobody else, right? We understand what we need to build into the design to handle those items. But what we cannot do is to allow all those lessons learned and band-aids and processes that we have put in place over decades. We cannot allow those things to constrain our thinking and slow down our creativity and innovation.

And that, to me, Larry, I think that seems to me, that's what's happening. We can't let the past go, right?

[00:18:36] Larry Burns: Yeah. Again, these are not easy problems and General Motors during my whole tenure as an officer in the company, we never had a lot of extra money sitting around to do a lot of extra things, but I had a great boss, Rick Wagoner. He was my boss from 1995 until we both left the company in the 2009 timeframe. And when I led R&D, which I started doing in 1998, it seemed like every quarter, I would come to the automotive strategy board. This was the group of the 13 of us that sort of reported to Rick, and that was the heart of how the company was led. And every quarter, it seemed like somebody wanted to cut the R&D budget because we couldn't make the quarterly numbers. To Rick's credit, he wouldn't let that happen. His thesis was, we can either go bankrupt by running out of cash, or we can go bankrupt by not being prepared for the future, and I'm not going to let the latter happen. So, he did a good job protecting my budget. With that said, he expected me to spend every penny as productively as anywhere in the world could spend R&D dollars. So, we would go all over the world and set up collaborative labs in different countries where we either could get a tax break or where the engineering resources were less costly and utilize the talent there to make better use of our R&D money.

But you have to have the commitment to the future and be prepared for that. So, Rick and I sat down for lunch one day, and soon after, he named me head of R&D., And we got talking about, gosh, if we were going to invent the automobile in 1998, instead of the late 1800s, early 1900s, what would we do different? And he said, 'Larry, that's what I want you to answer. Because I just felt like we needed this new design DNA.' I said, 'Rick, we would probably base it on an electrical architecture, not mechanical, but we certainly would do something about the human driving behaviors that lead to so many fatalities.' And all of that grew a concept vehicle called Autonomy. It was shown at the 2002 North American International Auto Show. It was a skateboard. It was the first skateboard that was shown at an auto show. And it was a remarkable opportunity for a small team of people within a huge company, General Motors to express themselves on what they would do if they had a clean sheet of paper. I had a boss that let me do that, Jan. And I think that's really important for all of the leaders in this industry to carve out enough resource and give enough empowerment to let people develop these ideas.

[00:21:12] Jan Griffiths: Ah, give enough empowerment. Now, there's a leadership question for you. We tend to love our command and control in the auto industry, and we have quite a few micromanagers out there because we want to make sure that we don't fail. We want to make sure that the results come in, that we meet our objectives. I know in my career in automotive, I was programmed that way. We're not programmed to say, 'Understand that was a mistake, but we learned from it. So, let's go to plan B.' A lot of people will say that, but they don't really practice it. Where have you seen, Larry, a company, a legacy company that's been around for a long, long time that has done that? That has been able to really carve out that environment and encourage people to make mistakes and learn. Who would that be?

[00:22:05] Larry Burns: I've had a recent experience advising Goodyear, Chris Housel, and Rich Kramer; Rich Kramer the CEO, Chris is the CTO. And based on what I saw at CES this year, there was the empowerment of the CTO and the teams at Goodyear to go after some very, very important challenges that the tire industry was facing. A lot of people might look at the tire and say, 'It's a Tier Three commodity in a corner module of a car.' From my standpoint, and I think Rich and Chris's standpoint, no, it's where the rubber meets the road; the physics of that and the complexity of the tire mean that all the other systems need to be, to some extent, subservient to the tire and to the friction. So, making smart tires, making tires that don't emit, making tires that are tailored to the higher masses of electric vehicles. All of those things became important challenges. And again, the speed at which Goodyear started stepping up to those in the time I was with them and the manner in which they went at that, I thought was pretty impressive for such a mature company in such a mature industry. With a remarkably complicated product, tire is not just a piece of rubber. It has 70 different materials and in a modern tire today, Jan, I've advised probably 60 or 70 enterprises since I left General Motors, my definition of having advised someone as if they wrote me a check and paid me. And so, when I add that up, I've had a peek into a lot of different companies, and a lot, almost all of them have their strengths. They are different and many different ways. And then, to be frank, none of them are perfect. It's too hard to be perfect across the board. But with that said, especially from a US lens, you can't look at this just from make America great perspective because what kept me up at night at General Motors as an R&D lead was the realization that the 25 percent of the people in China who are the smartest people in China equal the population of the United States. Realizing that the engineering capabilities of our engineering center in Mexico were every bit as good as those in Detroit and Michigan. And these capabilities, everybody around the world, and I know you've traveled globally, and you understand this. They have the same motivations that Americans have. They want to make their life better for their kids and their families and for future generations. And they want to have a chance to realize their full potential as an individual. That's not unique to the United States. So, we've got to look at these challenges globally, and what's going on right now outside the US with these technologies is something that we really have to pay attention to.

[00:24:59] Jan Griffiths: Given your experience, both at General Motors and with your clients, you've taken a look at the 21 Traits of Authentic Leadership. What's the one thing that's common throughout these leaders that really get it, that are able to create these innovative learning environments that can turn the mothership? What's the one trait in leadership that you see that stands out amongst all of them?

[00:25:28] Larry Burns: That's a great question. I want to give two answers to it because they're interrelated. One of the people who advised me and Rick Wagoner when we're at GM was a guy named Roger Martin, and he wrote a book called The Opposable Mind and what Roger did he was the Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto; he went out and interviewed a whole bunch of CEOs, those that we're clearly successful and those that were less successful. And what he concluded in this book is that really great CEOs have an integrative mind. They connect the dots. They're not willing to accept the least bad of a set of bad options. They keep working for a better solution. And as I reflect on Roger's work, I began to embrace, from my experiences, what I call the 'power of and.' I think the word 'and' is a much better word than the word 'or'. So, you kind of gave me an 'or' question there. You've got a beautiful list of 21 Traits. And said I need to pick A or B or C or D. I don't think it's that. I think it's all of the above, and a great leader probably can't do all 21 of what you have on the list, but great leaders, I think, result from having great mentors, and they tend to tailor their style based on what they see that's work. And I think that's an important characteristic of any leader. So, I like to think about the 'power of and.' you have to have empathy if you're going to be a leader. People will see through you otherwise. You have to understand that every worker has challenges in their life outside of work, and you need to say there are good days and bad days. I think you really need to be able to embrace a team working together. Another great book that I love is They Made America. A guy named Harold Evans wrote that book about the great innovations from about 1870 to 1950. And one of the takeaways is it seemed like the great innovations came from pairs of people. Procter and Gamble would be one example. I don't know; when you look at that, they had partners that tended to complement each other. They weren't clones of each other. So, I think being able to work together and connect the dots as a team is critically important in that list. But and I don't mean to be critical of your question, there's not one magic pill a person can take to be a great leader. And you've got to be very, very sensitive to the people that you're leading. Because if you don't set the right examples in your behavior, whether it's integrity or treating people with dignity and respect if you overreact to someone who had a failure, that'll spread throughout the organization instantly. You're going to make mistakes as leaders. Don't be too hard on yourself. If you don't embody your 21 Traits every day and every minute, all the time, people will cut you slack on that. But if you have tendencies that just turn people off or focus on things that they think are just not the right priorities, the people you're leading are going to see that, and they're not going to follow.

[00:28:48] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. You know, Larry, growing up in the industry, as we both did, we were told early on to keep your personal life completely separate from your professional life. The two should never mix. And now the world that we're in right now, it's impossible. You cannot separate the two. And at the end of the day, you are one person. You have a set of values, and that should not change whether you're outside of work or inside of work. What are some of the personal values that you hold dear, you personally as a leader?

[00:29:26] Larry Burns: I do want to share one lesson I learned from a great mentor, Jack Smith, who was the chairman and CEO of GM before Rick Wagoner. And Jack was in that role when my career started to take off in the late eighties and early nineties. And I happened to be flying with Jack on a business trip. It was just the two of us on the plane. And I was struggling with this personal life, work-life balance because being a senior executive in a large auto company has a 24/7 job year in and year out. And there's just no other way to look at it. So, I asked Jack directly. I said, 'Jack, when you were growing in your career, how did you manage that?' And he said, 'Larry, I just reached a point that I had to accept it as a way of life.' And I thought that was great advice to accept something as a way of life. And that helped me have the discussions. My wife is a hairstylist. She's had a remarkably successful career as a hairstylist. I have two daughters, and we had my in-laws would stay with us at times to help with the kids and things. You really, really need to find the time to be with your family because time goes by so fast. And it's crazy to get married and have kids and then not experience the kids. Why would you ever do that? The other thing I think is real important is you can't let the urgent get in front of the important. With the devices we use in our everyday life, the texts and the emails and the TikToks and everything else, you can find yourself getting distracted by a whole lot of things that just aren't important. I would always start each day with my to-do list, but I'd always move the most important things to the top and give time to that. And if the urgent things didn't get attention, at least I could end each day saying I made progress on the things that really mattered. You have to have integrity in life. I think that's something that's really personal. You have to have fun. Our family are travelers, so we're restless when we don't have our next trip already scheduled. We like to travel with a company called Backroads, which are sort of outdoor adventures, but kind of nice hiking, but you don't have to stay in a tent, you can stay in a nice little house. We've been doing this with our kids, and they're in their 30s now, and they won't miss a trip with us. We're blessed that our kids still want to travel with mom and dad. So find that time to have fun. Find that time to enjoy your family and don't let it tear you apart. Accept it as a way of life. Those tensions are real out there. One last note, Jan, from a personal standpoint, I lost my hearing as my career was taking off. It was in the early 90s. I lived a year deaf, and General Motors leaders, many of these were my mentors; they stood behind me through that very difficult year where I couldn't hear at all, and they allowed me to realize my full potential. I eventually got cochlear implants, and I can function like we're functioning today. But believe me, that year when I couldn't hear gave me a whole different perspective on people with disabilities. And I would always would look at someone in a wintry, wet, cold day, like we have here in Michigan today, in a wheelchair, wheeling down the street, saying, 'What's driving that person? How can they possibly have the courage to be out there in the weather to get around?' It's independence. Independence is cherished, and people are going to work hard to realize their independence. And when I finally had my cochlear implants, they were working, and I fully regained my independence, I realized I needed to cherish that. And so, the world's going to throw you curveballs. You got to be resilient. You got to bounce back from those. And you got to find time to have fun. You got to communicate with your family. But if you're in a big job in a big industry, you've got to make that a way of life and do that jointly with the people who are near and dear to you and understand that.

[00:33:24] Jan Griffiths: I agree with you wholeheartedly. And I found that growing up in the industry, there was a mold that we had to fit. When you're a leader in the auto industry, that you got to be tough, and you got to be on 24/7. And in the latter years, you got to be answering those emails, and even if it was 5 AM or whatever, and up until 10 o'clock at night, you got to be, it was an unwritten rule. It was an expectation. That is not the way to live, but I'm not going to judge anybody who lives that way. I would say this, and I believe we're saying the same thing: it is a personal choice, and there are points in your life when you are all on 24/7 with your career, but there's a time where you do need to ratchet it back. And when I had my daughter, I ratcheted back the level of intensity by which I operated. And you know what, Larry? Nobody noticed because a lot of that is in your head.

[00:34:23] Larry Burns: Absolutely, Jan, I think that's true. I think that's true. I had an assignment in Lansing. We were starting up compact cars and two assembly plants in Lansing, and I was the program director for all of that.

I lived in Franklin, Michigan, so the drive was 75 minutes. And the agreement I have with my wife she would drop the kids off at the daycare in the morning when she was heading to the hair salon. Well, I had to pick them up at night, and the daycare closed at six. And so, every evening after putting in a very long day—many times starting up in Lansing at four or five in the morning to look at the product that had been built the night before—I'm screaming down I-96 with this image of my kids sitting on the curb because I didn't get there by six o'clock. Yeah, but you make that kind of a thing work, Jan. I mean, you have to. With all of that said, I would not trade my jam career at all. Yes, we went bankrupt and all of that. But man, and I learned this from Mark Rice. This was a long time ago when we had a discussion, but we were talking about what's so passionate. And he said, 'Larry, Prince has this song, Little Red Corvette. He didn't sing Little Red Laptop Computer.' And Mark was saying to me that what makes this industry great is the passion around the product that you get to make. And he was absolutely right. It's a remarkable industry in terms of its global scale and scope, in terms of the technologies that you get to work with, in terms of what the cars do, enabling the freedom of people to go where they want to when they want to. To be able to be part of that at the highest level of the largest company at the time is something I would never give up. Going bankrupt wasn't a great experience. But there was life after bankruptcy as well. You just have to bounce back and go after it.

[00:36:21] Jan Griffiths: What message would you have for both Tier One and OEMs leadership struggling with this transition to EV and autonomous from a leadership and culture perspective? What would you say to them right now?

[00:36:35] Larry Burns: Well, as exciting and challenging the pivot to electrical, electrically driven, and autonomous vehicles has become for the industry and connected vehicles, it's not going to stop there, Jan. I think there's something bigger coming. And when I step back and I look at the way people live their lives today, I realize that the convergence of communication and information technology is having a bigger impact on whether we travel, where we travel, and why we travel, than perhaps car design. And I use the term accessibility to describe our freedom to access the activities that embody our everyday life. And when you begin to connect the dots on remote work, e-commerce, online learning, social media, and telehealth, you begin to realize that there's a lot of technology that has already played out in our lives and more technology coming that has really begun to eliminate the need for us to travel. The story I like to tell on that is if I needed to go, I needed a spice for a recipe tomorrow, let's say it's tandoori seasoning and I didn't have it, I could get in my car, and drive to the local market, park, walk in, find a pay for, and come home, and maybe use 30 or 45 minutes of my time. Or I can go to Amazon Prime, and order it, and have it on my porch and 12 hours at a lower cost. Jan, there's no amount of speed to the store that can save me the amount of time from not having to make that trip. And what we're seeing is the reasons for people to travel are changing dramatically. And you combine that with this new DNA for mobility machines. And I think the industry transformation is going to be even more profound than anyone could imagine, from just simply switching from combustion to electric and human driving to autonomous driving.

I think the big, most strategically important question for communications, information, transportation, and entertainment companies is: how is all this going to come together and shape the way people live in the future? Where are the value creation sweet spots in that future? And how do I need to prepare my company to go after those opportunities?

[00:38:56] Jan Griffiths: Great advice. You're really forcing people to project into the future and think about the impact into their business. And I'm not sure that we do that to the level that you're suggesting, Larry. Great advice.

[00:39:11] Larry Burns: Thank you.

[00:39:12] Jan Griffiths: Larry Burns. Thank you for joining us today.

[00:39:15] Larry Burns: Thanks for having me.

[00:39:17] Jan Griffiths: Thank you for listening to the Automotive Leaders podcast. Click the listen link in the show notes to subscribe for free on your platform of choice, and don't forget to download the 21 Traits of Authentic Leadership PDF by clicking on the link below, and remember, stay true to yourself, be you, and lead with Gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership.