WonderTour

Welcome to Lead Wisely by Wondertor.

Today, we're talking about human machine
interactions and we're doing it through

the lens of Ford versus Ferrari.

This is an awesome film that has humans
working with machines to accomplish these

nearly impossible goals.

Brian, let's start out with a tough
question.

Why do large organizations always seem to
fail to innovate?

Because in Ford versus Ferrari, we see
this Ford Motor Company having to try to

change

to become a racing company, to have a
different persona and identity, but it's a

very challenging thing for them to do.

Yeah, this is a great question.

This touches on a thing we've talked about
a couple of times.

It's almost the definition of a large
successful organization, is that by

definition, an organization that has
become successful, has become as big as a

Ford Motor Company in the 60s, is really
good at something.

And they're not good at something because
they are.

running a bunch of little experiments,
they're good at something we've got a

whole bunch of people with have fairly
standardized processes and they're doing

it at scale very, very well.

The challenge with that, of course, is
that by definition that process tends not

to want to innovate, right?

Especially one of the Ford guy quotes in
here, right?

Is Ford means reliability, that's the Ford
way.

Like these are process phrases and are
kind of one of our running...

comments or jokes on this is that mental
management in a large organization are

like the white blood cells of the
organization.

Their job is to reject change.

They were promoted to their level because
they were successful in whatever the

standard way of doing things is.

And you can't be good at that.

You can't sustain it unless you don't let
things change.

Unless you don't let anything screw up.

The problem, of course, is that when that

way of doing things when that status quo
and that set of processes is starting to

become uncompetitive, it's really hard to
introduce change because you've got an

organization that is designed to reject
it, an organization designed to squash

innovation.

And so it's almost the definition of a
large company is that it's an organization

that has successfully resisted all of the
disruptions that would mess up their

current process.

Yeah, so it's almost like the system is
designed not to be able to change, or at

least that's what large systems becomes.

So as we go forward in this episode, let's
talk about now, how do you overcome that

for your organization?

How do you get past organizational stasis
or organizational drift or these different

things that plague us causing us to have
these static systems that don't allow us

to respond to the needs of the customer?

Right, and so I love this for a leader
tour, right?

Is that we, for a one-year tour, we talk
about leadership archetypes.

And in this movie, we've got Henry Ford
II, the deuce, the boss, the grandson of

Henry Ford, whatever, you know, the guy
who's running the company.

And we have this great moment where he
sort of recognizes that this is not, that

his company's not thriving.

And what we get to watch through the
course of this movie,

is a couple different levels of leadership
working on this innovation challenge.

But at the deuce level, we have the, I'm
the CEO, I have all the resources and all

of the authority, and I have a bunch of
people working for me that are used to

doing things a certain way.

How do you as a leader in that situation
actually support and empower change?

How do you let something happen through
your organization that is very different

than the standard operating procedure?

How do you get permission for it?

How do you get people to actually go do
it?

And how do you?

Keep the organization from killing it.

All these things and more.

Brian, let's hit the intro.

All right, I'm Brian Nutwell.

And we are on a journey to become better
leaders by touring fantastic worlds and

inspiring lore by going on a WONDER Tour.

We connect leadership concepts to story
context because it sticks to our brains

better.

You can find out more at
wondertourpodcast.com.

Yes, you can.

So yeah, let's talk about business
agility.

Let's talk about you're the deuce.

Congratulations, Drew.

You are now the boss of a very large, very
successful organization, and you're

starting to worry that you're falling
behind, that your competitors are eating

your lunch, that the new generation of
customers doesn't love your product as

much as the last generation of customers
does.

So what do you do?

What does the deuce do in this situation?

Yeah, we get this great piece of
storytelling right at the beginning where

he comes out and he shuts off all the
machines or has everybody, it has already

kind of come out into like a town hall
style format and addresses the people.

So as you hear that, that's what we're
going to become.

If we don't change, all of this is going
to cease to exist.

This is so he has the initiative.

He has the knowing that like we have to do
something.

He has that as the top leader of the
company, he has that big.

understanding that things are changing.

You know, the, the voice of the customer
is telling us that our competitors are

superior to us in ways that they haven't
been in the past.

Obviously that's also going to impact us
financially.

It's going to impact every person who
works here, who finds purpose here, who

has relationships here.

What are we going to do differently?

And so he tries to incite people with new
ideas.

He wants radical innovators, basically.

He wants people to step up and say.

this is what I think we should do to
change because he personally isn't at the

level of the information to be able to
know those things.

So yeah, so we get this great, you know,
man comes to my job, my office with an

idea, that man gets to keep his job.

Now we're recording this in 2023, I would
not suggest using the word man in that

phrase if you wanna try this in your
office.

Perhaps it'd be a little bit less, I'm
saying it like, it'd be a little bit less

gender specific and a little bit less
threatening about it, might be a more

modern approach.

But the concept of my door is open to
anybody in this organization who has an

idea how to make us more competitive, how
to make us better.

I want radical innovators to come talk to
me personally as the boss, break the chain

of command, go outside your job
description, tell me what your ideas are.

That's pretty powerful, right?

That is a strong realization from the top,
like, no, I'm serious about this.

To start, I'm not gonna pick the three
people that are already vice presidents

and say, congratulations, you're the new
business innovator.

I'm gonna look for ideas throughout the
organization of any type.

And...

with any luck if you try this in your
organization, you'll have at least one Lee

Iacocca who's plugged into your customers
and who's like, hey, we've got a

generation of 17 year olds with money in
their pockets and they like the Impala a

lot better than they like the Ford product
right now.

We need something for them.

We need to refurbish our image.

I have an idea.

So that's a...

It's a first step, right?

It's a give me some ideas what, which of
these things might make sense, might be

big enough and powerful enough and things
that we could reasonably do.

It's a recognition that we have a problem,
but it's not a solution to the problem.

And at least, like you said, he knows that
he doesn't have the solution today to that

problem and he needs help getting to that
solution.

So in a lot of ways, like you already have
stated, Henry Ford II is not necessarily

the most, like the type of leader that we
look up to on Wander Tour, at least in the

way that he treats people.

But the way that he thinks, he's not that
far off.

He is that type of a visionary leader that
knows we need to go forward, that's trying

to empower people.

He's just doing it in a way that
sometimes, at least in our culture today,

would be taken as like demeaning to
people.

Yeah, so let's keep following the lesson.

So then they do the first thing that a
large organization would reasonably want

to do.

Like, hey, we want a new function.

We've decided the new thing we're going to
have is racing.

What are we going to do?

We're going to spend a bunch of money and
go buy another organization that's good at

racing and just insert them into our
company.

This is a very natural reaction.

It's probably the shortest distance
between two points.

Let's just do an acquisition.

So they try to acquire Ferrari and.

we get to see very skillfully framed
through the cinematography here.

We get to see that there are some pretty
big cultural differences between Ford and

Ferrari.

So to no one's surprise and to the benefit
of the movie, this doesn't work out.

Ferrari throws it back in their face and
is uninterested in being purchased by

Ford.

In the real history, the Fiat purchase
happens later.

It's not quite as dramatic as we see on
the screen, but in practice...

Ford does get extremely offended by their
interactions with Ferrari and decide not

only do they want to win races because
they think it'll be good for Ford, but

because they're personally really wanting
to demonstrate their superiority over this

other company.

So that didn't work.

bit of an emotional piece to it as well
there for sure.

Right.

So, okay, so that didn't work.

We tried to buy it and it didn't and we
couldn't buy innovation.

So now we want to find another way of
getting innovation.

All right, well, can we can we build it?

Can we find some internal people and some
allies and throw a bunch of money at the

problem and create our own racing team,
our own innovation team?

So how does that go?

So of course they go to the people within
the network that they know that

potentially could run a racing team and
one of the people that they just happen to

be aware of is Carroll Shelby who has
already himself won Le Mans, which is the

race that they're trying to win.

So he's one of the first people that they
want to go to and they literally go to him

with a blank check.

And there is a literal aspect to it.

We will pay whatever it takes to beat.

Enzo and to become good at racing.

But there's also this, uh, figurative
piece of it that the old culture just

thinks money is going to buy a win.

Basically like we'll give you any amount
of money.

We just have to win this race.

And one of the immediate things, uh,
feedback that they get from Shelby is.

First thing you have to know is you can't
buy a win at this race.

And he doesn't actually even reveal to
them initially there, you know, what you

actually need.

He says, what does it take to win Le Mans?

And then you just don't, as the audience
and as the Forward Motor Company

representative, you don't get an answer to
that.

And later on, he does come back with that
answer and he says a pure racer, but we'll

talk about that a little bit later.

Right.

And but he does say like, yeah, money will
get you to the green flag, right?

You can build a car.

You can get you can get permission to at
least start the race if you're willing to

stand up a new organization.

You're willing to put the resources into
it if you're willing to empower people to

do some amount of stuff.

And so this is, you know, so OK, so Ford's
willing to take this next step.

All right.

We can't just buy a company.

So now we're going to basically create a
company.

We're going to take an existing small
organization, Shelby American.

We're going to give them enough resources
and support and designers from Ford of

Europe that actually are designing the
race car.

We're going to kind of bash them all
together.

So we're going to find all the moving
pieces we can.

We're going to try to make this race team
and we're going to tell Carol Shelby,

great, you're in charge.

Go make us a race team.

And it's still Ford Motor Company.

So what happens?

The.

so of course they try to put in charge the
business executives who can manage the

program.

And of course, as we talked about in the
first segment, what do those people want

to do?

They want to adhere to the current
processes and standards that exist in the

system.

They want to adhere to the current
cultural norms.

And so they want like a pure hierarchy.

They want to have everything be the
current and old Ford branding.

They are not open to new ideas.

And they think that we should just be able
to lay out a plan and execute it and win

the race.

And so what they do is they enforce to
Carol that they are going to have their

own driver driving the race instead of Ken
Miles, who's this radical innovator.

And of course, what happens is they are
not able to win the race, even though they

had a lot of money and radical ambitions.

Right, and so this is probably a thing
that really happens.

This is certainly a thing that really
happens.

We've both been through this in a large
organization where a large organization

may not recognize which pieces of its
standard operating procedure, which pieces

of its self-image as an organization are
not compatible with the new thing that it

wants to do, right, with the innovation.

So the self-image of Ford means
reliability and Ford means the race driver

standing on the podium

is clean cut and well spoken and gonna
represent Ford really well is a marketing

thing, right?

On one level, the whole thing is a
marketing thing, right?

We want to go racing because we want to
look good on television.

But on the other level, like the clean cut
racer standing in the podium saying nice

things about Ford and being very
professional is only valuable if that

person has won the race.

So you sacrificed the ultimate, the
primary most important goal of we have to

win the race.

for a secondary goal of we have to have
somebody that looks like a Ford person

standing on the podium.

And they just confuse those two things.

And as a result, they don't fully commit
to the primary goal.

You can argue whether or not they would
have run the race anyway with reliability

problems, yada, yada.

This is a movie, so they're gonna make it
a little bit more dramatic.

But this is a real thing, right?

Large organizations cannot help
themselves.

The white blood cells are gonna try to
either reject or absorb the change.

You're like, okay, fine, we're doing this,
then we're gonna do it the forward way.

And you may not recognize as the new thing
is happening, it will feel risky, it will

feel alien, it will feel bad, it will feel
scary, it will feel threatening to your

job, it will feel threatening to your
sense as a manager.

If you're one of these other managers,
you're gonna feel like, oh, this is not

right, this is not the way we do things
around here.

And this is a very natural thing that
happens.

And so we see...

We see the great example here.

Great, they don't win the race.

It doesn't, they confused their process
with the ultimate goal.

And so they didn't, the first round isn't
successful.

So now back to the deuce.

So now you're the boss, you failed, you're
upset that you failed.

You're like, all right, this didn't work.

I threw a bunch of money, I gave you all
this stuff.

Like, why didn't it work?

And he's on the verge of pulling the plug
on the whole thing.

Like he's now like, and now I'm more
embarrassed than I was and I've spent a

whole bunch of money and Ford doesn't look
any better.

Like, why should I keep going?

and

Carol talks him back into it.

And so he says, all right, great, go to
war.

You only report to me, everything is fine.

Go back to do the whole thing.

But inevitably the same thing happens
again.

Comes back around, the Deuce is flying
back out to visit Shelby American.

He's bringing all the Ford executives.

They're gonna tell Carol that he's not
involved anymore.

So let's lead us up to our mountaintop
moment where our magnanimous leader of the

day, Henry Ford II, the Deuce.

is coming to kill Carroll Shelby that he's
not in charge again and coming to

basically hamstring and handicap the team
again.

What happens?

Yeah, so on Wander Tour, we believe that
we're on a journey and each episode is a

journey.

So when we're on this journey, it can kind
of be like a hike.

Sometimes you're going to see some vista,
you're going to see some lake, some peak.

So this is why we call it the mountaintop
moment of the episode.

It's where we can kind of like get that
vantage point to see the theme that we're

looking at, to see it in practice in terms
of a actual scene in our movie that we're

drawing from.

So today.

Our moment is when we have Carol Shelby.

He realizes that there's a threat
immediately as soon as they arrive.

He has, he basically is about to get boxed
out of being able to complete the mission.

And his response to that is first he locks
Leon, the Ford executive in his office,

and then he runs outside and he takes the
deuce into the...

the GT40 that they're working on, and then
he gives him that experience of driving.

And it's all in this one moment, he's
taking him up to like super high speeds,

he's flying in between barrels and taking
tight turns.

And at the end, you have this really
visceral experience that the deuce is

going through where he's like, I never
realized that this is what racing was

actually like.

Why?

Because he was always just watching it.

He was watching somebody else fly by, but
when you're actually in the car, when

you're experiencing the technology for
yourself, it's a whole lot different than

just developing the technology.

So I think what he realizes is, we need to
trust the people who know about the

experience, not just the people who know
about the engineering and the technology.

We can have the best engineers in
technology folks, but if we don't have the

best driver who knows how to work the
experience of the course.

with the technology we're developing, how
are we possibly going to win?

And so of course he ends up deciding to
work with Carol and work with Ken Miles,

but he only does it under one condition
and it's a stake that they make.

And of course we have our innovator in
Carol who's like, I will stake my entire

company on Ken Miles winning the Daytona
500.

If he can win this next race.

Like you let him drive Lamans.

If not, you can have my entire company.

Big, big stakes there.

Yeah, yeah.

So this is, this is a really cool
leadership moment for the deuce here.

Like he's sitting in the car and this is
the first time in this whole sequence for

as sincere as he is about wanting to
rescue his company for as sincere as he is

about racing being the thing that's going
to revitalize their fortunes for as

sincere as he is about empowering people.

Right.

Part of the reason he keeps falling back
into the old Ford ways is he doesn't

actually get it.

He doesn't actually understand how
different this form of

car engineering is from what he's familiar
with, right?

He's just never gotten in the chair.

He's never really tried to get it.

And so once he gets down into it and he
gets it, he's like, oh, like, he

understands how his, the normal Ford
executives, just they don't live in this

world.

They don't understand what it takes to
succeed here.

He understands how different it is from
the domain that he's used to playing with.

So, so yeah, so he's like, yay.

So I.

I now understand that I need to empower
the very best people who really love this

stuff, but how do I tell for sure how
committed they are?

How do I tell for sure that they're not
just talking a big game, that they're

actually willing to do what it takes to
win this?

He extracts a pretty dramatic concession.

This guy is so serious about winning Le
Mans that he's willing to risk his entire

company on

just getting the right driver in the car.

Like not even the whole winning the Le
Mans thing.

He's like, I'm willing to risk my whole
company just so you can let Ken Miles be

our primary driver.

Like that's a level of commitment that
tells me that this person is a truly

committed innovator.

That this person is like putting it all on
the line for this goal that we are

perfectly aligned.

Cause I'm putting my company on the line,
like Ford Motor Company's reputation.

I'm putting it, I'm tying it to this
activity.

You should be at least that committed.

And so that is an interesting moment.

It's an interesting leadership moment for
him where he realizes that he's gonna have

to change his company or change his
operation more than he thought.

And he also realizes kind of, he's
starting to sense like what, does this

person have the level of commitment to
really get done what I think we need?

And so that's pretty cool.

together here, I think, with a little bit
of our business agility theme.

So I want to use this quote from Scaled
Agile.

In today's digital economy, the only truly
sustainable competitive advantage is the

speed at which an organization can sense
and respond to the needs of its customers.

Its strength is its ability to deliver
value in the shortest sustainable lead

time, to evolve and implement new
strategies quickly, and to reorganize to

address emerging opportunities better.

is just as true in Ford versus Ferrari,
almost as it is today.

It might not be a digital economy for them
back then, but in that emerging tech world

and the changing experiences of the driver
that they're talking about here, how are

they going to be able to change, right?

It's to be able to follow the needs of the
customers.

And if you're still building for the old
reliable,

hey, we just need to be able to turn out
as many of these things as possible at as

low of a cost as possible, which was what
made Ford great.

Then you're not going to be following the
needs of the changing market because the

market always seems to change.

You never have a competitive advantage for
forever.

It's always going to erode and a new one
will need to be developed.

So really is the only true competitive
advantage as this quote, uh, articulates

pretty well, being able to sense and
respond to the needs of your customers.

And in this situation,

Right?

As they're trying to change, the way to do
that is to put somebody who actually

understands what the experience needs to
be inside of the car.

Don't put the person who knows the old
experience and is really good at making

and developing the old experience, put the
new person in there, put Carol in charge,

the person who, who is passionate about
paving a new road towards a new type of

race car, let's get him out there and
let's give him a chance.

Yeah, yeah, because we talk about these,
the other kinds of competitive advantages,

right?

The competitive advantage of I have better
technology or I have a better product or I

have a really great production process,
right?

Or I have, you know, the best sales
organization in the world.

These are legitimate competitive
advantages, but they aren't necessarily

sustainable because they're attached to,
they're relatively static, right?

The sustainable competitive advantage is
being able to continue to evolve.

the sustainable committed advantage is
being able to reorganize, to address

emerging opportunities better, like your
quote says, right?

And I love that they were at the speed,
right?

Racing is a very easy to understand
example of an organizational challenge.

Because it forces you to do, you know, it
forces you to have humans doing things and

machines doing things in ways that
interact nicely with each other.

It forces you to be ready.

When the starting gun goes off, nobody
cares.

Like if you have the perfect race car five
minutes after the race started, it doesn't

help you very much.

So all of these things, as an analogy, it
works really well because it's a very

clearly framed problem.

But it also is a problem that forces a lot
of these other organizational behaviors,

especially in the context of an engineer
organization.

Like a competition will force your
organization to get better or it will

expose how good it is at evolving, at
competing.

And so it highlights this organizational
agility.

And it definitely, if you don't have it,
then these things will show them very

quickly.

Yeah, and you can't have organizational
agility and you can't move in these quick

iterations and bursts.

And we'll talk about this more in our next
episode, but without empowerment, without

bringing the decision-making to the level
of the people that have the information,

right?

The executive for the Ford Motor Company
doesn't have the right information to be

able to design and implement an incredible
racing team.

They need to hand off.

And you see so many like funny over the
top.

things about that.

Oh, they control the RPMs even in the
vehicles in the race.

You have that like amazing hubris of the
driver to Ermin of the executive to giving

the interview with the Daytona saying
like, oh yeah, we control everything that

these people are doing out there.

We are the ones responsible for their
success.

It's like, no, you aren't.

Yeah, yeah, that's so let's talk about
kind of how what does this look like in

practice, right?

What is it?

You know, what is it?

What does it look like when it's
successful in practice?

What does it look like when it's not
successful in practice?

So the example that we were talking about
earlier that came to my mind was the sort

of the counter example that how bad can it
get if you're not agile?

If you're not organizationally adapting is
the U.S.

government military product development
process.

So for developing a new aircraft carrier,
a new a new.

plane or satellite or something like that,
is legendarily expensive and slow and has

19 levels of subcontractors to it.

So I actually read a report about this a
couple years ago.

I was involved in a product development
consulting project where about 30 years

ago, the government was concerned that the
products were delayed and they were

getting very expensive and they would get
to the end and they would find out that

they wouldn't work.

She's like, all right, so they looked at
the industry and said, we're gonna

introduce a stage gate process where we're
gonna check pretty early on if we've got

everything going reasonably well before we
give you any more money.

So we won't just keep throwing money at
you for five or 10 years.

You know, you've got a couple of years
worth of, you know, getting to the

prototype stage and then you have to pass
all of these requirements.

You have to pass this gate before you can
go to the next stage.

So they did that.

So fast forward a couple of decades and
what does that turn into?

Well, the stage gate process itself is now
a cottage industry.

where it takes a year and a half just to
make the documents to be able to pass the

stage gate, even once your aircraft
carrier plane or whatever is ready to be

evaluated.

And now you're spending millions and
millions of dollars on creating documents

for this report and it's added more and
more time and you're getting farther and

farther behind.

And what's happening now is that the
technology that you started with is

becoming increasingly obsolete.

You made decisions, you passed your stage
gates six years ago, two gates ago.

But you can't even buy those parts
anymore, right?

Because that's not the current technology.

And it just gets worse and worse, right?

So investing in agility is the only way to
stay on top of this kind of constant

change.

And it doesn't mean it's easy.

It doesn't mean that big organizations
will naturally just thrive in this new

world.

But that sense of like, oh, we're gonna
lock in the process and avoid messing up

is 100% guaranteed to...

become out of date very quickly.

It's 100% guaranteed to close off
opportunities to make something better.

Yeah, and that's generally the type of
solution that the current system proposes.

This is what we have to be very, very
careful of.

And this is where top leaders do have the
responsibility in terms of when your

organization is making a shift.

We have to be, let's go back to what we
said before on, hey, we need to identify

the pieces of our current self that are
not compatible with this vision of our

future self.

So the current system, how many times have
you seen this, Brian?

You have an issue.

It hits the customer or whatever.

It hits the metrics.

And somebody gets tasked with making a
countermeasure.

And of course, what type of countermeasure
does a white blood cell try to create?

It tries to create a countermeasure to
force everything back into the current

system when the current system was what
created that defect in the first place.

So all you end up doing is creating layers
of process on top of layers of process and

forgetting what your organizational
purpose and your mission actually was.

Now, like you said, the mission is to get
past the stage gate.

But why do we have to get past the stage
gate?

What value does it provide for us to get
past the stage gate?

We have to constantly ask ourselves things
like that.

What value does this provide?

Is this who we want to be as an
organization?

If we don't second guess ourselves
constantly on those sort of things, are we

actually adhering to our mission?

Then it's very easy to take that higher
purpose that you had initially, your first

goal, and your primary goal, and
accidentally drift away and replace it

with something like, oh, our goal is to
get through these 23 stage gates.

Yeah, and so we got one of these, we
actually got the explicit analogy for this

in this movie, right?

At one of their summit meetings when Carol
has to talk Henry Ford into continuing the

race team, right?

He uses the, hey, look out at these
factories, these used to build B-29

bombers or something in World War II.

I want you to go to war.

Now, realistically speaking, no human
should ever want to actually go to war.

This is a terrible idea.

But as an analogy of like, make the goal
the most important thing, right?

And subordinate everything else to that.

you know, for a race team or anything
else.

Yeah.

If your job is to build bombers, then the
goal is not to pass the stage gaze, the

goal is to have, you know, the goal is to
have defense technology.

Just be able to have things that will fly
around in the air.

So.

The goal really is to protect your humans,
right?

To give your humans a good life to live.

with as quickly as possible, or however
you want to phrase it.

So that's...

that organizational clarity is really
important.

So I think we're getting into the key
takeaways here.

Like what should we learn from the Deuce's
experience of leadership and what he

demonstrate from the top of Ford Motor
Company in this movie, right?

So one of those things is definitely the
sense of like, what actually is the goal?

Like you identified the problem, we're
stale, we're gonna go out of business,

we're not competitive.

Okay, great, what's the goal?

What are you trying to accomplish that
will help you solve that problem?

And if the goal is we have to win Lamans
convincingly, whatever, a crush for our,

you're going to demonstrate our technology
support, then other goals have to be

subordinated to that one.

Right.

The we're going to look good, but the
standing on the podium, talking to the

microphone is important, but it's not more
important than that.

You can't have the one without the other.

So subordinating the goals to the primary
goal and getting everybody on board with

that all the way up and down the
organization.

is one of the most important things that
the top-level leaders can do.

You're not going to drive the car, you're
not going to engineer the car, you're not

going to engineer the brake swap system.

You don't even know that that's a thing,
right?

But you can make sure that those people
have enough authority to do it.

Yeah, I think number two is tech is not a
sustainable competitive advantage.

We can't assume that what we're currently
doing in terms of processor technology is

going to continue to be an advantage in
the future.

The only competitive advantage that is to
sustainable is to have an organization

that is quickly responding to the needs of
emerging kind of customer experiences,

changes in the world and the markets.

Exactly.

And at the beginning of the movie, that's
how Ferrari is portrayed, right?

Ferrari wins Le Mans every year, because
every year their cars get faster and

faster, and every year they learn more
stuff, and they can just keep doing it,

right?

That's the model that they're trying to
accomplish from within this behemoth of a

Ford Motor Company.

And then I think we kind of hit on it a
little bit, but the idea of pushing the

decisions down to the lowest possible
level is required.

And then, I don't know, got any others for
takeaways?

Yeah, I think the one other takeaway maybe
is with, for the deuce specifically, for

him, like you have to be, it's the table
stakes type of a thing, right?

You have to be willing to empower, to be
able to get through a transformation, you

have to be willing to empower the type of
people that the organization might not

normally like, because the organization,
those are the people that are gonna shake

up the system.

And one way to do that, it's just a
technique and a tactic, is you can...

Those people generally are willing to
stake things because they believe in what

they're doing and they're gonna work hard
to achieve them.

So using a stake model is like a kind of a
win-win.

Again, not the only model to get your
radical innovators working on things and

going in a direction, but it's one
technique that you can use to give them an

opportunity to innovate without creating
too much stress on the current

organization.

Well, it's a way to tell, it's a way to
sense whether the innovators are really

committed, right?

And, you know, so giving them a possible
risk or reward is definitely, you know,

proportional to the challenge that you've
given them.

But then giving them air cover, like,
okay, right, fine, you guys get to make

the decisions, like, you know, so I love
that.

The only other thing I would add really is
just the, you know, from the Deuce

example, right, is get in the car, like
you don't have to live there.

Don't pretend that you're going to be
leading the innovation, but.

Do your best to understand how this new
thing is different than the thing that you

already do.

Awesome, I think we wrap it up there,
Brian.

This has been great as always.

Looking forward to part two.

Yeah, so we spent time talking about the
top down innovation challenge in this

episode.

What did Henry Ford have to do to enable
innovators to go in Lamans in his

organization?

We're going to look at it from bottom up
next time.

What if you're Carol Shelby?

What does it take to run that crazy
radical organization?

What does it take to go after that goal?

What does it take to manage a difficult
personality like a Ken Miles if they

happen to be the person that you really
need?

All right, so Brian, you wanna bring us
home here?

I think that's it for this week, so thanks
again for joining us as everyone here on

Wonder Tour, and we're looking forward to
having you with us again next week.

In the meantime, just remember, as always,
Character is Destiny.