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

Britton Smith [00:00:00]:
The number one job of any business leader in a crisis is to figure out what’s most important and focus on that, right? And not get distracted by the things and really make sure that you can get that one thing right.

Kyler Mason [00:00:14]:
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 [00:00:22]:
But the leaders in the industry are the ones who are making it look simple. I’m John Gough.

Kyler Mason [00:00:27]:
And I’m Kyler Mason. And this is Why You Win. Presented by Element Three.

John Gough [00:00:32]:
Our guest today is Britton Smith, the prior President of the Blue Bird Corporation. Britton’s background is really interesting and we talked about how he found his way from the Naval Academy and the submarine force through consulting roles and ultimately to the president’s seat at a billion dollar bus manufacturer. He told us a story about how a week on the factory line was critical to his success as a leader. And, and how laser focus on your most important problem is the key to winning. In this conversation he said, don’t ever let a challenge pass you by. And I think you’ll see how he’s been following that advice his entire life. I hope you enjoy it. Britton, thanks for being here. We’ve been looking forward to this conversation.

Britton Smith [00:01:08]:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

John Gough [00:01:11]:
I have the privilege of seeing behind you on your office wall, your US Navy graduating class, I assume. And one of the reasons that I’ve been looking forward to this conversation is because of your interesting and varied background. You were in the Navy for a while and then after you left the Navy, you became a consultant and then that’s. You jumped from there to Blue Bird Corporation. Once you got to Blue Bird, you entered kind of our world of B2B2X and this distributed sales channel and all the stuff that we think about and talk about all the time. So I just love to like hear a little bit about the journey and how you, how you ended up where you ended up.

Britton Smith [00:01:50]:
Yeah, it has been an interesting journey. And to your point, I started out at the Naval Academy and my objective was to learn how to lead folks very early on in my career. So pretty exciting opportunity. But not only do you learn about leadership, but you learn about operating under pressure, physically under pressure, underwater, you know, 600ft of water. But, you know, the phrase that we like to use is once you turn the key on a nuclear reactor, everything else pales in comparison. So it was a great environment to learn and great first job out of college and obviously a phenomenal opportunity to serve my country and defend freedom across the globe. So really nice experience. Knew I didn’t want to stay in the military forever, so transitioned out through business school and to your point, then joined into consulting and one of those things where I intended to stay in consulting for just a couple of years, but ended up being in there for six years at McKinsey and served some great clients and really had an opportunity to work on some of the toughest challenges that these companies faced.

Britton Smith [00:02:47]:
But again, same type of thing. I never expected to stay in consulting forever and wanted to get out into management. So now I call myself a recovering consultant. For folks who work with me, they know that, you know, you can take the guy out of consulting, but you can’t take the consulting out of the guy. So, you know, I tend to think in those frameworks and analytical mindsets and for better or worse, but, you know, my hope would be that it both the Navy leadership experience and the analytical framework style thinking that I learned in consulting, you know, helps to play out well for, for performance in the business world. And, you know, post consulting, I did a few different roles in financial services overseas and started my own company, which was a great adventure and, and ultimately landed up at Blue Bird, which really has just been an absolutely amazing ride. And I know what, that’s what most of this conversation is about. You know, we took the company and turned it around, entered new markets, led the way on electrification and propane and gasoline, so really, really an exciting transformation in the company and one that I’m very proud of.

Kyler Mason [00:03:49]:
You sound like a guy with a, with a plan. Did you have this all mapped out?

Britton Smith [00:03:53]:
I really do wish I did. It’s one. It’s one of those funny things that I knew that I wanted to get into management someday but didn’t understand the path to get there. And it’s funny, I coach a lot of younger folks, just graduates from college. This is across every industry that I served in. Folks that just reach out to me asking for advice, and they say, how do you chart a path like yours? It was. It’s so interesting. And you’ve done so many cool things, I have no idea.

Britton Smith [00:04:17]:
I mean, you see opportunities I never targeted to come to Blue Bird. Never really thought that I would be in that kind of a position to, to lead a company of that size and scale and, and history, but you know, sometimes great things happen. And you know, what I’ve really focused on my whole career is just trying to do as well as I can in each role.

Kyler Mason [00:04:33]:
What are some of those ingredients, though? Like when you get asked like, how’d you do it? What was your plan? How can I follow in your footsteps? I’m sure you’re like, it was less like a plan you designed but more how you showed up. What are some of those things?

Britton Smith [00:04:46]:
Yeah, I mean, I’d say number one is being true to yourself. And for me it’s a lot about trying to build people right and organization behind me. So I know my strengths and weaknesses. You know, I’m, I’m not shy about asking for help. I, I put in, you know, I hate to say it, but 100% effort as much as I can. I mean, showing up to work. When I was at Blue Bird, I had a summer where I was at the factory at 5am every day, which means that I was riding my motorcycle into work at 4:30 in the morning. It’s a challenge, it’s a long day.

Britton Smith [00:05:15]:
But you do what you got to do in order to, to get stuff done. And I think level of effort is one thing that any boss, you know, in any industry will see recognized. And then obviously you need to seize opportunities. I was working at KPMG when I got an offer to join Blue Bird. KPMG was a phenomenal, really just a safe organization. I was very happy to be there. It was a very difficult decision to leave that safety net and join Blue Bird. But sometimes you need to take those leaps and see some opportunities along the way.

John Gough [00:05:45]:
I’m glad you touched on that because the element of risk in this story is the thread that I immediately picked up. But the story doesn’t sound like chasing. It sounds like being willing to step beyond the bounds of your current role or opportunity and take the next risk.

Britton Smith [00:06:03]:
Yep. And I think, you know, one thing that’s interesting about my career is that it has not been built on functional expertise in one area or an industry vertical where I’ve really tried to specialize. There are pros and cons to that. I mean, I left McKinsey to join Financial Services Company. I’d never done financial services before and I moved to England, so in a totally new geography. But to me it was a great adventure and our family had a fantastic experience because of it. So I think willingness to take those leaps and trusting yourself that you’re going to be able to do well along the way, that to me is invaluable.

John Gough [00:06:37]:
When you got to Blue Bird, your role was in strategy, is that right?

Britton Smith [00:06:42]:
It was strategy and electrification. So you got to remember. So the school bus industry, like a lot of transportation industries are sort of in A transition over to electrification. Blue Bird was leading the way. We had our first demonstration vehicle for the Atlanta Olympic Games. So that was, you know, 1998 or not, sorry, 96 Olympic Games. And we launched commercially in 2018. So we’d done electrification for a long time, but it had really not grown a ton.

Britton Smith [00:07:12]:
And so there was a ton of funding. I think most folks know there’s an EPA clean school bus program, $5 billion of funding coming down the pipe. And my job there was to grow that as fast as possible. Then the second piece was on strategy, and frankly, the company was in a pretty challenging time. 2022 When I joined, and this is what I’ve written extensively about this on LinkedIn, but it was. It was, frankly, in crisis mode. So it was a lot of looking at initiatives to help pull the company up out of that crisis mode and set us up for the future. So it was initially strategy and electrification, and then ultimately transitioned into the president role about a little over a year later.

Kyler Mason [00:07:49]:
What from your past helped you to just really stay steady and. And observe what you observed in crisis mode to really kind of turn and right the ship.

Britton Smith [00:08:00]:
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting because the most important thing is prioritization and understanding what needs to be done first. The challenges in any crisis, whether you’re talking about on a submarine or, you know, where you have a simulated firefight and, you know, you gotta. You gotta put out a fire, or you’re talking about, you know, in the business world, where you have a million different priorities and you’re trying to figure out, what do I focus on first? The most important thing, the number one job of any business leader in a crisis, is to figure out what’s most important and focus on that, right? And not get distracted by other things and really, you know, make sure that you can get that one thing right. For us, frankly, it was cash generation. We had to figure out, hey, how do we generate enough cash to stay afloat, pay the bills, pay our suppliers, you know, build inventory, and then sell those buses, right?

Britton Smith [00:08:51]:
It was a very, very challenging time. But what’s interesting is our CEO at the time really put together a cadence of meetings and information flow that narrowly focused us on that and said, okay, how do we make sure that every discussion is cash? Cash is king, right? It’s not about profitability. It’s not about the next generation of buses. It’s not about building for the future. It is, we need to generate cash. And then we started to transition from that to, okay, now how do we start to Build for the future really reinvest, but reinvest carefully, right? So that was the really narrow focus which started to build us up out of that crisis mode into kind of future looking mode.

John Gough [00:09:30]:
So is that two parallel paths then? Because your, your role was electrification and strategy and you’ve described two apparently different problems. One is an opportunity problem, one is the crisis problem. Was the electrification problem and access to the grant money. Was that a cash play? Was that the part of the strategy that made that make sense at the time, or was there some other thing going on there that I don’t understand?

Britton Smith [00:09:55]:
Yeah, it was a bit of both. So the electrification piece was maximizing the opportunity and it was a bit of a longer play because they take longer to generate cash. The cash generation point was literally getting buses out day to day, right? And I think this is one of the challenges that a lot of business leaders face is they get caught up in the day to day too much and then they miss opportunities for investment or growth, right?

Britton Smith [00:10:19]:
And so, you know, our company had the wherewithal to say, hey, look, you know, this EV opportunity is so big that we need to make sure that we’re doing the right things there, but at the same time generating cash and cranking buses out and making sure that we can pay the bills. So it was a bit of a parallel path to your point. And this is why I was in that role, right?

Britton Smith [00:10:37]:
You sort of needed someone who can focus on, hey, how do we make sure that we don’t just get 150 electric buses but 300, 500, 800 electric buses? How do we really set the groundwork for that? That’s going to happen over the course of the next few years. And we did, we went from 150 before I joined last year. We did over 700, so about a 5x growth over three years, which is pretty exciting achievement.

John Gough [00:11:00]:
Yeah, that’s incredible. And it reminds me of my favorite Peter Drucker quote, which is about the role of a CEO. And Drucker says that one of the roles is to balance yield in the present and investment in the future. It sounds like in sort of every way, in the most clean way, that was your job. Yield in the present and investment in the future.

Britton Smith [00:11:20]:
Yep.

Kyler Mason [00:11:20]:
Tell me about this, like management system, I think is what you referred to it as. When you were in crisis, you needed to prioritize. You mentioned your CEO set up a system for you. Can you tell us about that a little bit more?

Britton Smith [00:11:32]:
Yeah, I mean, in the simplest term, it is the sequence of meetings that you’re having, the metrics that you’re tracking and the discussions that you’re having around those metrics, right?

Britton Smith [00:11:42]:
And so for us, it was a daily meeting. We called it the path forward. And at the end of the day it was Monday through Friday and sometimes on Saturday mornings, right? But it’s that frequency. And if you think about this is a billion and a quarter revenue company, can you imagine the senior management team meeting every single day to talk about the same topics and understand how do we evolve from this crisis? But that’s the level of urgency that’s needed. And then obviously, you know, you have sort of the other meeting cadences and metrics that you’re tracking that support the regular operations. But putting something like that in place is absolutely critical.

Britton Smith [00:12:17]:
And it evolved over time. It wasn’t the same metrics, it wasn’t the same topics. But at the same time, we use that as a forcing function to enable us to really push forward quickly on initiatives to come out of this crisis mode.

Kyler Mason [00:12:29]:
That’s awesome. And the, the focus and what you were supposed to only be talking about was cash flow.

John Gough [00:12:36]:
How long was the meeting? I’m getting like a few very specific questions like how, how long did you meet every day?

Britton Smith [00:12:42]:
So the record, the shortest meeting was 14 minutes. And I remember the whole team was so excited because it’s only 14 minutes. Probably the longest was an hour and a half, but we scheduled it for a half hour at the end of the day so nobody had any conflicts. And you know, we had to talk through problems as needed and resolved them there, so.

John Gough [00:12:58]:
It was a great, a great, meeting cadence or how long did you have that cadence in place?

Britton Smith [00:13:02]:
It’s still going, but it’s evolved, right? So this is kind of the interesting point is we sort of took it from a daily meeting, then it was three times a week, then it was two times a week. We changed the information that was being shared. And now it’s no longer really cash generation. It’s more a touch point for the senior management team. And it also kind of doves, tails. Well, it’s more of an operations meeting, let’s say, versus, you know, before. It’s purely focused on cash generation. So it’s one of those things that as a leadership team, we would sit back and say, hey, what do we need this other meeting for? And on a monthly and quarterly basis, we’d adjust as needed each one of those meeting cadences.

John Gough [00:13:41]:
Yeah, you stepped into that president role in a sort of like a wartime moment, right? And so that the wartime versus Peacetime leadership in a business context, I think is a different gig. But I’d love to hear your perspective on that and maybe with your consulting background, maybe that’s some additional color. Are you a wartime guy or a peacetime guy?

Britton Smith [00:14:03]:
Well, I would hope both. I would hope both. And to your point, you know, there’s been a lot of literature about, you know, wartime leaders, peacetime leaders, and, you know, can you kind of cross over to both? My preference is towards action and change. I like to solve problems. And that’s what, that’s what consultants love, is to jump in and solve a big problem. But military folks serve during peacetime too. You don’t join the military and immediately grab a gun and start shooting people. So it’s a, you know, it’s kind of thing where to your point? I joined Blue Bird very much in wartime mode and I left, I would say, very much in peacetime mode. The challenge that we had were obviously the transition to electrification. That was a big deal. Really focus on gas and propane where our competitors were all diesel effectively. So really trying to transition the industry over towards cleaner fuels, not just clean and electric, but clean air fuels was a big deal. But then also the investment for the future and getting out, setting the baseline for, you know, the next three, four years of growth. So it was a big time of change. And personally I like those types of problems to focus on. I like to be able to have a big impact in an organization.

Kyler Mason [00:15:10]:
So you’re not necessarily looking for wartime, but maybe difficult transformation.

Britton Smith [00:15:15]:
Absolutely. And this is one of the things, you know, in my personal opinion, every leader should be creating creative destruction within their organization on a routine basis, right?

Britton Smith [00:15:26]:
In my experience, if you have an organization that’s stagnant, you are just waiting to die. So the question for business leaders, how do you do that? So you’re not totally destroying the organization, but at the same time, there are small ways that you can create tension, create opportunities. Blue Bird had a huge opportunity because of the upset within the industry during COVID and post-COVID on the supply chain side, as well as the transition to electrification, which created another opportunity. So we sort of saw those opportunities and were able to take advantage of them. But I would be a proponent of, hey, look, every organization should figure out, how do you, how do you create that creative destruction along the way?

John Gough [00:16:03]:
I love the image of you riding to the factory on your motorcycle at 4:30 in the morning. Are there any other moments that stand out in that experience that are just like etched in your brain?

Britton Smith [00:16:13]:
Yeah, you know, One of the, one of the best things that I did as president was I spent a week on the line. It was very funny because some folks are saying, hey, look, you go down and visit the factory once a week, then that’s great. That’s all you need to do. Maybe spend a little bit more time down there. But the leadership at the plant said, hey, look, it would be great if you actually worked. And so for a week, they set it up at different shifts in the morning and afternoon and paint the paint booth, and then I would go shoot rivets and then drill holes. And it was the kind of thing where you really get to experience.

Britton Smith [00:16:47]:
I did it in February, which is great. In Georgia. You do not want to do it in July or August in Georgia. That is really challenging time. But what’s amazing about it is you really get to appreciate what it takes to build a bus, right? And you see that it is a highly manual type of a process. There’s thousands of rivets that hold together this vehicle. It’s built like a tank, which I absolutely love. But the amount of, of skilled labor that we have at the plant, over 1500 people who physically touch every single bus that go through there, to me, it’s an amazing thing. So not only do you get an appreciation of the work that they do, but also the challenges that they face, right?

Britton Smith [00:17:24]:
Coming out of that, a big initiative that I had was, hey, hand tools. We need to go through and fix and update every single hand tool. Because if you got a rivet gun that jams, it is so frustrating, right? You can’t do your job. You know, folks on the line, they’re very proud. They don’t want to ask, right? And they try and get it refurbished. They try and keep using it. They try and power through. But you want to make sure that as a leader, you know, all of them are taken care of, that they have the tools that they need in order to perform well.

Britton Smith [00:17:52]:
You don’t get to see that unless you’re on the line, right. When you actually go there and pick up their rivet gun and try to shoot a rivet and it doesn’t work, that’s when you experience it, not when you’re sitting there just watching.

John Gough [00:18:02]:
And it’s the difference between seeing those tools as a cost center and an investment, right. Not only in the productivity of the line itself, but in the people that you’re employing.

Britton Smith [00:18:11]:
100%. Yeah. And this is. This is a philosophy that I took to everything. I mean, you know, even just dealers, right. You know, we have 50 dealers across the country. And it’s very different to have a conversation with a dealer over the phone or in zoom versus going out and visiting their territory, visiting schools, talking to school districts, talking to the mechanics in the shop, you know, at a school who work on the buses day to day. And they can tell you, hey, here’s the issue that I’m seeing and here’s why.

Britton Smith [00:18:37]:
It becomes a very different conversation with any of your tier ones when you’re able to say, this is exactly what’s happening and here’s why. And I understand it’s a rounding number for you, but this is why it’s so important for us to fix this together, right? So it gives you a very different perspective when you have those conversations.

John Gough [00:18:54]:
Say more about what a tier one is for the people who are listening.

Britton Smith [00:18:57]:
Yeah. So in the, in the automotive and commercial vehicle world, tier ones are the first tier of suppliers that support. So those would be the Hendrickson, the Dana’s of the world, the Cummins kind of big brands that you hear about. Tier 2s are the ones that support them with components. And then tier threes might be the raw materials or smaller, smaller components that go into it.

John Gough [00:19:17]:
So you’re having conversations with the chassis suppliers or the engine suppliers and saying back to them, hey, like, we love your stuff, but we can’t make this work because we understand not just the dealer, but also our end customer. So well, and we need these kinds of changes in place, right?

Britton Smith [00:19:35]:
Exactly. It leads to very tough conversations. And this is what I found, is that a lot of leaders, business leaders, you know, focus to your point, focus on the numbers. They look at, you know, productivity, they look at, you know, ROI. They understand very well the financial side of things, but they don’t really understand the why. And it’s very different if you have a conversation with a supplier and you’re, you’re talking about numbers. You know, that’s a, that’s a very shallow discussion. Very, very, very difficult to move anywhere.

Britton Smith [00:20:03]:
When you have a real deep understanding of the use case at the customer level, the challenges that the customer faces, the repairs that the dealer needs to make on a routine basis, the total cost for the customer, then at that point you can, you can have a very deep discussion. And it’s not just a numbers game of, hey, how do I, you know, get some cost concessions from your price concessions from you, or how do you help me lower my cost base, right? It’s a total cost of ownership, but it’s also a shared success or failure within the field and with your customers.

John Gough [00:20:36]:
So your background here. So I think this is where it kind of comes into play because the consultant stereotype is way closer to like the bean counter. And I’m like I’m going to squeeze every cent out of this sort of situation and you’re telling a completely different story. And I can only imagine that that comes from the engineer in you, the leader that you were built in the military or somewhere else. Where do you think that comes from?

Britton Smith [00:21:01]:
Yeah, I 100% believe it’s a military thing. And this is where so the consulting side to your point, I mean look, there is data gathering and you know, you try to get paint as much of a data analytical supported picture as you can but generally you don’t send consultants into the field to talk to customers. It’s a bit frowned upon. You know, in the military there’s the classic management by walking around, right. I mean you can sit in your control room and try to talk about the ship, but if you don’t see how everyone’s doing within the organization and what they’re doing on a day to day basis, you really don’t know what’s going on. So I would 100% agree with you. And this is the interesting part about leadership in the military is that you see this all the time. Great leaders are in the field, leading from the front line, getting to know their troops and getting a feel of how every piece of the organization is performing and where they can affect change.

John Gough [00:21:55]:
So I was a military brat and your whole story is really resonating with me. I would just add on to that. I think that, I think credibility in those organizations, in that environment comes from knowing that the person that you report to had your job or he had to dig a trench too. Like he was in the bottom of the ship before he got to sit at the top of the ship. When people get parachuted into those other roles without having understood the entire ecosystem, it just doesn’t seem to work no 100%. And this is beginner. In a submarine, the first thing you do is spend time on the sonar stacks. Like a sonar operator who’s just out of high school, right?

Britton Smith [00:22:35]:
You spend time on the dive planes to understand how the ship actually reacts when you push on the planes or pull. So in every single station within the you have to spend time on those. You’re not trying to take over their jobs, but at the same time you need to have that experience. And your point is spot on. You have a different conversation once you’ve actually done that. For some time. And it gains credibility, enables folks to say to, hey, you’ve sat here, you know what I’m seeing now, Let me tell you why I need this fixed or I need you to help me here, right?

John Gough [00:23:06]:
Is that true for your dealer experience too? You start talking about dealers for a second and you ended up talking about the customer, right? The school district. How did the dealers react in those moments where you were sort of reaching past them to their customers? Were they happy, sad, excited?

Britton Smith [00:23:24]:
We as the OEM, the manufacturer, never really reached past the dealers. It was always with the dealers and through the dealers, right? So we would go out to dinners with superintendents and the dealer was right along with us. You know, we would go to a show, customers would come up and the dealers would come talk to us, right?

Britton Smith [00:23:42]:
So it was always a shared responsibility. But the beauty of Blue Bird is that it is a small, relatively small manufacturer. And so the, the fact that a customer could call the president of the company and say, hey, this is the problem that I’m having. And I would say, fantastic, let’s talk about it now. Let’s, let’s go bring in the dealer and understand how they’re going to support you locally, right?

Britton Smith [00:24:03]:
Because you know, Blue Bird doesn’t have a, a huge force of technicians in the field. We rely on our dealer channel to make sure that the customer’s taken care of. That’s their long term responsibility. And what’s so fun about the school, school bus industry is that it is so local and is so relationship based. The salespeople go to the graduation party for the kids of the superintendent transportation director. They, they go out and play ball together on the weekends. I mean it is one of those things that is a hyper local type of an industry and it’s such a niche industry that the average Blue Bird dealer tenure is over 30 years. They’re multi generational family businesses that have been built up over time and they maintain these long term relationship with these school districts.

Britton Smith [00:24:47]:
So that’s not something that Bloomberg as a corporate organization would ever want to take over. Never want to supplant it, never want to overreach. Blue Bird really does rely on the dealer network and I think they work very well together with the, with the corporate entity.

Kyler Mason [00:25:02]:
Kind of taking a step back to like the, the moment of, let’s say, crisis and the, and the change that you had to lead through. If you could like synthesize a bit, what were some of those key areas that you had to examine and change in order to, to pivot from where you were to put yourself in a position to, to win in the way that you were.

Britton Smith [00:25:20]:
Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing was, you know, where we had to start with is how we were scheduling and building buses and getting buses out the door. And there was a long term history of building on demand. Very quickly, whatever the customer wanted, we’d put that in, slot it and go. The problem was that created havoc with our suppliers. And so it was really interesting. I had this great conversation with an engine manufacturer and they said, hey, look, your ordering has been, you ordered 50 here, 100 here, 30 there, 70 here. It needs to be 50 all the way through.

Britton Smith [00:26:00]:
Like, wait a second, you guys are one of the biggest engine manufacturers in the country. Like, how do we need to level demand from you? They’re like, no, no, no. This is, this is the new reality. Everything needs to be leveled, right?

Britton Smith [00:26:09]:
And if you think about any component in the supply chain, this is the supply chain crisis that we’re having is you couldn’t, you couldn’t all of a sudden order this huge batch, which was the old way of manufacturing. So what that forced was because of these supply chain needs for leveling and forecasting. We had to totally change the way that we were scheduling and building buses. We said, okay, every single day we’re going to build this mix. Every single day we’re going to build this mix. And it enabled us to really make sure that everything that was coming in was very regular. Remember plants, Plants like steady state, they don’t like big changes, like very small changes at a time. And the same thing is true for our supplier, so we had to match our manufacturing process and that scheduling process over to the supply chain.

Kyler Mason [00:26:54]:
Interesting. So you looked in, it sounds like early to optimize some of your operation, improve, I’m assuming, cash flow. Were there other big components that were external to your operations that you were examining too?

Britton Smith [00:27:09]:
Yeah, I mean, the other big piece was on the supply chain itself. We had to change from a highly fragmented supply chain over to more consolidated. And this is the classic. I did consulting at McKinsey, so I know what they do. There’s a lot of times where we go into a company and say, oh my gosh, you need to take all of these components, all your spend, and go bid it out and get, as you know, many bids as you can. Take the lowest price and you’ll save all this money, right?

Britton Smith [00:27:32]:
And it does save money in the short term. The problem is, is that during a supply chain crisis now you have hundred different suppliers that you have to deal with and beg because you have a small amount of their total production, right? So we shifted from highly fragmented supply to key suppliers and we started to consolidate more and say, okay, you know what, we’re going to get rid of this long tail, but also reduce the complexity. So we’re going to start to shut off options and say, okay, you know what, you can’t order this light. You need to order this light. Because one of the challenges on the, in the school bus industry is that it is so complex. There’s so many different options, so many different state level specifications that need to be met.

Britton Smith [00:28:10]:
The last thing you want is the dealer to be able to pick one or the other. Really. Let’s say, you know what, this is the one that we’re going to go with it.

John Gough [00:28:16]:
Having those long term contracts give you leverage from a cash position too.

Britton Smith [00:28:21]:
You would think so.

John Gough [00:28:23]:
I would have hoped so.

Britton Smith [00:28:25]:
And I think this is one of the challenges that we saw during the supply chain crisis. It was, it was tougher than, hey, here’s your contract and we put in an order you and have to deliver. It was that they were in the same situation. We were right. So, and this is true with chips and most folks know there was a huge chip supply chain crisis and what was being manufactured, but apply that to any component across the board. You know, it was, it was less of a contractual discussion. It was more like, hey, who do you know is going to be a great partner in the future? And that’s where we had to choose your partners carefully. Work with them as, as business leaders, but also help them understand the need within the school bus industry, right?

Britton Smith [00:29:03]:
This is where I absolutely loved being part of the school bus industry because it is a noble pursuit. I mean, I call it a noble pursuit because it’s a safe and reliable transportation of students. Young parent puts their kid on the school bus in the morning and hopes that they come home safely at the end of the day, right?

Britton Smith [00:29:18]:
And so you know, as an OEM that you’re building a school bus that’s going to be reliable and take those kids to school. Well, and that’s the story that really resonates with these suppliers when you say, hey, look, you know, you can give an axle to these guys or you can give an axle to us. You know, it’s important that these, you know, these students get to school safely. And one of those industries that’s kind of the backbone of America.

Kyler Mason [00:29:39]:
I like that angle. Way to use that leverage.

Britton Smith [00:29:43]:
Yeah. Works well.

John Gough [00:29:44]:
I read recently that Blue Bird is putting seatbelts in standard on all school buses. And as a child of the 90s, that feels very foreign to me. But I, I read it as an example, yet another example of innovation continuing to push forward. And also to your point a second ago, of like understanding the precious cargo that, that you’re actually responsible for.

Britton Smith [00:30:07]:
Yeah, no, it’s a, it’s a great initiative, you know. So this is part of next level safety initiative that I launched during my time you’re there. And what was so interesting about it is, to your point, most school buses do not have seat belts. And it’s a crazy thing to me. But the other piece is that school bus drivers don’t have airbags. It’s wild. I mean, every vehicle that you drive now not only has a frontal airbag, but has side airbags and all these other protections for the driver. So that was one of the biggest initiatives that we had was, hey, look, we need to protect the driver, we need to protect the students, make sure that they have every piece of safety equipment.

Britton Smith [00:30:43]:
And we would get this feedback from parents where they say, hey, my kid gets on the school bus and is looking for the seatbelt to put on because they’re so used to it now, right? It’s part of their routine and they’re sort of floored when there’s, when their bus doesn’t have seatbelts. So we launched the next level safety initiative, included standard seatbelts at no additional cost with our new seat supplier first in the market, airbags. But then also other. A lot of other safety initiatives like high, high visibility LED headlights, which are pretty standard in the passenger car world, but not in the, in the school bus world, as well as flashing strobe lights, lighted school bus signs, down lights for better visibility. So a lot of stuff that’ll really help to improve the visibility of the school bus to prevent accidents. But then also, you know, in the case, in the, God forbid, in the case of an accident, protect the precious cargo that’s on board and the driver who is the first responder in the case of an accident.

John Gough [00:31:37]:
Until you said that, it didn’t even occur to me that that is true. And an important role for that individual. Talk to us for a little bit about what are you thinking about next? What, what is interesting, what’s on the horizon?

Britton Smith [00:31:50]:
I, I’ve talked to a lot of different folks about the experience at Blue Bird, and what was so exciting to me about it was the ability to have a big impact on an organization in a short period of time. It’s unique that you get to do that much that quickly. You know, we talked about kind of emergence from crisis mode, getting to record profits in 23, even doubling profits into 24. I mean, absolutely unbelievable trajectory that we were on. You know, the transformation into electrification, huge investment there and really charting the future for, you know, what the path of. We want an $80 million grant from the government for a new plant, right?

Britton Smith [00:32:28]:
So pretty. Pretty exciting stuff there, you know, And I think for me, when I look at other opportunities, that’s what I’m looking for is where can I have a big impact. I love to be able to jump into a company doesn’t need to be in crisis mode. But I would say in the next year, there’s going to be a lot of companies with a lot of challenges, right? The supply chain crisis of 22, I’m feeling echoes already, right?

Britton Smith [00:32:49]:
And the kind of things that we went through in order to right the ship, to keep the organization afloat and to start to invest for the future, it’s one of those things. You never want to let a challenge or crisis pass you by because that’s the best opportunity for a business leader to really remake the organization in a better light. And I think we did that at Blue Bird. So I’m looking for an opportunity where I can go, you know, support another organization and make a lot of change. I think there’s going to be a lot of that coming up and, you know, having some great conversations now about it.

Kyler Mason [00:33:19]:
Do you want to stay in manufacturing?

Britton Smith [00:33:22]:
I love manufacturing. It’s one of those things that, you know, you get to really see something built. You see a yellow school bus drive down the road. You know, you’re proud that it went by. I really do enjoy manufacturing.

John Gough [00:33:33]:
Is the engineering part of your brain calling you at all on that?

Britton Smith [00:33:37]:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s one of those fun things that when you can sit down with a supplier and talk about the design and why something is done a certain way, ask all these why questions, and really start to understand how something can provide a competitive advantage. It’s very different than just taking them for their word and saying, yeah, this is 10% better, this is 20% better. That’s the engineering part. To me, I absolutely love it. And it obviously plays into the manufacturing side as well, where you’re able to really get onto the shop floor, see how things get built, and understand why a certain type of bolt is better than another one. Maybe it costs a little bit more, but longevity, the assembly is going to improve and. And then it enables you to understand what’s going on, on the floor?

Kyler Mason [00:34:24]:
What else is a part of your playbook that we haven’t talked about that you’re going to bring to your, to your next gig?

Britton Smith [00:34:29]:
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest piece to me, I talk about this P3 Performance, the Peak Performance Pyramid. It’s something that frankly, I developed during, during my time at Blue Bird. The highest piece of that peak performance is all about culture, continuous improvement, and those conversations. So we talked before about the management information systems and the routines, the discussions. But what I’m most passionate about and what I absolutely love is having frank conversations and understanding what is the root of the problem. And that absolute candor, the ability to have a conversation with folks about, hey, what went right, what went wrong. You know, most, most business leaders don’t like telling their boss that something is not going well, right? But if you can get to a point where people come to you naturally and say, hey, this is not going well, how do we fix it, right?

Britton Smith [00:35:21]:
That is a totally different conversation and the organization gets to a much, much better place, right? It’s the idea of continuous improvement, identifying opportunities, not pointing fingers or laying blame, but having a shared responsibility for positive outcomes. To me, that is the most exciting part about business leadership is driving that improvement. That’s what I call peak performance.

Kyler Mason [00:35:44]:
How do you do that? How do you balance safety to address a problem and feeling safe to do that with accountability, like psychological safety in the example you were giving, like, create a culture where, you know, someone feels empowered, safe to come and say, I’m dealing with this problem, while then also in the leadership position, holding people, people accountable. So my question is, how do you do that?

Britton Smith [00:36:06]:
Well, my experience, it is enabling a shared vulnerability. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not perfect and I mess up all the time. And this is one of those things when, if you’re the type of leader who can never show your vulnerability, can never show that you make a mistake or pretend that you don’t make mistakes, then folks will follow you in that lead and say, okay, well, I can’t make a mistake either, right? If you’re confident enough to say, hey, look, you know what? This was a bad decision on my part, or I don’t know this, right? That’s one of the greatest things that you can say is, hey, educate, I don’t know about this, whatever process, tell me about this, then it helps folks to understand that, hey, look, you know, you’re vulnerable too. Things can go wrong and you know, we’re going to get there together, right? It creates that shared responsibility for a future, right?

Britton Smith [00:36:56]:
And I think, you know, the other piece is when things do go wrong, it’s a lot of how you react and obviously what you want folks to do is to be able to fess up and say, yep, you know what, this was either a bad decision or somebody messed up along the way. I’m taking ownership for it now. Let’s go figure out how to solve it.

John Gough [00:37:13]:
Being the example of integrity in that moment is absolutely the thing that creates that safety for other people and it certainly doesn’t remove the danger. I mean, we’re dealing with things, and especially in crisis moments like your. At an existential point, often with some of these organizations, are we going to be able to stay standing or not? If integrity is on the line, then it’s on the line, right? But we’re going to, we’re going to do the thing we said we were going to do. We’re going to be honest. We’re going to face our problems head on every day at 4:30 or 4:30 in the morning or 4:30 in the afternoon. That’s what we’re going to do.

Britton Smith [00:37:52]:
Absolutely. And this is what I tell everybody is when you turn the key on the nuclear reactor, it is everyone’s responsibility to make sure that everything goes right. Because if it doesn’t, it’s a bad thing, right? And that’s that shared responsibility, it transfers over from the military to consulting where, you know, the team is working on a solution with the management team and transfers over to business leadership. And when you’re building a bus, every single piece of that bus needs to be done correctly. And I, this is what I used to walk around the floor and talk to folks. If you’re putting the chassis together, if you’re assembling the windows, any one of those pieces falls apart and, you know, the whole bus loses its integrity, right?

Britton Smith [00:38:30]:
So it’s the sum of the parts. It’s not an individual is that shared responsibility over the outcomes that really gets folks excited and they understand it is a team effort. It’s not a, it’s not one individual. And nobody’s going to be pointing fingers. We’re all going to be looking at good outcome together.

John Gough [00:38:44]:
Britton, this has been incredible. Thank you so much for spending your time with us. We got a lot out of it.

Kyler Mason [00:38:48]:
Thanks, man.

Britton Smith [00:38:49]:
Thank you for having me. It was great.

John Gough [00:38:51]:
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 support and brand development.

Kyler Mason [00:39:07]:
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.com.