[Transcript]

[00:00:00] 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. Rising benefit costs aren't inevitable for you or your employees when you break through the status quo. Independence matters, it means Lockton can bring you creative, tailored solutions that truly serve your business and your people. At Lockton, clients, associates, and communities come first, not margins and not mediocrity. Meet the moment with Lockton.

Well, Ford just dropped a bombshell, didn't they? A $30,000 mid-size electric pickup plan for 2027 built on the universal EV platform. What on Earth is that? Well, it promises faster assembly, 40% reduction in workstations, 20% less parts, and lower costs. It's such a revolutionary idea according to Ford that they are comparing it to the Model T for its potential impact to Ford and the auto industry.

It all started back in 2022 when Jim Farley, Ford's CEO, gathered a group of his leaders in a warehouse in the Detroit area for a tear down of the Ford Mach-E against the Tesla Model three. And what they saw was humbling. They saw a lot more parts in their vehicle than was in the Tesla Model Three. And Farley said, clearly, we do not have a future at Ford unless they change everything. Everything. What does everything mean?

Now, Ford is transforming the way it makes vehicles. Yes, that's true. But here's the bigger question, if we can reinvent the product, we can reinvent how we make the product, can we also reinvent how we do business?

I am all about the need for reinvention in leadership and culture, and maybe I'm just not clear. That's an all-encompassing term. I mean, the way we make decisions, the way we interact with each other, all of it. The entire operating system for the business has to change along with it. And one key element of that is how we negotiate whether we are negotiating with suppliers, negotiating with unions.

Right now, we've got a lot of negotiations playing out front and center with the trade deals. Has the way that we negotiate changed, or are we using an outdated model? That's a question that we are gonna dive deep into today, and my guest is none other than Kate Vitasek, and she is perfect for this conversation.

She spent 25 years researching and creating highly collaborative partnerships and agreements. She's the architect of the Vested Methodology. And if you don't know what that is, you definitely need to check it out, and we'll put a link in the show notes. She's a well-published author, a Forbes contributor, and one of the most influential global voices in commerce today. Kate, welcome back to the mic.

[00:04:16] Kate Vitasek: Well, thanks for having me. It's always exciting to share our research, and I really like your spin today about challenging people to rethink the mindset of how they're going to achieve these big transformational things, like Ford's trying to do.

[00:04:31] Jan Griffiths: And as I think back Kate, let's say the eighties, 'cause that's when I started my career. And I look at my days in supply chain and purchasing and the way that I was expected to negotiate, it was all about leverage. If you didn't have it, you made it up. And it was all about beating the supplier down. It was about winning. It was about the bravado. It was about, you know, the personality, being the tough guy, and winning at all costs. That's kind of the way I was taught, I wouldn't say it was the way I negotiate today. But how have you seen and what does your research show that negotiation style has evolved over time?

[00:05:13] Kate Vitasek: Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, when you go back to it, it was really, and I would say even prior to the eighties. Really, if you look at Michael Porter's work on Five Forces, which was seminal at the time, competitive advantage, right? He said competitive advantage came when we used power. So, there were five forces, two of those forces were from power: Power over your customers, and power over your suppliers.

And then, following that, in 1983, you had Kraljic, right? And the Kraljic Matrix, the HBR article at the time, which was heralded as this like, amazing thing. It's a simple two by two. And the preferred strategy, as you used in your own words, Jan, leverage. How can we leverage our power? And if we don't have it, we break it up, we commoditize, we strategize to figure out how to use your leverage.

And then you came along negotiation books. You know, the Secret Power of Negotiation, and Start with No, and the Art of the Deal, which were very much power-based in the 1980s, early 1990s. But that started to change toward the mid-nineties with another seminal book: Getting to Yes. And Fisher and Ury's worked around interest-based negotiation. And I think that was a huge step forward away from power-based thoughts.

Now, people didn't just like, start one day and instead of starting with no or the secret powers in negotiation. They really started to use these interest-based negotiations. My husband is a retired firefighter. He recently retired, but they use interest based negotiations in their unions. And so, you start to see this more, I won't say collaborative approach, but let's use facts and data and benchmarks to try to come up with our interest and to get to, get to yes, per se instead of just like using all your power.

But then, in the 2000s, and really, in particular, the more you go the mid-2000s, the concept of collaboration and using collaboration to develop a solution. So when you've got a negotiation, it's because your interests aren't aligned, right? Think about it, the reason why you're negotiating is because you don't agree, right? You want something. Someone else wants something else. And so, you started to see books like 3D Negotiation in 2006, or Collaborative Negotiation in 2011, or my book Getting to We coming out in 2014. And so, these more collaborative approaches started to emerge that I think they are starting to take hold now. I mean, they're not ubiquitous by any means, I would say.

Companies who are using these more collaborative approaches to create value, that's not the norm, but I think you're gonna see it become the norm. But sometimes we have to let dinosaurs die and there's a lot of power-based companies out there, and dinosaurs gotta die sometime.

[00:08:10] Jan Griffiths: I couldn't agree with you more. And this runs right along with my whole mission, which is moving from command and control to authentic leadership because command and control, there's the word right there: control. It is all about control and it tends to be a bit more transactional, whereas authentic leadership is more about being yourself, and perhaps, coming to the negotiation, to the table, not having all these leverage points and all these arguments.

I mean, of course you need data, and I'm not gonna argue that. But coming as yourself with an open heart and an open mind and saying, "We! We collectively need to achieve something," which, I think, is a lot of what your work is about, right?

Before you answer that question, something I remember that you told me a long time ago, and I've never forgotten it, and that is, "Think about when you go into a negotiation, people typically sit the opposite sides of the table." And you talked about the visual of both of you sitting on the same side of the table.

[00:09:11] Kate Vitasek: Yeah, and that's actually where the collaboration starts from is, and you used the philosophy of authentic leadership, but when you really start to collaborate and co-create — you're sitting on the same side of the table to solve the problem, right? You can get to more business outcomes.

So, you used the term transactional, right? So, a negotiation is transactional: I want X at Y price, and well, I wanna give you X at Z price — a higher price. And so, you're back and forth and you have concessions and trade-offs, where a more collaborative approach takes a step back and is very transparent. It is not just about using interest, right?

It's a step. If I had to draw this continuum, right? You have this power based to then interest based to then collaborative, what I think of as co-creation or value creation. And so, now by being transparent, leaning in and saying, "You know what? Let's create a trusting environment. Let's look at transparency. Let's look at total cost of ownership. And now, let's work to solve a problem to lower our cost structure to make our supply chains more efficient. Because if I can work with you to drive efficiency in the supply chain, it reduces the cost structure. We can both win.

[00:10:31] Jan Griffiths: Kate, how does the time horizon play into this? Because if you are very short term, right? You want to buy a widget at this price and you're really not that concerned about the long-term relationship, you just wanna buy it at that price. Is that a time where the more power-based, you know, leverage kind of negotiation style is appropriate? Is it ever appropriate? Is it not appropriate when you want to maintain a relationship with the supplier long-term? Tell us about the time Horizons involved.

[00:11:05] Kate Vitasek: Yeah, so a power-based approach typically is more short term because I can win at your expense. But here's the fallacy of why that's wrong. Why the short term thinking is wrong. Because, especially, if I'm dealing with suppliers or unions, right I have to continue to work with them. It's not just this negotiation, this time, this deal, these deal points, right? I have to come back to the table.

And Oliver Hart, who I collaborated with David Frydlinger on an HBR article called A New Approach to Contracts. Oliver has really popularized this concept in economics called shading. And so if I take a short, I may have the power. I can get that hammer out and I can use that hammer and I'm gonna win in the short term. But the other party feels that was unfair. And so, they then become non-collaborative. Sometimes, even unconsciously, they work to get even. Sometimes they consciously work to get even. For example, in the GM, right? When GM went bankrupt, they got a ton of concessions. But the union wasn't happy, they got even, most recently, right?

[00:12:14] Jan Griffiths: Yes.

[00:12:15] Kate Vitasek: And so, it's this back and forth and back and forth because the labor unions right now have more power, and so they were able to win. And so, what a collaborative approach does is it takes this win-lose out, and it actually says, "Let's choose to create a trusting relationship through transparency, through problem solving, value creation." So, not value extraction, not value exchange, value creation.

And that value creation, the fact that you could optimize your supply chain, you could reduce the number of parts you have, is going to be more powerful. But I have to bring that long-term perspective. It's not gonna be overnight, and that's what makes it so hard. Companies with a lot of power are very tempted to get the short term win versus "be patient and work on the bigger solution," even though they could have a bigger gain.

[00:13:17] Jan Griffiths: Does it take more time to work on a collaborative negotiation than it does to use your power?

[00:13:23] Kate Vitasek: I don't think so at all. I think that's another myth, right? So, go back to the union, you know, United Auto Workers, how long did that play out? And so, here it is, power base. Because you can't just expect the other guy to give in. And so, now you've got this back and forth negotiations, trade-offs, concessions — that takes time. And so, a collaborative approach, you just claim it from the start and say, "Hey, here are the guiding principles that we're gonna work under, here is the shared vision we're gonna do, and we're gonna start the solution." And we find a collaborative, a truly collaborative process, using the Vested Methodology is about six months, maybe seven months. The quickest we've seen is four, but some of these deals are huge, Jan.

[00:14:11] Jan Griffiths: Yeah.

[00:14:11] Kate Vitasek: They're not tiny, right? So they were gonna take six months or more anyway. And so you're already taking that much time, but the process gets you a better result. And that's what makes me so excited is when I see these deals, and we love to do what we call C flips, so they're existing relationships that adversarial, They had to work together anyway. They had a pattern, you know, every two years we went to bid, every five years we're doing a union negotiation. I love to take those and say, "All right, this next time you're gonna negotiate. Let's use a different methodology and you can start to see the before and the after results, not just on the business results, but on the emotional feeling results."

And we do a thing called a Compatibility and Trust Assessment, we like to take that right up front, and it gauges the trust levels before and it gauges the trust levels after and then ongoing. And so, I'll look at, for example, in the HBR article, we talk about Island Health. So the Canadian government, one of the health authorities and their doctors, the hospitalist, they had a 85% negative adjectives to use to describe the relationship.

So we actually have a quantitative score, but it's more of the qualitative score, adversarial, toxic, opaque, bullying. These are real words that people use, and you know, after going through the process, collaborative, win-win, trusting, transparent. That makes people more happy. Don't you wanna — at least I wanna work in an environment that is collaborating transparent, trusting, win-win than adversarial, toxic bullying.

It's super cool to me, that you can take these relationships and change the process for how they get there. It doesn't take any more time on a big deal, right? If I'm going the flea market, I'm never gonna see the guy again. Don't use the Vested Methodology.

But on a deal where the stakes are high, you have repetitive, you're seeing those players again and again. They're your key supply chain partners, your unions. You're not just firing all the union. You gotta deal with them. And so when you have these repetitive relationships, changing the nature and using a more collaborative value creation is game changing.

[00:16:35] Jan Griffiths: But you've gotta come to the table with the right mindset. And I would think that after you've taken a client or — I know that you have courses that you run at the University of Tennessee — after you've taken people through the course or you've taken people through, through a real difficult negotiation and they've come up with a collaborative agreement.

Once they've done it once, like you say, the relationships and the way they feel towards each other, that has fundamentally changed. So the next deal, they're coming at it, the starting point is much higher, right? It can only get better over time, but it's this starting point to get over this idea of I must win. I must use my leverage, and I must win. To get to that mindset of we truly are in this together, we are looking to solve a problem, how do we do it, and as you say, co-create an agreement that gets us there.

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[00:17:53] Kate Vitasek: Yeah, and I love that word co-create because if you're negotiating, your interests aren't aligned, stop and co-create.

[00:18:02] Jan Griffiths: Yeah.

[00:18:02] Kate Vitasek: You asked me when would you ever use power-based things? And so we're working on a couple deals now that are quote monopolies, right? Oh, I don't have any power. It's monopoly, or I've got all the power. It's monopoly. That's like Island Health and the Hospitalist. So it creates transaction cost.

And so if you have a monopoly and you're never gonna see them again, maybe you can get away with it. But in a monopoly situation where you continue to work with those players, you have to change the game because it's creating these transaction costs. And that's what I think people don't understand is the cost — not the hard cost of the price. Yeah, you got the price down, but you created a shading environment. The subtle tit for tat that drives total cost of ownership up. It drives transaction cost up. And that's why we're really trying to educate people to change the game.

And Jan, you mentioned when people come to our class when they do a deal, it's kind of fun because they become groupies, you know? So it's like, wow, I think differently now. I can't go back to the old way. And I say change the world one deal at a time, but unfortunately, there's a lot of people at the top of these big power-based companies, you know, the bigger they are, the bigger the company, typically the older the people are at the helm who have been trained in these older ways.

[00:19:23] Jan Griffiths: Yeah.

[00:19:23] Kate Vitasek: Right? And so, this is why I'm say sometimes you gotta let the dinosaurs die. Young people don't have a problem looking at total cost of ownership. They've studied John Nash's Game Theory. When I went to school, when you went to school, Nash hadn't won his Nobel Prize on game theory and win-win. You know, you set a strategy and you don't waver. And it's when we waver, when we negotiate that you actually deteriorate trust.

And so, now we look at how do you set that strategy? If we say win-win's important, how do we use a process that keeps us from falling back into old ways where we're negotiating and trading off and have concessions, right? Because that act, that process actually creates the distrust that creates the shading. You know, you start to see how that happens.

So, it starts with education, and you know, that's really what we're about is just trying to get people, invite people to come take our classes, read our books. So much of our work is open source. And begin to question, right? Hey, is this power based approach really the right way? Or even is the interest-based approach the right way? Which I love the interest-based approach, but you can get to yes, and in a dynamic world, you're back at the table.

[00:20:41] Jan Griffiths: Yeah.

[00:20:42] Kate Vitasek: it's not that it's not good, it's just a little incomplete because when I'm in an ongoing relationship and I'm in a dynamic world, I'm always continually aligning interest. It's a continual negotiation, not a, get to yes, this deal.

[00:21:00] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, I hear you. Kate, what kills a deal faster, ego or lack of trust?

[00:21:08] Kate Vitasek: Oh, that's a really good question. Well, I think they go hand in hand.

[00:21:12] Jan Griffiths: No, you have to pick one. Come on. If you had to pick one.

[00:21:14] Kate Vitasek: Oh my goodness, I think ego

[00:21:16] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, I do too..

[00:21:17] Kate Vitasek: Because you can educate people that they have, like with island health and the hospital or the, you know, other lots and lots and lots of companies who've taken our compatibility and trust assessment. You can educate people of their lack of trust, which many people don't even know. They kind of, they sense they have a lack of trust, but they don't know why. So then, you can unpack that and help 'em understand how they got to an untrusting relationship, and so now you can help 'em change those behaviors. I can't change someone's ego, and so if you wanna win at all costs, I'm probably not changing you. That's a mindset that you've got that I, maybe education can help you, but an ego kind of not. And so, you know, I would invite people with egos that, you know, and maybe not an ego is bad in all situations, but when it comes to power-based egos and winning at the expense of others.

[00:22:17] Jan Griffiths: That's, you're right.

[00:22:18] Kate Vitasek: It will trigger, it will trigger shading. And this tit for tat behavoir.

[00:22:23] Jan Griffiths: Yeah.

[00:22:23] Kate Vitasek: I mean, you see it going on in the geopolitical space right now with tariffs. And so, oh, here, and we go back and forth and back and forth. I mean, the businesses are going nuts because it's like, what is? Where are we at today? And I just did a session for Customs Broker Association. All these custom brokers, what am I supposed to tell my client today? It's this, or it's this, you know? And I think about, just literally in the news right now, Jan, is the magnet issue.

[00:22:53] Jan Griffiths: Yes.

[00:22:54] Kate Vitasek: I'll call it the magnet issue because, gosh, I'm gonna put all these tariffs on China. Golly gee! Do you realize you asked that we own like all the rare earths for your special magnets that you need for advanced electronics? If you're gonna do this, then I'm gonna not give you some magnets.

[00:23:11] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. Tit for tat, there it goes.

[00:23:13] Kate Vitasek: And there it has. And that's the nature of life, right? You did something I don't like, I'm gonna get even. And so, this is when I can take a step back through transparency. I can look at the facts and information I'll go, "So, Jan, that would be really interesting. You can take that step, but here's what I'm going to do if you take that step. Do you want me to take that step? Then let's solve the problem.

So, what if we could optimize our supply chain? You know what? We need things from China, they need things from us. They want things from us. So, slow down, check your ego at the door, and start optimizing. And then, you start to realize that the best way to optimize is to co-create, to use transparency, to solve the problem in these repetitive high stakes environments. When you're gonna see someone else again, if you're gonna the flea market, go negotiate all day long

[00:24:09] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, I agree. And I gotta admit, I did love going to China back in the day when they had that market. That underground market where you could go and buy stuff for cheap and you'd negotiate, it was kind of a thing. I did enjoy that, you know, for a minute. But that's not how you want to negotiate with a long-term partner or employee or country. Let's face it, or country. You don't wanna use that negotiation style with a country for a trade deal.

One thing that I see playing out with the trade deals, Kate, and obviously you're very, very familiar with the world of supply chain and that's where my background is, you're never gonna get an agreement that dots all the I's and crosses all the T's on every single detail, I understand that. But it seems that sometimes these deals come out and there's a very, very broad framework and not a lot of detail. And as countries are getting into the detail now, we are seeing some disconnects and some back and forth. What are your thoughts on that?

[00:25:07] Kate Vitasek: That's actually the beauty of the Vested Methodology because it's not just the framework of that you have this intent, but you're actually taking it down all the way to the contract clauses

[00:25:16] Jan Griffiths: Oh, okay.

[00:25:17] Kate Vitasek: And so, aligning the details to the intent is huge. Because think about it, we are business people. You know, business people go to dinner, they sit in a comfort room with a whiteboard, and they have this great idea.

[00:25:29] Jan Griffiths: Yeah.

[00:25:29] Kate Vitasek: There are great ideas up here. Oh, win-win, look, we can create value. And then it goes through the procurement process. And then it goes through the legal process. So what they wanted was not what they bought. As I tell people all the times, I know that's what you wanted but don't blame your supplier because that's not what you bought. You bought X. You bought a transaction. I know you wanted an outcome. I know you wanted innovation. I know you wanted collaboration. But you bought this transaction with a, you know, that shifted risk and the suppliers having to come back.

And so we take that intent, that framework. And the parties actually write a formal statement of intent. It's their shared vision, guiding principles, which are six social norms that they commit to. So behaviors that they commit to. And their high level desired outcomes. And then you take that statement of intent and you trickle it down into the way we work, there's five rules and there's 10 contractual elements. And what this means is what we wanted is actually what we bought.

[00:26:32] Jan Griffiths: Yes. Yes. And there is an agreement. Yay.

[00:26:37] Kate Vitasek: Yay. And I always say, if you start the vested process, there's five rules. You know, you start with rule one and you go all the way through. And if you don't have agreement, then go back to your old way. You can go back. But we only twice ever have seen someone not continue with a Vested Methodology. One of the reasons why was, it was an aerospace company and they did work with the supplier. Actually, it was about a billion dollars in revenue and supply chain work that they were doing for this aerospace company. Half of the billion dollar spend was in the defense sector and half was in the commercial sector. And the commercial sector and the defense sector did not have the same mindset of how they wanted to work. The defense sector said, "Hey, we need you. Let's be more collaborative. Let's think win-win," And the supplier created what we call in the Vested lingo language, a guardrail. And so, they said, "I'll be transparent with you, but don't share this with the commercial division because we know they have a hardcore power-based mindset.

[00:27:40] Jan Griffiths: Ah.

[00:27:41] Kate Vitasek: They're gonna. They're gonna take my information and use it against me. And so, the aerospace company couldn't honor the guardrail. And they're like, yeah. They thought they could, but when they went up to try to get firewalls and different stuff, they're like, "Yeah, they're gonna be able to see all this stuff that's transparent, that's gonna help us create a better solution." And so, the supplier said, I can't risk this half a billion dollars. You know, your friends, your brothers over here in the commercial sector are power based and we don't like working with them. And so we have to be power based over there too.

[00:28:16] Jan Griffiths: Oh boy, Kate, we see that played out in automotive with suppliers that have different divisions. We see it playing out with different functions, silos within the automotive industry. So, what I'm hearing from you is that, I'm gonna bring it back to culture. Either you're all in as a company and a culture in this type of collaborative agreement, this style of negotiation, or not.

I wonder how many leaders have sat down with their companies and with their teams and said, "Okay, let's talk about our negotiation style as a company," As a company. Whether it's with labor unions, whether it's indirect suppliers, direct supplies, whoever, but let's talk about it and what are our values as a company, what our cultural values? Who are we? How do we wanna be known? How do we wanna negotiate? I bet you there aren't too many leaders that have actually sat down and had that conversation. Maybe, Kate, just maybe, we have sparked enough interest so that they would have that conversation. What do you think?

[00:29:21] Kate Vitasek: Well, I hope so. I invite people to come to our classes. You know, I have our Collaborative Contracting Class, as well as our Executive Education Class. So, our classes are exclusively Exec. Ed, so they're for grownups who are in real jobs.

[00:29:34] Jan Griffiths: Yeah.

[00:29:34] Kate Vitasek: And so, just come and learn. And if you go, we've heard this by the way, that's hairy fairy. And I'm like, it's not for you then, it's okay. But at least you learned. But what we find is when people, and I won't say your whole company has to go down this path, I would actually argue pilot it. So, don't just say, "One day, I'm gonna change my mindset. My company is gonna have a different philosophy!"

[00:29:58] Jan Griffiths: Yeah.

[00:29:59] Kate Vitasek: You know, P&G has 80,000 suppliers, or GM, How many suppliers do they have? They're probably not all gonna believe them. And so, instead, take one, pilot it, learn the process, learn what's working, how you want to, and then go to another. So, I say change the world one deal at a time, one relationship at a time. Learn those skills, and as you go through the process, people graduate from our program as Certified Deal Architects. So they learn how to architect the deal, where what they wanted is actually what they bought.

So the process matters. Learn the process, learn the tools and tricks, and then go and apply it to your second deal and your third deal and your fourth deal. And then, over time you start to see the success stories. You'll be able to get momentum in your organization to drive the cultural change versus one day just going, "Snap, I'm gonna be value creation."

[00:30:57] Jan Griffiths: I totally agree with you. Now, I have a few short fire questions for you. You ready? I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit you fast. I'm gonna come at you fast. All right, so..

[00:31:07] Kate Vitasek: Alright, we're gonna see. I'm gonna put my thinking cap on.

[00:31:09] Jan Griffiths: Okay.

[00:31:09] Kate Vitasek: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:09] Jan Griffiths: Command and control leadership, dead or alive?

[00:31:12] Kate Vitasek: Dead.

[00:31:12] Jan Griffiths: Dead. Okay.

[00:31:13] Kate Vitasek: Should be dead. It's not dead. It should be dead.

[00:31:17] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. Yes, yes. Very, very true. Okay, finish this sentence. You ready? A great negotiator today must be what?

[00:31:26] Kate Vitasek: A co-creator.

[00:31:27] Jan Griffiths: A co-creator. A co-creator, yes. What's one word that negotiators need to leave behind in negotiation? They can't bring it into the negotiation at all. What's that word?

[00:31:41] Kate Vitasek: Power.

[00:31:42] Jan Griffiths: Power. Yes. 20 years from now, negotiation will be more about blank than blank.

[00:31:50] Kate Vitasek: Value creation versus value exchange or value extraction.

[00:31:57] Jan Griffiths: Yes, there it is. Collaboration in one word.

[00:32:01] Kate Vitasek: Value creation.

[00:32:04] Jan Griffiths: Okay.

[00:32:04] Kate Vitasek: You see the theme here.

[00:32:05] Jan Griffiths: I see the theme. I see the theme. No, I think this has been, this has been great. I think we've really explored the differences and the different negotiation style and where to use them, and it's your choice and what you wanna use.

But bringing it back to the Ford discussion at the beginning of this episode. And this is my message to the auto companies out there, you can work on the technology all day long, if you don't work on the operating systems, the culture, the leadership that binds all of it together, then you are gonna be in the dinosaur category, and we cannot allow that to happen, and the Chinese OEMs will take over the auto industry. It's as simple as that.

So, my message is, "Again, you cannot run a 4K video on a '95 Windows operating system. So what makes you think you can transform this industry using the same operating system that we've had going back to the eighties?"

Kate, closing thoughts for our audience today? If you are listening to this supply chain leaders in the auto industry, executives in the auto industry, listening to this episode, and you wanna leave them with one thought, something they should do moving forward after they listen to this episode, what would that be?

[00:33:24] Kate Vitasek: It's actually a thought that I learned in graduate school. We had executives come in, in residence, and so one of the best lessons, and I've took this forever is pilot. Everything's a pilot, so just try it.

[00:33:38] Jan Griffiths: Yeah.

[00:33:38] Kate Vitasek: You don't have to change every single thing that you're doing, but just give it a try. If you've got a deal that's stuck. If you've a supply chain relationship, if you're stuck with your union, like with Island health and the Hospitalist, learn and try.

[00:33:57] Jan Griffiths: Learn and try.

[00:33:58] Kate Vitasek: You don't have to change it all. Pilot.

[00:34:00] Jan Griffiths: Yeah.

[00:34:01] Kate Vitasek: If it was a pilot, you can always go back.

[00:34:02] Jan Griffiths: Yes, yes, I like that. And I would say open up the dialogue in the discussion about how you do business with your partners and how you negotiate. And with those two things, I will say, Kate Vitasek, thank you so much for joining me.

[00:34:17] Kate Vitasek: Well, thanks for having me. Always fun to banter back and forth and put on our thinking hat and, you know, envision the art of the possible.

[00:34:27] Jan Griffiths: The Art of the Possible. Thank you, Kate.

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