This transcript was generated with the help of AI and may contain some errors.

Adam Wint [00:00:00]:
Early in my career, I asked a lot of dumb questions and I knew they were dumb questions. I wanted people to tell me why they were dumb questions because people can’t resist telling you why you’re wrong. You learn a lot about them, but you also learn a lot very quickly about how things are done and why things are done.

Kyler Mason [00:00:22]:
Whether you’re going to market through dealers, distributors or some other partner channel. The mediated sale is complex. We call it B2B2X.

John Gough [00:00:30]:
But the leaders in the industry are the ones who are making it look simple. I’m John Gough.

Kyler Mason [00:00:35]:
And I’m Kyler Mason. And this is Why You Win. Presented by Element Three.

John Gough [00:00:40]:
Our guest today is Adam Wint, the Global Trends & Futuring Manager at Ford Motor Company. Adam’s department at Ford acts like an internal consultancy for different groups around the business. And he gives some really good insights about how to get everybody working from the same set of assumptions about the future so you can plan your strategies well. He also gives a cool framework for how other companies can start thinking about the future of their products and services. Whatever size you are, it’s an awesome episode. You’re going to love it. Adam, thanks so much for coming on the show. We’re glad to have you here.

Adam Wint [00:01:13]:
Hi, John. It’s a pleasure meeting you.

John Gough [00:01:15]:
So you have a very different role than some of our guests that have been on the show. So tell us, tell us about what you do.

Adam Wint [00:01:21]:
I am a trends and featuring manager at Ford Motor Company, which means I am tasked with understanding how the world is changing five to ten years out into the future. And then what does that change mean to consumers? What does it mean to the auto industry? What does it mean to Ford Motor Company? And then what are kind of the implications throughout that system to our strategy, to our products, really every aspect of our business.

Kyler Mason [00:01:48]:
How the heck did you get that job?

Adam Wint [00:01:52]:
A long and sordid tale. I was working with dealers. I actually worked with dealers out in the field as a field rep for Ford for eight years and had a background in market research prior to joining Ford. And I wanted to get back into doing something with consumer research and kind of being on that, more of the consumer of that research. So an opportunity arose to join our product development team working on future commercial vehicles. And I jumped at it and it turned out a lot of that job was figuring out how our customer was going to change. When you design a product, you’re thinking about the cycle, that how long it takes to get a product in market, which can be anywhere from three to five Years or longer, depending on the product and what it goes through. But then you are thinking this product that’s five years out, for example, needs to be relevant in market for about 10 years, how long kind of the shelf life of that product is.

Adam Wint [00:02:55]:
And then the average vehicle on the road today is 13 years old. So you gotta add another 13 years onto it. So when you think about it, in 2024, we’re thinking about how do we design products that are still relevant and roadworthy in the 2000s or even early 2000s then how do customers live and grow with that product then over time?

John Gough [00:03:18]:
25 years feels like an eternity these days.

Adam Wint [00:03:22]:
Oh, it is. And we often say anything more than like three to five years out into the future is really difficult to, to start being accurate, to have like some sort of accurate read on. In fact, we like to say we don’t predict the future. Anyone that tells you they can predict the future is probably trying to sell you something. What we do is try and prepare teams for however that future manifests or however it comes to be.

John Gough [00:03:50]:
Yeah, I don’t see any crystal ball on like your, in your background anywhere. Either it’s on your desk or you don’t own one.

Adam Wint [00:03:57]:
I do have a Magic 8 ball, but it always tells me the outlook is not so clear. So.

Kyler Mason [00:04:05]:
So do you have like KPIs, how are you measured?

Adam Wint [00:04:10]:
We are measured by the impact that we’re having to the business. So essentially, are we helping teams future proof their decisions? We have a lot of teams that go out and they do customer research or they are establishing a strategy. But oftentimes, and this isn’t just Ford, it’s kind of human nature. We are reacting to something that is happening or we have gone out and we’ve talked to customers and asked them, hey, what’s your life like today? And that’s great, but that doesn’t help us with a product that’s going to be in market in five years to 15 years down the road. So we need to future that work. We need to understand what are the forces that are acting on those customers and our business and how might those customers react then to, to this change that’s coming down the road. So we like to say values are persistent within customers. People’s values don’t change.

Adam Wint [00:05:07]:
You are essentially the same person you were 10 years ago. What changes is the world around you? So how those values manifest in the world start to change, which makes it so important to understand what that change looks like.

Kyler Mason [00:05:20]:
If someone’s listening to this, trying to sort through. How could they maybe try something like this in their business? A question I might have would be like, how, how do you interact with other departments? Are you, are they your customer? Like how does this work?

Adam Wint [00:05:35]:
Yeah, we are in a way like an internal consultancy within Ford. Our primary product is the proprietary research we do. So we study trends, we go out, do our own research. The second thing we bring to teams is the ability to kind of think dynamically about the future around. We call it different orders of implication. So it’s easy to understand first order implications, those are like the direct result of the impact of something. If, if there is flooding in your state, for example, due to extreme weather, you might be more predisposed to buy an all wheel drive vehicle. So that’s a first order implication.

Adam Wint [00:06:17]:
But then we start looking deeper to like, well what’s beyond that? What is beyond that then? So second third order implications, we’ll bring other trends in, crash them into those ideas. What we end up with is starting to see things like, oh, it’s not just about buying a four wheel drive vehicle, it’s about building resilience into your life. So maybe now you want an electric car with battery backup systems at your house and you want that to be powered by solar so you’re not reliant on the grid when that starts to fail. And all these different types of systems that then support that customer in the future.

Kyler Mason [00:06:53]:
How does that insight and those orders of implication make their way into planning and decision making with departments you’re working with?

Adam Wint [00:07:03]:
I am the engagement manager, so I run workshops with teams to understand specifically how this feature context, how trends are going to impact their particular product or their particular customer.

John Gough [00:07:17]:
So you are designing interactions where you are bringing insights, data, trends and you’re sort of like helping them work through the implications. First, second, third order implications of here’s what that might mean in your particular context. Is that right?

Adam Wint [00:07:35]:
Yep. And we often find that if you don’t live in this space, often second and third order implications are really difficult. It’s really hard to get people to, to think that way. The example I use for people, if you want to try this at home, is think about something that has changed for you in the past, say like year or two, and then think about, well, how are businesses going to react to that thing that changed for you and then how is government going to react?

Kyler Mason [00:08:05]:
Can we try an example?

John Gough [00:08:06]:
I’ve got a son who’s about to turn 16 and start driving. That’s a thing that’s changing in my life right now.

Adam Wint [00:08:11]:
All right, so how does business around, like, the things he’s buying, the businesses he’s interacting with start to change?

John Gough [00:08:20]:
Yeah, his whole world is about to open up to him. As soon as he gets range, he goes out with his buddies, but he always needs dad to drive him around, like, go to Buffalo Wild Wings. There you go, free promotion. Or go hang out at McDonald’s and eat a McFlurry or whatever. And so I think the ability for him to access these local establishments, they should be very interested in. Not that he has that much disposable income, but some.

Adam Wint [00:08:48]:
So the places he goes are starting to change. So age is changing, and then where he’s able to go changes. So now I would say there is a legal thing or a government thing that’s tied to this. A driver’s license. What else does having a driver’s license open up for him?

John Gough [00:09:07]:
Oh, okay. Yeah, I like this game. So he’s now identifiable and he can prove who he is in a way that he was never able to as a young child. He’ll use that eventually to vote to get into a bar to. Those two things come to mind. First, what else can you do with driver’s license?

Kyler Mason [00:09:29]:
That’s all I use it for.

Adam Wint [00:09:33]:
So you started to do the next one too, which is. All right, so now that he’s got a driver’s license and he’s identifiable and there’s this information connected to them, how are businesses going to start using that? And you said, like, he’ll eventually use it to prove he’s of age to drink at a bar. But how else are businesses going to leverage that. That information?

John Gough [00:09:54]:
Well, I think being identifiable is something that we as marketers spend a lot of time thinking about. I don’t know that I could tie that back to having a driver’s license or not. He’ll get a bank. You know, he has a bank account. But that sort of ecosystem of identifiability and his, like, identification footprint, I think becomes relevant at that point.

Adam Wint [00:10:15]:
Yep. Things like credit cards and FICO scores and all sorts of things become new elements of his life. So then, yeah, how does that impact him? So we’ve gone full circle.

John Gough [00:10:28]:
I love that. And so. Well, first of all, is it always a circle? Is it. Is that. Is it cyclical in nature? These ideas of levels of implication.

Adam Wint [00:10:37]:
I like to think of it as climbing a ladder. And this is like the simplest way of thinking about it, is that you’re. You’re climbing up the ladder, then you’re climbing down the other side. So you’re looking at these different systems that are going to drive change or react to the change that you see in one place. It’s that chaos theory effect. Like one thing happens so someone else responds to that and someone else responds to that and that drives another reaction, which ultimately drives the, the original person to, to react in a different way. So you can track then how one change to someone’s life shows up in new behaviors further down the road and then how the whole system kind of adapts or changes in reaction to those new behaviors.

John Gough [00:11:24]:
That makes a ton of sense. So when you’re doing these exercises with internal groups at Ford, you’re taking them through this sort of ladder diagram and helping them example and understand these orders of implication. And then are you also sort of like throwing curve balls at them about like, great. Well, here, here’s a thing that comes from our research that’s going to happen or we think is going to happen. Now what is it? That exploratory back and forth kind of thing or how does that work?

Adam Wint [00:11:52]:
Yeah, a bit. So we do a lot of research into trends. So there’s a couple different taxonomy bits here. There are trends which are kind of as much as I can know what the future is, a trend is that we see a lot of evidence, we see investment, we see a lot of momentum behind it, and we judge it to be very difficult to disrupt this thing. It would take a lot, A lot would have to be true for this thing to be disrupted. But then whenever you have a trend, you also have a lot of uncertainties. The questions that you can’t answer answer around that trend. So we like to review trends because that’s the known change.

Adam Wint [00:12:34]:
Everyone is going to react to trends. In fact, trends aren’t that unique. They’re things like, oh, we have an aging society. Oh, vehicles are on the road longer, probably because affordability is an issue for a lot of consumers. You get these kind of almost universal truths that trends are, and it’s useful to bring those to teams because then they can understand or expand the context around the work that they were doing. But as I said, everyone reacts to trends. So everyone in the industry is going to choose to take an action or choose not to take an action about this thing that is changing. Where we find real opportunities is in the uncertainties which really offer a risk and opportunity.

Adam Wint [00:13:19]:
You’re either betting on this future going in this direction or answering the question this way or, or you’re betting on it going another way. So an example Because I knew you’re going to ask me for an example. We see multigenerational housing on the rise in the United States. So that is families cohabitating three generations under one roof. What’s really fascinating about this is if you have gone back like 10 or 15 years ago and asked me, what do you think about 30 year old children living at home with their parents? People would say, well, their parents have failed them in some dramatic way. But today, today parents see that as responsible parenting because affordability for housing, affordability for cars, the student loan debt crisis, there are all these things that frankly this next generation has to deal with that weren’t necessarily there for that other generation. So if we can set our children up better to succeed, then we’re being responsible as parents. Okay, so that is a trend.

Adam Wint [00:14:27]:
We, we see this happening, we have data that shows it happening. We have drivers and we see momentum, we see it evolving into the future. There are a lot of uncertainties around this. So how fast does this happen? Does this show up really strongly in three years? Does it show up really strongly in five years? Does it start to change how people think about vehicles? Like, is a vehicle still mine? Like, am I thinking about it from a point personal ownership view or am I thinking about it from like the fleet of vehicles that now exist within my household? So maybe now I want a, a truck and a sports car and a couple SUVs that can rotate between different users and then even that, like, who’s using the vehicle and how do you make the vehicle feel more yours when you’re in it, even if you don’t have some sort of primal ownership over that vehicle. So just an example of like one thing that with the uncertainties, you make a bet and you say, okay, well, I think based on what we’re seeing, the future is going in this direction and I’m going to recognize that there’s some risk here. But I’m also recognizing, here’s the thing to look for as to whether I’ve made the right decision or not. And then I can move forward with that.

John Gough [00:15:45]:
We love talking about strategy in terms of bets. It’s our, it is our language too for understanding the type of risk that gets introduced into the world. You know, and we’re marketers, so from our perspective, a lot of the bets that we’re taking are allocating funds and trying to get attention from different kinds of audiences or groups and what sort of messages we might put out into the world. And so some of that works and some of it doesn’t. And the classic line is, you know, every marketing dollar works or 50 cents of every marketing dollar works. You just can’t tell which 50% it is. And so making those bets well and understanding that you’re making a bet is very relevant in the way that we, that we professionally enter the world too and being comfortable with the kind of bets you’re making. But the way that you’re talking about it I think is so fascinating because we, we are betting on things that are very much sort of like in our face and the decision that’s going to impact us in the next 60, 90, 180 days.

John Gough [00:16:43]:
You’re describing a world where we are taking these either trends or observations, not even yet trends, and then trying to make predictions and bets around those things. I think that’s really you mentioned earlier, but I think it’s really hard for people to think that abstractly about the future. Is that consistent with your experience? Is it hard to get people to come play this game with you?

Adam Wint [00:17:07]:
There are a lot of different teams with a lot of different competencies to be able to think this way within forward. And I think in general we tend to find that this idea of forward thinking being able to, to project into the future and not just think about the problems of today, first off it’s, it’s an endemic problem in our society in general. There’s actually a trend for it called nowism and organizational. Nowism is such a powerful force right now where companies are almost paralyzed by the uncertainty into the future that they are hyper focused on the issues of today. You asked me earlier about like the KPIs I have. This is a challenge because a lot of our KPIs at Ford and I think a lot of companies today are established on reacting to what’s going on right now in their business. It’s not about thinking forward and setting themselves up in five years to be incredibly successful. I don’t know that companies should stop thinking about solving the problems that they have right now.

Adam Wint [00:18:16]:
But I do think they should take into account when solving those problems. How does this better set me up for success in the future? Like is this part of a longer term strategy and plan?

Kyler Mason [00:18:30]:
So there’s like contrast of planning and the kind of the role you have in nowism. Bring back to the example you were using earlier about multi generational housing and living situations and how vehicles may need to adapt to that. How, how do you or do you have a role in. Right. Sizing bets so that you can satisfy let’s say nowism and Also place a bet that you think is in line with the trends that you’re seeing.

Adam Wint [00:19:00]:
Really depends on the team we’re working with. When we’re working with strategy teams, they really want to understand those bigger implications, so that kind of network effect. And they want to understand what are the opportunities, but also what are those risks so that they can make some more informed decisions around what they’re choosing to do. Traditional marketing really loves trends because it tells you something about the world that’s changing, that seems really exciting that a lot of people don’t, might not know, but might be just kind of on the cusp of people’s awareness. So it helps people maybe prepare for that more immediate, like two to three year future.

Kyler Mason [00:19:40]:
Can you right size this bet? So we work with a lot of OEMs that have product development cycles and these bets just, I perceive them to be big. Can you test something like you’re talking about in a way that isn’t just a substantial financial risk?

Adam Wint [00:19:58]:
So we do have a tool for that and it is scenario planning. So we have four scenarios about potential futures. So these are futures that kind of ran away in a particular direction. And we use them then to test strategies, ideas, products, big decisions to see in what futures do these succeed and in what futures do they fail, and then what can be done about the idea in general that might make it less of a failure in these futures, or maybe like just a net zero, but also succeed, continue to succeed in the futures that it does. And I will say we did these scenarios back in 2019, and some of them felt incredibly radical at the time. But whenever we go into workshops today and we bring these, the thing that we hear is, oh, I see all of these coming true all at once. We’re like, yes, that is exactly what’s happening. That means we did our job five years, six years ago.

Adam Wint [00:21:01]:
But it’s also pressure on us then to continue to push the teams to say, okay, well, but does your idea succeed if it keeps going?

John Gough [00:21:10]:
Adam, I sort of have to accuse you of something here now because there are a lot of people who look at our current state and say, like, I can’t believe this is the timeline we’re living in. And it just sounded like to me you described this might be your fault. Is this the Ford futurist group that’s like driving this?

Adam Wint [00:21:29]:
Listen, there are a lot of corporate futurists out there and the government employs a lot of futurists as well. I would blame those government futurists. But the truth is, as a futurist I like to say I’m never wrong. It just hasn’t happened yet. If I could figure out when something was going to happen, I certainly wouldn’t be working anymore. That’s like the magic bit of data or a piece of information that we lack that would turn us into superhumans. I can tell you what’s going to happen in the future with high confidence. I just can’t tell you when it’s going to happen in the future, which, for a lot of people, it negates the importance of that fact or that piece of information.

Adam Wint [00:22:11]:
That has been actually one of the biggest challenges in this role and in this job and working with different teams, working within different time horizons and different time frames, is trying to calibrate the content and the story that you are bringing and the context that you’re bringing them around the time frame that they can swallow.

Kyler Mason [00:22:36]:
So you have a belief and you have training, an experience. And the way you’ve talked about conducting, planning, and thinking about the future, what sort of strategic planning drives you crazy that you just think is insane when you see it happening beyond people just.

Adam Wint [00:22:56]:
Coming to us and saying, hey, I have this idea. It’s fully fleshed out. Can you just tell me why it succeeds in the future? Actually, the number one thing that drives me crazy, and it’s something that in the past two years, we’ve been really successful. We relaunched our kind of our program in 2022, and we’ve been slowly wrapping everyone around working from the same set of future assumptions. And that’s critical because without that, what you end up with is individual teams, individual programs, individual parts of the company creating their own future that’s most favorable for their product or project or program. And then they go and they pitch these ideas to senior leaders who must feel whiplash at being just thrown radically different futures that are sometimes in conflict with each other all the time. And that can be good if we understand, like, how those futures were created or we’re operating from a single set of assumptions. But just creating an extremely biased future that doesn’t challenge the strategy or the work that you’re doing.

Adam Wint [00:24:12]:
That’s probably my biggest pet peeve. Even in the workshops we run, we will frequently pull in something that’s very left field for a team. So we’ll hit them with two things that kind of make sense. Then we’ll hit them with something very left field to give them some very distinct contrast to consider when they’re considering this potential silo or line of thinking for the future.

John Gough [00:24:40]:
I did some work for some private equity in a past life. And one of the companies that I worked with had some really incredible predictions about growth for their SaaS product. It was just a beautiful hockey stick curve. And if there was no way on earth that it was going to work, and you telling that story is just like it swims into view in front of my eyes. I was like, oh yeah, that would have been cool if that particular version of the future had been exactly what had happened. There’s a lot of magical thinking, I think, in that sort of planning environment that you’re describing is like, well, if this happens and this happens and this comes in just right at the right time, then we’re all going to be millionaires. That’ll be great.

Adam Wint [00:25:20]:
I mean, I think as an industry we, we might have gotten a little caught up in EVs on that. And the one element that I think everyone missed was that there would be this trough, this period of time where the industry wouldn’t shrink, it would continue to grow. But because you were in this valley of, okay, so you have a lot of interest, but you don’t have a lot of products available for people on the market, sales wouldn’t quite take off like you’d maybe anticipate them to. I think what’s going to be really interesting in two or three years is when like another 30 or 40 electric vehicles hit the market and suddenly consumers have this overwhelming amount of choice out there. What happens to that, that growth curve?

Kyler Mason [00:26:09]:
We were doing some prep before this and we were talking about some of the things you’re working on. What are the big things that you’re thinking about right now exploring that you’re able to talk about?

Adam Wint [00:26:17]:
I am working on a series of reports right now based on some of our trend work and macro trend work, looking at how consumer mindsets are changing for 20, 30 and beyond. So, you know, we, we’re seeing a lot right now. There’s this concept called the poly crisis, which says, hey, people are actually at kind of their emotional limit with how much just stuff they can deal with coming at them, whether it’s housing affordability and inflation and consumer debt and just, I mean, it just goes on and on.

John Gough [00:26:51]:
You don’t say, yeah, crazy, huh?

Adam Wint [00:26:54]:
And that has an impact even crazier on consumers and how they make decisions. So how does all that stuff start to change consumer behavior? So what might we see? Or what is there some amount of confidence we can have in what consumers are going to be looking for or how their values might be manifesting around things like affordability or around enjoying the outdoors in that Future or Beyond 2030.

Kyler Mason [00:27:21]:
Is your job to have an opinion about that or to surface it, to facilitate opinions from others?

Adam Wint [00:27:28]:
I would say that is a change that is happening right now. Traditionally, our team, we felt like our responsibility was to surface these ideas and bring them up to teams, make them aware of it, and then they had to own the decision, they had to own the outputs for those things. What we found in the past couple of years is that because it’s so difficult to think in this space and because we have knowledge of all these different things now, when we run a workshop, what we tend to do is we take all the inputs. We use the workshop as a way to collect their point of view and their perspective and their thinking, and then we use that through synthesis to then bring in some other ideas that we’re aware of that we think might be tangentially connected to what this insight or what this output would be. And then we continue to, like, build it out. So we present it back to them as an enhanced version of their thinking. So I wouldn’t say it’s our point of view, but it’s a blend between our point of view and the points of view of the teams are engaging with us.

Kyler Mason [00:28:34]:
Is that welcomed? As you say?

Adam Wint [00:28:37]:
It’s changing, actually, it has been quite a bit. I think our perception was always that we weren’t experts in all the things that Ford Motor Company does, and we specifically avoided being experts in all the things that Ford Motor Company was an expert in because we were looking out from an outside in perspective versus looking at Ford and then looking at the industry and then looking at consumers out from. From that. That way. What we found is that the appetite for having a stronger point of view or a stronger, like putting a stake in the ground and saying this is how you need to react or this is the decision that you need to make has come across really well. And I think it’s the nature of where we are. Five years ago, I don’t think that was the case. Teams wanted to do a lot of that thinking themselves.

Adam Wint [00:29:28]:
I think today, just with pressure to do more with less, teams are afraid that they’re missing something and that’s where we have something more to bring to them.

John Gough [00:29:38]:
Yeah. When you describe yourself as an internal agency, it makes me think about this expectation of great. Like you told me a thing, you dropped off this information on my desk and now I have yet another thing to worry about. But you’ve done nothing to help me get over the hump now it’s just like, more problems. Appreciate it, Adam. Thank you for coming.

Adam Wint [00:30:00]:
But agencies don’t work like that at all. No, never.

John Gough [00:30:03]:
I can totally see how the synthesis and the like, come sit next to me and help me see around the corner and then help me like make some guesses, good guesses about what to do about that could be incredibly value, value oriented for those teams. When we’re doing that, some like, we have a number of frameworks that we use deliver an insight and then we would say, like, care, do, impact. Why should I care? What should I do about it? What’s the impact of that choice going to have? Do you have shorthand or anything that like, somebody could pick up and be like, great, I’m going to like drop off this thing. Also, here’s how you’re going to put it to use.

Adam Wint [00:30:40]:
I like to always leave behind what are, what is the impact and what are the implications? So if you don’t do anything about this, which I’m going to assume that 9 out of 10 times when we drop something off on someone’s desk that they are not going to do anything with it. So part of it is saying, all right, well what is the impact? So what could this impact for your business where the areas where the decisions, the spaces, and then what are the implications of that? So if this does happen, it might leave us exposed here, or it might mean this assumption that you have about consumers is now wrong. Or you may have gone down this path, designing with this thing in mind. But ultimately consumers shifted dramatically. It’s interesting, just looking at the industry in general, how many companies are very focused on family vehicles and very large family vehicles, but we consistently see family size shrinking, except in the cases of multi generational living. So it’s. There are these things that we can interpret that different teams out there are seeing like they might be seeing. Family size is shrinking, fewer people are getting married, fewer people are having kids, and they’re all doing it much later in life, which means when they do it, they have more disposable income.

Adam Wint [00:32:05]:
Their life stage is a bit different. We also though within that might say, okay, but more of them are cohabitating. And even when they’re not cohabitating, over the past 40 years, the average square footage of houses has increased. So there’s a data point. So houses are getting bigger and families are getting smaller. So now what does that say about who’s living in these houses and how does family formation start to change?

John Gough [00:32:33]:
Yeah, so the name of this podcast is about B2B2X. So this working in the, in the dealer model or the channel model you mentioned, that’s in your background and also very much in the world of Ford Motor Company. I have to ask you, are there any trends or observations that you are making right now that you think are particularly relevant to that world?

Adam Wint [00:32:58]:
I mean so many. We actually just did a like big Northstar paper for Ford Pro on the emerging change coming down the pipeline in consumers. So what is going to change with consumers that’s going to impact businesses? So was the change that they’re going to have and then what does that mean for our vehicle portfolio and the products and services that Ford offers? I think one of the biggest thing is going to be data transparency in that B2B2X. Consumers want more of it from the businesses that they’re doing business with. And more and more I think businesses are moving to this kind of, we call it vertical disintegration. But the idea of instead of being a vertically integrated company that’s going to do everything in house and on their own, they’re leveraging the technologies and new working styles to pull in resources or pull in business units to do specific jobs when they need them at the scale that they need them. And this is particularly true for small to medium businesses where it doesn’t make sense for you to have a finance guy or an accountant, if you can, for the same or a much lower price, hire a tier one finance company to, to do that work for you. And frankly, why would your one finance guy want to sit around and be the one finance guy when he can go work with a bunch of finance bros at, you know, a tier one finance company? So that ability to outsource work or rapidly source labor is one huge change, this kind of scalability of companies.

Adam Wint [00:34:37]:
But then also the key to that is being able to share data in a way not just that makes it a more trusted relationship, but also the ability for companies to interpret data from very different companies in ways that make sense to them. So I think that is one of the most incredible transformations that AI is bringing about is the ability to translate data in meaningful ways, to combine disparate data sets in ways that create insights that are relevant to new businesses. We go through life casting off data all the time. Like you go out to eat and the restaurant knows how much you spent and the calorie count of the food and you know, how many steps you took that day and how active you were. But each one of these exists within like a very specific silo and doesn’t talk to each other. But when all this information starts to talk to each other, it unlocks some really interesting opportunities like say, dynamic menus based on your activity level for the day or recommendations of activities to do after you’re done eating based on what you chose to eat there. That kind of ability to take all these disparate data sets and combine them in a way that’s crazy.

Kyler Mason [00:36:00]:
Kyler, you can only have one leaf of that salad today.

John Gough [00:36:05]:
You chose, you made some choices earlier today. You are now down to one league.

Kyler Mason [00:36:10]:
That is fascinating.

Adam Wint [00:36:11]:
I doubt it’s ever going to limit you to one leaf. It’s going to be more like you can have one Pringles when you pop. You must stop.

John Gough [00:36:23]:
New slogan.

Kyler Mason [00:36:24]:
That was good. You must stop. For listeners that don’t have the, you know, the scale and resources that Ford has, how, how would you recommend they. They try to adopt some of the thinking that you bring and your department brings to your organization in a way that would be helpful for them to pilot. Try it, whatever those types of things might be. What do you recommend?

Adam Wint [00:36:49]:
So first, keep doing what you’re doing, which is reading a lot about your industry and what’s happening in that industry. But in addition to reading, take some post it notes or find a, a good tool. We use Miro at Ford. But find a tool to start gathering those insights and just putting them up on the wall, stick them on the wall and just start seeing what collects. Because I guarantee what’s going to start to happen is over the course of a couple months, you’re going to start to see patterns in what you’re seeing. Oh, this is AD electrification. This is also electrification. Once you get enough things in electrification, you get a big cluster of things on electrification.

Adam Wint [00:37:30]:
You start to see it bifurcating into new spaces and then you start to pull those things out. What you start to see is these micro areas of change that are happening within your industry that start to give you insights into what is specifically happening around you. And then maybe when you start looking. So we make these mental maps that look crazy, but starting to do the like detective boards where you’re putting a pin in one and tying it to another. And then you start to see how these ideas start to cross collaborate, you might see something like in the electrification space, specifically in. I’m just making this up, so don’t fact check me on this. In the electric communication space, specifically in the area of EV as a service, so companies that will help you set up a depot and a fleet, you’re seeing a lot of mergers and acquisitions happening. So now you can start saying, okay, so this space is consolidating, it’s not expanding anymore.

Adam Wint [00:38:26]:
Who are going to be the winners in that space and how do I get in with them now as a client before they get too big and frankly aren’t looking for new clients or are too big for me to afford?

Kyler Mason [00:38:43]:
Very cool. So I heard a lot of what I felt like was a mix of from earlier, I think you called them orders of implication and scenario planning. In that example you were giving, like, do you, do you recommend sorting through like maybe the noise of a trend by doing scenario planning? Like, say there’s a lot of EV post it notes and you’re starting to develop a bias around, I don’t know, something there. Do you then recommend getting into scenario planning to better grasp and understand something you’re potentially about to make a bet on?

Adam Wint [00:39:15]:
Well, for scenario planning we build and the way to do that within foresight is to identify a couple uncertainties and then can create like a four box or foursquare and be able to say, okay, so in that example, all right, so I’m seeing in the EV like services space, I’m starting to see consolidation. So the two uncertainties I might like that stand out to me might be how fast is this happening, Is it happening slow or is it happening fast? And does consolidation mean better services or worse services? So do you see monopolistic behaviors or do you start to see like better investment and maybe more competition? And then I would say, okay, so I have one box up here that says more competition or better competition and it’s happening fast. So that tells me that the space is going to be rapidly evolving. So maybe I want to wait and see who lands where and what are the distinct differentiated services that services they’re having. But on the other side, if it’s happening fast but you think monopolistic, then you might say, okay, well in that future I would pick someone now because they’re likely to just become, they’re all going to consolidate into like one or two monopolistic forces. So I can’t really pick a loser. And what you would say is, okay, so this decision I need to make, like I’m moving to ev, I’m, I’m going to take my fleet and I’m going to electrify it. Who do I want to be my partner in that? Or do I even want a partner in that? So I would look at that and say, well, what would be the capabilities of a partner in this window versus this Window versus this window versus this, this window? Or what would, what would it look like if I made this decision and I moved? I had to live in this future, or if I made this decision, but I had to live in this future.

Adam Wint [00:41:15]:
And then you’d look at that and say, okay, well, if I make this decision to electrify my fleet, I’m actually better off in three of these four futures. Brilliant. That tells me quite clearly I should do this. But maybe it says in these features, if I electrify, I’m not better off. I’m actually kind of worse off than I was before. And you might say, okay, well, I really want to electrify. So how do I do that and de risk that decision for these spaces? Like, are there things I need to do? Do I need to, for example, install solar so I’m not beholden to my energy company? Do I need to start looking into different types of vehicles and different ways to do the work that I’ve been doing to lower my overall operational costs? And there’s a lot of different ways and tales you could take that, but you start thinking then about, well, what would it take in each of these spaces to de risk this decision? And then you start to look at all of that. You say, where are the common threads? What are the things that really feel doable, but also they showed up in the most spaces.

Adam Wint [00:42:31]:
So if I do this thing, I should be more confident that this is the right direction to move.

John Gough [00:42:37]:
As a parting thought, is there anything that you. You feel like looking back on, on your experience or where you’re sitting right now that you. That you wouldn’t want to miss out on sharing?

Adam Wint [00:42:48]:
I would say one of the most impactful things that I internalized within my career in general was not being afraid to be wrong and not being afraid to make mistakes. I think everyone is wrong at times and everyone makes mistakes. It’s how you react to those things and not being afraid to continue down that. That pathway. I like to say, kind of as a joke, that to my co workers that early in my career I asked a lot of dumb questions and I knew they were dumb questions. I wanted people to tell me why they were dumb questions because people can’t resist telling you why you’re wrong if you’re wrong. And you learn a lot about them, but you also learn a lot very quickly about how things are done and why things are done. At some point in my career, that shifted and people stopped telling me I was wrong.

Adam Wint [00:43:46]:
And now I’m kind of scared because I don’t think I’m any smarter than I was. So I can only imagine people are more afraid to tell me I’m wrong.

Kyler Mason [00:43:57]:
There’s this undefined grace window when you enter your professional career. That’s the secret sauce there.

John Gough [00:44:05]:
It’s the gray hair, man.

Adam Wint [00:44:06]:
I’ve had it since I was 16, so.

John Gough [00:44:09]:
Oh, well, then maybe that’s not it. But it is a, it is a gift to be able to give away your ego on that kind of stuff and, and live in a world where being right or wrong is not the thing that matters most to you. It is being engaged and being willing to learn. For sure.

Adam Wint [00:44:29]:
I was lucky. In my second year at Ford, I had a regional manager who was retiring after a 35 year career with the company. And his very last day, I went into his office and said, I want you to give me the most like, honest performance review ever. You have no reason to hold anything back. You can tell me how it is. He sits there for a second and he goes, you fail more than anyone I’ve ever met. And he just lets it hang for about 20 seconds.

John Gough [00:45:09]:
I’m like, that’s an eternity.

Adam Wint [00:45:11]:
Well, appreciate your feedback. He goes, hold up. He goes, I see you try more. You try something it’s not, it’s never been done that way before and then it fails. And then you just roll into trying the next thing and then that doesn’t work. And then you try another thing and that doesn’t work. But maybe it’s that fourth or fifth thing that just works way better than what the status quo was. He goes, don’t lose that.

Adam Wint [00:45:39]:
That isn’t something that a lot of people have. And talking over my career with people about that, I found that most people’s reaction to that is no. When I fail, I ruminate on it. I let that sit there, that failure sit there and weigh me down. When I fail, I just get excited about what I might do that will work.

John Gough [00:46:03]:
Great place to leave it, Adam. You’ve left us a lot to think about and a lot of great tools. This has been awesome.

Kyler Mason [00:46:10]:
Yeah, thanks, man.

Adam Wint [00:46:11]:
Well, thank you guys. Pleasure to be here.

John Gough [00:46:13]:
Why you win is presented by Element Three, a marketing firm focused on modernizing go to market strategies for manufacturers that sell through complex distribution channels. We help leaders solve problems across demand generation, sales channel channel support and brand development.

Kyler Mason [00:46:30]:
If you’d like more from myself or John, connect with us on LinkedIn. And for more from Element Three visit elementthree.com that’s elementthree dot com.