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Everyone wants to know about Amazon. Its ultra-fast, customer-centric culture couldn’t be more different from traditional automotive, but in the age of software-defined vehicles, leveraging cloud technology is vital for OEMs.

Wendy Bauer has a strong background in traditional automotive and currently serves as the general manager of Amazon Web Services (AWS) for automotive and manufacturing. AWS helps companies operate more efficiently and better understand their customers’ needs. Yet despite the limitless capabilities, there are often challenges in bringing enterprise cloud computing to the auto industry.

“These two worlds are colliding in many ways,” says Wendy, “but they talk past each other — often. I see it every day.”

To remove the obstacles, companies need a culture of innovation. It’s more than just cloud computing or performance diagnostics. Partnering with tech companies is a strategic decision that requires enterprise-level buy-in. From rethinking workflows to creating top-down changes in the corporate mindset, automotive leaders can unlock the potential of a full-scale digital transformation.

Wendy joins the Automotive Leaders Podcast to share more about what’s possible with Amazon Web Services. Jan presses for details about how OEMs can accelerate forward to prioritize big data. These aren’t far-fetched, futuristic ideas. But for change to happen, companies need to embrace it.

Themes discussed in this episode:

●      How Amazon Web Services can help the automotive industry

●      Why OEMs need big data to stay competitive in today’s market

●      The steps involved for an OEM to purchase cloud services

●      Why do so many companies struggle to implement enterprise-level solutions

●      The importance of failure in a culture of innovation

●      Listening skills as the key to open communication

●      The mindset required to maximize the potential of cloud technology

Guest: Wendy Bauer

What she does: Following a successful career in the auto industry, Wendy has worked with Amazon Web Services since 2019. She currently serves as the general manager for automotive and manufacturing, where she helps automotive companies leverage data and cloud-based technology to develop new products and work more efficiently.

 On leadership: “[Listening] can’t be understated … we will far sub-optimize what is possible with our organizations as leaders if we don't listen more than then we speak.”

Episode Highlights

Timestamped inflection points from the show

[0:58] Ask Alexa: Everyone knows about Amazon’s fast delivery speeds and home devices, but what are they doing in auto? Wendy describes the mission of Amazon Web Services for automotive.

 [3:48] Put simply: What does “leveraging cloud-based IT capabilities to maximize value” really mean? Wendy explains how Amazon collects data to help OEMs understand their customers’ needs.

 [6:03] Problem solving for optimization: Many automotive companies recognize the strategic decision of partnering with technology companies. Jan and Wendy discuss how OEMs purchase cloud services.

 [9:05] Speaking the same language: The tech and automotive worlds often talk past each other. What does it take to bridge the gap in communication? Wendy gives an example.

 [14:04] The speed of innovation: Wendy shares the difference between a one-way door and a two-way door — a mental model for implementing new ideas.

[16:59] Advice for auto industry leaders: How can leaders create space to fail and a culture of innovation? Jan and Wendy discuss the importance of different perspectives.

 [22:22] Building the ecosystem: The conversation turns to the future implications of software-defined vehicles. How will they affect the business model of OEMs?

[27:52] 21 traits: Of Jan’s 21 traits of authentic leadership, Wendy chooses trust and listening skills. She says that in complex business dealings, partnering is an art form. You can’t play the “blame game.”

 [36:17] Get in the boat: Jan asks about the fun stuff. Wendy brags about her team and shares her leadership secret for how they work so well together.

[42:31] Closing comments: Wendy challenges automotive leaders to challenge their understanding of what is truly possible.

Top quotes

[12:34] Wendy: “When you start to talk about technology transformation, generally things that are very valuable at an enterprise level and don't fit squarely into a bucket … technology is one variable. There's culture, there's [the] business process, there's data flow — there are so many layers to this onion.”

 [17:02] Jan: “In a lot of Tier 1 [companies] out there, the CEO will talk about innovation, and then he'll look at his VP of engineering or technology and go, ‘You’ve got that on your agenda for this year.’ And it's like, no, wait a minute — slow down. Innovation is part of the culture. It's not a thing that somebody does.”

 [30:23] Wendy: “I can't underscore the trust piece [enough]. Every minute of every day in

every conversation … in the speed that we're moving, [with] the complexity of the problems that have to be solved and the opportunities that we all have in working together, that single thread of trust just has to be there, or you not going to get anywhere.”

[38:19] Wendy: “At one of my employers along the way, I learned this notion of bad news first. Go solve it. It's not about blame. It's about making that constant improvement on behalf of the customer. I want to know what's wrong because we want to get better.”

[44:28] Wendy: “There’s such an opportunity to really advance our understanding of what is possible and what is here [with digital transformation]. It is not far away.”

[Transcript]

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.

Don't know about you, but I'm intrigued with Amazon. Amazon seems to be just about everywhere in my life. Alexa wakes me up in the morning. Amazon packages arrive on my doorstep and I watch Amazon Prime from time to time. What I'm really interested in is the culture. This company that puts the customer front and center that seems to understand technology far better than most, and seems to operate with speed and agility. And just when we think we couldn't get things any faster, they go and raise the bar again. I want to know what they're doing in automotive, don't you? And I want to know how the culture at Amazon compares with our more traditional automotive culture. And today, we're going to find out we're going to meet Wendy Bauer. Wendy is the general manager for Amazon Web Services, Automotive and Manufacturing. She has a stellar career in traditional auto, but also understands the tech space. Wendy, welcome to the show.

It's great to be here with you today. Thanks for having me.

Wendy. Wendy. Wow, what a career you have had in our beloved automotive industry. You've worked for General Motors, Denso, Eaton, Delphi, Microsoft, and now Amazon.

It's surely been exciting.

Everybody wants to know about Amazon. We've got Amazon in our homes. It's infiltrating our life everywhere. But you are responsible for Amazon Web Services for automotive. So come on, let's go right in tell us. What's that all about? What is Amazon doing in automotive, Wendy?

Sure. So, AWS for those of the industry that may not be familiar with it, it's the cloud technology arm of Amazon. I have the luxury and privilege of leading our automotive and manufacturing sectors around the world. What that means and how I spend each of my days is working with our great automotive customers, whether it's OEMs, tiers, auto tech, suppliers, or even other partners in the industry, to think about how to leverage data and cloud based technology capabilities to really drive and accelerate their transformation that can be and how we develop products and vehicle innovation. That can mean how we are transforming and making the factory floor more efficient. But it's leveraging cloud based IT capabilities to really maximize the value of what we understand from data and to really move that forward.

And that sounds great. But I don't really know what that means. Because I don't I'm not in that space. So, for those of us who have come up through the ranks and traditional auto, dial it back a little bit for us, would you put it in simple terms, what do you do at an OEM?

Well, I think this the simple way that I would break it down, let me let me just talk about cloud services that may or may not be familiar with it. Cloud capabilities really is an on demand, what you might traditionally think of as IT services, simple compute and storage. But of course, the world has evolved. New technology capabilities that you may often hear of may not really understand what they mean is IOT services, analytics, machine learning. All of these great capabilities, help us understand data, manage data, connect things around the world so that we can get data and intelligence out of it. AWS, like other cloud providers in the industry, provide those technology services that really enable you to manage data, unmock data, get the insights out of it connects things and so on and so forth. But it really also boils down to some of what most people might be most familiar with is the basic storage and compute you also have to start there to. To answer your question about what we're doing with automakers, let's take a simple OEM. 90% approximately of cars running around the roads today are connected in some form. If you think of a car and the ability to connect it, you have to connect it with something. So, capabilities like IOT are foundational. But then of course, you're trying to understand, you don't connect things just to connect them, right? You want to understand what's going on with them, get data off them better understand your customers. And so technology that helps you take data off the vehicle, how you manage it, how you get insights from it, really, we offer those services to our customers, so they can can really learn and determine what services and offerings they want to put back into the car from a feature perspective.

Not too long ago, there was no need for this whatsoever. Because we the car wasn't defined by software. Now we look at a car, and we're starting to make our buying decisions based on software capability. And that's a huge switch from buying a car based on mechanical capability, I'd never really thought about the fact that you're going to need this huge amount of cloud storage to manage all of that. That's got to be a huge switch too in terms of the way OEMs purchase a service like yours.

That is true. And we see it and have those conversations. As you can imagine the auto industry, for those that have been in it for many, many years, and very understandably, are automotive customers really want to understand, what am I paying for what business value was driving? What is it costing me? How am I ensuring it's optimized, right? If you've been in the traditional supply base, you know, we were all accustomed to this notion of price downs and continuous improvement. It's no different when you think of capabilities like Cloud, and we work hard every single day to continue to drive those efficiencies and optimizations for customers. But of course, we have to really work hard and collaborate with customers to know what their outcome goal is how to leverage capabilities to really optimize the design, if you will, to get not only the outcome that they want, but in the most effective way. And that really triggers a different kind of engagement and different kinds of dialogue really problem solving together for optimization. And I think in the automotive industry, the engineering disciplines have been very accustomed to doing that, right? They design in a very collaborative way with the industry supply base. So that comes very natural in areas like engineering, when you start to go outside of those areas and get into factory floor, you're trying to leverage technology, right? It might be a different way than then the companies have traditionally bought or had to think or even develop their own business cases, when you think about is the action that I'm driving really gonna drive the right outcome. And is it worth the money to be spent.

We'd think from an OEM perspective and picking the right cloud provider for who want of a better term is a pretty significant decision, because they're going to be into your business, not only at the vehicle level, but all the way through your business. Is that right?

Yes, partnering with technology companies is a very strategic decision that we see more and more companies and how they think about it, right? This is gone in many cases are the days of just give me a little more storage or compute. And I just want my storage and compute and you can go away. It's really a different kind of mindset that we see many companies in the automotive industry or manufacturing sectors more broadly and in many other industries, recognize the importance of it being a true strategic decision at a board level in many cases on how are they leveraging cloud technologies for what do they have the right partner? How does that look across the enterprise, not just in one piece of the business?

And of course, you're uniquely qualified to handle that discussion. Because of your background. You have a background in traditional auto and you have a background in technology. Amazon didn't know anything about automotive, their tech company, right? So they didn't know anything about auto. Let's start there. How do you teach Amazon about auto? We're gonna get to how you teach auto about tech with Amazon. But how do you teach Amazon about auto? How do you manage that balance? Because you've got two vastly different cultures that you're dealing with. Tell us about that.

Yeah. It's been a fun journey. If I if I go back to just just independent of where I work to jumping from the automotive side over into the tech side, if you will. My quickest observation was bow these two worlds they are colliding in many ways, but they talk past each other. Often. I see it every day. I see it in many conversations. And I think over the last seven years that I've, quote unquote, been on the tech side of the world, I've witnessed firsthand this, you know, passing in the conversations where you don't you really recognize very quickly, each party doesn't understand what the other saying. And so you've I've been really focused on tuning into tilt seeking for that looking for that, not only in conversations with customers, but also even in my own organization in in thinking about how that requires a different mental model around, hiring and skilling, and how do you continue to build the skills where you need to grow. And what are the right skills that collectively it takes to really come together for this transformation. And the customer side, it also requires that, that you really demonstrate listening and probing and diving deep and absolutely do anything but rushing in assuming you know the answer of how things are going to work or how they're going to play out. And so it requires a very different striking the right balance of, I have a point of view because of experiences that we have. But I want to understand your environment, or the why or the you know, and really working to bridge two worlds together. And so it's as much of an art and in how you do that and relationship build, and the importance of really gaining trust and earning trust in that process. Because without that trust, you can't bring these two worlds together in a very effective manner. And so there's a lot in terms of how you operate internally, externally build skills, engage. But even the day to day in daily conversations is super important.

Can you give us an example, you know, you talked about talking past each other? Can you give us an example of that? Just give us a flavor of what that means.

I think one of the classic examples that I've observed over the years, and again, I understand it, right, coming from the automotive industry and working in OEMs, and tiers and understanding sourcing cycles and delivery of in product development, and how companies do budgeting. And one of the observations that I've had is, like many companies, it's not automotive alone, I see it in a lot of our manufacturing sector companies more broadly as well. But how you do procurement and sourcing and each function gets their own budget, in like every every good company, you want accountability for budgets and deliver on results and operating within your budget. When you start to talk about technology transformation, generally things that are very valuable at an enterprise level, don't fit squarely into a bucket, like a budget into a bucket into an isolated bucket. Right. And so how you go in and go deep on a problem to talk about a value statement and build a business case, think about what you're really trying to solve and the role that technology plays in that. But technology is one variable. There's culture, there's business process, there's data flow, there's, there's so many layers to this onion. And then you get into conversations, depending on the customer persona you're speaking to. You can walk into one customer talk to 10 different people and get 10 different answers of what's the priority. Or you go over here and someone says you're saving money, but I go over here and they're telling me it's it's costing money, right? And so how do you bring together this enterprise view of really what you're working towards, in doing what we call working backwards from like, what am I here to solve? Who are all the stakeholders? How do I ringfence this broader thing? Rather than looking at everything in such myopic little, little views? Again, it comes back to the to the art in really thinking how do you navigate companies earn trust, dive deep, get into the details, but really move forward? Because we also have to move with speed?

Yes, well, Amazon is a company that's known for moving at speed. Tell us about the Amazon culture as a whole.

I'll tell you a few things that really resonate with me that were just stood out from my decades now of time in the auto and tech sector. I think one of the things that has really landed with me that I always will think about every single day speed, speed, speed and speed of innovation, and really starting to embrace what that really means and this notion of of kind of what we talked about inside of Amazon of one way and two way doors. How do you know when you're going to create a one way door where if you move forward with speed and you don't have it right that you can't walk backwards from that decision versus a two way door? I might be right. If I am wrong, if I'm not right, let's say I'm not right, like really thinking through what's the so, why didn't out, what's the impact? And, can I recover from that, and is that a risk I'm willing to take? Simple little methodologies or tactics like this are mental models, when you start to really embrace them and understand them and get structured and how you think about it. That's such a simple concept. But it's such a powerful one. And so the notion of kindness speed, while being disciplined and focused, and that you can do all of those at once, is probably one of the biggest things that I've that's really stood out to me of all the places I've experienced working that you can move in a very focused, customer driven way, with a sustainable business that really is around speed of innovation and being willing to fail and still move past a fast in that process. At the same time, I think also this notion of speed, for some, you can also feel a little bit out of control, right? It can give you that sense of feeling, or I've worked in many companies that are extremely structured and disciplined in their process and very hierarchical. That's not how how we operate, it's very much about speed, it's around, go to the source of where you can get your problem solved, isn't focused on like hierarchy, it's a very much what we call escalation culture, it's operate in the best interest of the customer move speed and get to that decision maker immediately, even if that means you're jumping above layers, because we all understand that we're working on the behalf of our customers to do the right thing. So if you've been in the automotive industry, in places that I may have worked in, over my past career, those are not things that you would find in those environments. So it's just different. And sometimes you find they make people uncomfortable. Other times you really learn to embrace them for the good that you see it drive. And so, definitely as a different culture, a different way of working.

I love that innovation mindset. And you know, Wendy as well as I do in a lot of tier ones out there. The CEO will talk about innovation, and then he'll look at his VP of engineering or technology and go you got that on your agenda for this year. Okay, good. Next, and it's like, what, no, wait a minute, slow down. Innovation is part of the culture. It's not a thing that somebody does, it's a culture. And you talked about this risk taking environment. I mean, you cannot have fear of failure, if you're trying to nurture an innovative culture. So knowing what you know, it's not like you started at Amazon yesterday, you've been there for over three years, you're very successful in it, you know, traditional automotive culture. I'm very interested to know, what advice would you give to tier ones out there to help them nurture a more innovative culture?

To me, it's a culture that starts at the top and giving permission, and it's, it's giving permission, but it starts at the top. And it starts with the leader at the top of the organization to create the space to be innovative, create the space to fail, create the space to say, okay, it failed, what did we learn? Okay, now, now, what would we do next? And while that's easy to say, I think sometimes it's probably fair to assume that oftentimes, historically, companies in the industry may struggle with the implementation of that notion. But it starts from the leadership, and it starts around creating and being intentional to give that space and how are you going to create the culture, also recognizing it's not putting a time slot on your Outlook calendar for one hour, here's my innovation window, I'm gonna be innovative in this hour. It's breathing the culture in it's bringing in people that think different than you that have had different perspectives. You don't want someone to tell you what you want to hear you want them to tell you why your assumption is wrong, and learning to listen. So it's very much a culture. I would say in that the role that I have in working with so many awesome OEM customers and tier one customers as well. I would say we're seeing places in the industry that are very much making, making progress on this and being open to innovate and doing different ways. Having great dialogue around what does this mean for my employee base in terms of skills that are required? When you write the job description of the of the past and all the requirements you had to have and the skills and experiences? Maybe the job descriptions of tomorrow, look different? And leaders are starting to really think through what are the different skills, what should someone have come from and it's not necessarily work in Company X, Y, and Z and roles with titles A, B and C. It's how they think, how they they work, how they show up, how they've led teams differently the kinds of experiences they've had in building software and, and how they've operated closer to the customer, maybe in terms of this notion of as you think about software defined vehicles and software development, it creates an opportunity to be closer to your customers and have these closed loop circles, if you will, of quick Insights, quick, quick innovation, push it back out, right? That requires your your setup your tools, your your operating environments, to be different. It also requires leaders to not assume what you put on the chart today is the five tasks I'm going to go do. And now next week, I want to see the progress on your five tasks, maybe the five tasks are different. And there could be a very good reason why is much as it is around mindset and culture, it has to be fostered with how you work, the tools, the space, the embracing that you will fail. But again, not assuming that that doesn't mean you're not operating to a strategy of where you're trying to go.

And I agree with you it, it truly does start at the top with the leader, you cannot say that you want an innovative culture one day, and then the next day, talk about how tough you are and how you're going to fire a guy because he screwed up, because you want to show everybody around that table how tough you are. And that you want people to know that if they don't perform exactly the way you want to perform, that they're out of there. That's sometimes seen as a bit of a badge of honor, right? That that's how you need to operate in in traditional automotive and those days are gone. There's still a few people out there, they might even be listen to the podcast. I don't know, that think that that mindset is the mindset to have because it's all about driving results. Yes, it's about getting results, but it's about getting results a different way.

100% And how do you know you're measuring the right thing? And I think one of the observations I have most is how do you measure and quantify innovation? Right? You can't put your finger on necessarily the dollar today. So how do you know you're doing the right things? And I see that for a lot of companies, there's a lot of dialogue, and that that I get to have the opportunity to be part of to think through.

Talking about innovation. You recently were the recipient of the Motor Trend Group Software Defined Vehicle Innovator Leader Award. Wow, that's a lot of words in that title. What's that all about?

Yeah, so that was a super big honor. On behalf of the work my entire organization has been so focused on for the last few years. Yes, it was motor trends inaugural Software Defined vehicle Innovator Award that was announced during CES back in January of 23. Obviously, Software Defined vehicle is such a focus on the industry at AWS and the organization that I lead. We have been working on this feverishly for the last few years. It was a recognition that my entire organization was so proud of and I was pleased and humbled to accept on behalf of the work that the team is doing. I think for what it means to us at AWS and the role that we're playing is, of course, the automotive industry is working towards this software defined vehicle. If you're an OEM, that may mean one thing in terms of how you're developing the architecture on your car, and how you're gonna, how, where, who is going to develop the new features and applications that are going to go on the car. If you're an end consumer that buys the car like URI, you may think, Oh, great, what is the software defined vehicle going to do for me, the hope and kind of the perspective in the industry is this car that I buy in the future. The day that I buy it, it doesn't depreciate, right, the day that I buy it, it can actually get better as it ages. And I can continue to develop new features that I pushed to the car, right. So there's all these great benefits. I think we at AWS, what we're focused on is really understanding to make all those points happen. There are aspects of technology around how automotive software is actually developed. And this notion of CICD or continuous innovation. Think about that example I gave you of connected car back in the beginning, in the future, the OEMs will be able to take data off the car, understand the health of that data, whether it's a feature or software stack, or the health of the vehicle, they'll be able to run quick analytics. An engineer might say, Oh, I can fix that and push that update back to the car and voila, the customer has a vehicle that's running better next hour than it did the prior. That is really great. And that's where we're going. For the industry, what that means is software developers have to develop differently. They need to different tool chains that can't all sit, quote unquote, on premise, you have to be able to leverage the power of the cloud when you're processing that much data, managing it real time pushing the updates to the car. And so suddenly, you you realize back to I said that, you know, these two worlds are colliding. For us, that means we have to continue to innovate new capabilities, that are purpose built for the automotive industries for specific use cases, or are developed and tweaked for how automotive software development is done. And so we continue to innovate those, what we call undifferentiated, heavy, lifting pieces of technology, where the automakers don't want to invest their time and building those those resources, or excuse me those capabilities, because it's not what differentiates them from their competitors. So we're building a lot of kind of core building blocks, if you will, that will ultimately assist in that process be on board the vehicle to help enable managing bigger sets of data, for example, in developer tools that they need in that process.

It's a whole ecosystem, isn't it? You know, I hear terms like compilers and debuggers, and design tools and virtualization and the cloud provider. And you're, you're in that whole ecosystem? Who has the lead on that from an OEM perspective? Does the OEM source every single one of those entities in the ecosystem? Or do they work with you and you source and you connect everybody? How does that work?

Those are all strategic decisions that the OEM customers are making. And it's really them thinking through who are their strategic partners, the core pieces, if you will, that that ultimately have to come together to really collaborate to help enable them to drive towards where they're going. And kind of like we've always seen in the industry in terms of how much they do in house versus how much they look to outside partners to do it varies across the industry. But that is totally an OEM decision and of themselves as to what they do, who are the partners, how that work split happens, and really, ultimately how it gets integrated.

Yeah, and that that integration is huge, right? Because it's not like you're dealing with mechanical components, and you can source with stamping gear and a casting there. I mean, the everything that I just talked about has to work together.

Absolutely. Yep. And so to your point, that job of quote, unquote, the integration piece is, is getting bigger and bigger, it's definitely not getting smaller.

Well, I'm fascinated to see how that's gonna play out with supply chain and purchasing, managing all these different entities, yet to be seen.

Lots of exciting times to come for sure. And lots of challenges to figure out together as an industry.

Let's talk about your leadership, Wendy, out of the 21 traits of authentic leadership, give me the top two that resonate with you the most.

My two and then I'll kind of dive into each of them. One is trust. And the other is listening skills. I think one of the things that we we talked about really is like how do I think about my role and my job beyond the title, to me in the work that I do every single day on behalf of not only my organization, but on behalf of the business, and on behalf of our customer. And on behalf of the industry that I'm here to lead in support. A lot of that comes down to building great teams, building great leaders, and empowering great leaders. And I take great pride and get really excited and motivated when I know that my team around me and in their own way, they're so much smarter than me or they know things that I don't know. But I have to be intentional. And I have to really be in tune with the listening skills. And so to me, that listening piece really can't be understated. And that's such an important one. That's easy to say. But I've observed in my 20, some years of working in a professional world, how often that actually doesn't happen at all, or nearly to the degree that we need. And I think especially as you go forward in this new innovative world, and think about doing things different and think about the pace of innovation and thinking of all that is possible. Without great listening skills, we will fire sub optimize what is possible with our organizations as leaders, if we don't listen more than then we, we speak. So to me, that's a really important one.

As you said earlier, right? You're really a translator between two different cultures here. So your listening skills have got to be sharp to be able to do that because and you're when you say listening, I'm assuming you're not just talking about the verbal content, right? You've got to watch it all you've got to watch the tone of voice. You've got to look at the body language, all of it to make sure that, as you said, people aren't talking past each other.

It's not about just the word either. It's the word, it's the context, it's the conversation. And that requires like, deeply listening, not just hearing. To me, that was the one that I really embrace equally with the trust piece. Again, I can't underscore the trust piece, like every minute of every day in every conversation doesn't matter if it's my team, my aura, the broader company, with customers, with the analysts with partners, in this industry, in the speed that we're moving, the complexity of the problems that have to be solved and the opportunities that we all have in working together, that single thread of trust just has to be there, or a year, you're not going to get anywhere.

And you absolutely cannot have speed without trust. There's a reason why, Stephen MR. Covey wrote a book called The Speed of Trust. And if anybody questions, the fact that you cannot have speed without trust, please read that book, I'll put a link in the show notes, reams of data, both qualitative and quantitative data to support the fact that you cannot move fast without trust.

And, I see it every day, as much as I talked about conversations with customers, it's very rare that I talk about a conversation with a customer that actually doesn't require the involvement of a partner, that is also a trusted partner to our customers. What we're doing is getting so complex and partnering is an art form like it is in a skills of organizations, that organizations I see such a need to really embrace and understand what real partnering looks like. And it's not a vendor transaction, it's actually something very different. But again, how do you, how do you trust? And how do you lead an organization and trust something you don't understand, that's the skill leaders need. That is absolutely a skill leaders have to get proficient at is learning to trust and lead in an area, you actually don't understand.

ooh, a lot of people are going to be nervous with that, Wendy.

I'm sure there are.

But you got to be comfortable in your own skin. And I think that comes back to vulnerability too. Because you're right, you're gonna have to lead in an environment where you don't know anything. You have to trust a lot of people and a lot of things. But you got to show your vulnerability and be transparent. There's so many aspects of leadership that comes into this. And at the end of the day, you gotta be yourself and be that authentic leader.

And as much as it is, you know, getting comfortable to say, here's what we're going to do together. And here's what we're not. And this is what's in scope. And this is what's not, and just being being brutally open and honest, and finding common ground and finding the one plus one is three, right? And every partnership angle, and that it's got to truly, truly make sense collectively, are fundamental guiding principles that I see, oftentimes just don't get the right focus that they deserve. So to me, the second is trust.

And I think to your point about partnering, right, as you know, my background is supply chain, a lot of purchasing in there. And it used to be about crafting the document, the contract, the supply agreement, right. And yeah, it is important to memorialize that agreement. But what's far more important is having the collaborative conversations in the partner in conversations upfront. What happens if this goes wrong? What happens if we do this? What happens if this goes right? Having that basic understanding, upfront, not relying on some document that you've spent hours, weeks months, and I don't know how many hundreds of 1000s of dollars working on with attorneys, so that you can say gotcha, at the end of the day, which is what automotive purchasing tends to be a little bit about, right? It's, it's more having these conversations upfront and recognizing you know what, somebody is gonna mess up in this relationship, somebody's gonna make a misstep, it's gonna happen. So what do we do when that happens? Let's talk about that.

Over my 20 plus years in the automotive industry, I there were many very memorable instances where something went wrong outside of the control of the company, or the customer or economic issues, or instances where things truly went wrong. And what always stood out at me was the best relationships were formed and how the two companies showed up together in those tough times. I don't recall to your point anyone ever went and whipped out the contract and went to row 77? What did we do in this instance? You showed up and you figured out how you got through it. But you're right. I think more and more as even this topic of software, like If you can't really pick up everything and measure it and figure out exactly what line that code that was now compiled from 15 Different companies like how do you put your finger on who is wrong? It's a different world. So how do you think about taking risk being open collaborating? When these are our new collective realities to think through? And it's again, how are you going to show up and things go wrong? How are you going to show up and be prepared to work through issues is such a big part of the conversation now in our new world together?

I very much love to hear that. Because playing the blame game, which you've done for so many decades in automotive, the moment does a problem with a supplier or a problem, regardless of whether or not they have data to support the fact is, it's a supplier issue, it's automatically supplier issue, because the ops guy Oh, couldn't be operations. It couldn't be quality, gonna be purchasing stop. And then we would spend weeks and months running around pointing the finger and blaming each other. Ah, please, those days are gone. Let's not let's not have leaders that perpetuate that leadership model anymore. Please.

Couldn't agree more.

That's my public service announcement or statement. Yeah, PSA. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about the fun stuff. Let's take a turn here. I want to know, what gets you up in the morning? What gets you ready to just take on the world? Wendy, what is it what's going on in your head?

It is absolutely my team. Absolutely my team, I get super motivated by every conversation I have internally and externally, I say my team, but actually it's my team and the work we're doing on behalf of our customers and the industry. But one phrase that that stuck with me and I started in the role and with Amazon is it's truly about making history and putting your mark on things like our organization in our way for this industry, automotive and, and now even in a broader role that I have with the manufacturing sector more broadly. Like there's so much opportunity in history in the making, that is being made every day right here in Detroit, where we are in the automotive industry that we all know and love. And I have the privilege of setting and leading a team that's making such a big impact. And that is super awesome and motivating, comes with great responsibility, of course, and lots of pressure, of course too. But I think getting out those really around. It's truly a time in the industry where history is being made unlimited opportunity everywhere. And it's just there's not enough hours in the day, and you can keep going and going and going. And it's pretty motivating and exciting.

Yeah, I feel you. If I were to ask your team, what they loved about you, what do you think they would say?

Oh, that's a good one. I did probably say a lot. Maybe one thing, what do you think? I think probably the one thing is they would say I absolutely am so in tune with what they're working on. And I am the first to get in the boat and help them solve problems. When the N dangit chord gets pulled, it's not it's not it's back to the example we talked about. It's not the blame game. Don't care why do the right thing, get it done, and let's figure out what we learned. And that scares people. You know, when am I one of my employers along the way, I learned this notion of bad news first, go solve it. And it's not about blame. It's about making that that constant improvement on behalf of the customer. So I'm like, I want to know what's wrong, because we want to get better. I don't like talking about everything. That's great. Yes, we need to find those moments to celebrate success. Absolutely. Everyone needs that pat on the back and reinforcement that they're doing the right thing and adding value. But there's so much opportunity, we got to continue to raise the bar, as we like to say, and I am the first to get in the boat with my team and really help them sort through it no matter what it takes.

What do they hate about you? Let me tell you, let me give you an example. Right. I know that's a tough question. But let me give you an example. Right. My last team, one of the things that they would absolutely there is no doubt in my mind that they would hate about me is I am an absolute witch when it comes to spelling mistakes, right? I can spot a spelling mistake a mile away and I'm not lying. I don't have to I look it jumps. I can just see it. And it drives me insane. And I will nitpick a presentation a document whatever. I just can't help it right. Right or wrong, good leadership, bad leadership. It's just me. And it's it's a trait, and I'm sorry, and I can't get over it. So that's me. I'm a bit of a pain in the ass like that. So that's one thing that I'm sure drove them nuts. So what maybe that's a better way to ask the question. What is it about you that would drive them nuts?

I love Excel. And I love pivot tables. And I love playing with data and numbers. I'm an engineer by trade, but I'm a numbers geek. And I absolutely love to drill into pivot tables and like find the answer of what I'm looking for. And I do it to an extreme sometimes when I'm trying to land a point that I think is really important.

That might that might irritate them just a touch. Yeah. Okay. All right. I have to make one of your team members one day and ask him well, they'll be listening to this and we'll ask them to email me and tell them if we got it true.

Ask them to put in the comment feed, see what it is.

What do you like to binge watch? Do you have a show you like to binge watch?

Oh, this is an embarrassing one.

Come on, tell me what it is.

And I'm actually gonna throw my husband under the bus with me as well. I actually don't watch TV. Like I just I listen to music, and I work and read. But I do have one show that I do watch. And we actually watch together, which is the bachelor nation shows. It is so ridiculous, the bachelor, bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise. But we do. I think why I love it. It is so mindless. And I often find myself are asking myself the question when I was 23. Would I have ever done that or said that? And thank goodness the answer has always been, Oh, heck no. But it's my I guess it's my National Enquirer, my my downtime.

Everybody's everybody's got it. You know, if you listen to my interview with Carrie Uhl, who's now Chief Procurement Officer at GE Healthcare. She's Candy Crush girl.

Oh, funny.

She's all about the Candy Crush. Yes. Yeah, we've all got our little things right. I just love to love to bring it out. Favorite podcast, Wendy. What is it?

Favorite podcast? Well, yours. I have to say yours.

Okay, as a favorite podcast.

Oh, I don't really have a lot that I track and follow.

When I've been listening to lately that I really enjoy for fun is smartless.

Okay

With Jason Bateman. They interview celebrities, and it's kind of a you get a bit of the backstory. And it's so unstructured. And they they're all over the place. I just That's my fun podcast, but I enjoy smartless. I enjoy how unstructured it is.

I will note it. I'll listen to it soon. Awesome.

It's a good one. So you said you listen to music? Yeah. What's the music you like?

I love country music. I'm a country fan.

I don't know that I would have pegged you as a country music girl. But last book you read.

Last book I read, Thrive.

Oh, and who wrote Thrive?

Arianna Huffington

Okay, I would like to know, as we close this out today, our industry, our beloved automotive, industry transformation. We talk about mobility, we talk about ICE to BEV, all of these things, everything that's happening, right? What do you think is the biggest challenge that we're facing in this industry? And what advice would you give to the CEOs out there, particularly in the tier one space?

I think so many of the companies and the leaders are really struggling with deeply understanding what is truly possible. When we talk about innovation when we talk about I mean, digital transformation is such a buzzy word today. It really is. Everyone's got their own definition. I feel like I deeply understand it. It's what I do, and work on every day. But I also see so many companies and so many very critical leaders leading very important companies in the world that I feel have such an opportunity to really increase their understanding of what it is a that it is real. It's not a far fetched idea 10 years from now. But how do they have to change their leadership style and even break it down and think about it is technology but it is culture? It is their business processes, it does require that you make decisions that are enterprise thinking, not siloed thinking, if you say, Oh, yes, we're transforming my, my company or the company that I lead, like, can they really answer the question? Beyond Okay, I have this vision to go from A to B. But how am I really going to get there? How are we leading differently? How are we changing processes? How are we changing skills? How are we driving a new culture? What is the tag, which again, is back to it's one layer of the onion of many, many, many. But I think it starts with there's such a such an opportunity to really advance an understanding even of what is possible and what is here and it is not far away. And those companies and those leaders in the leadership teams really have to embrace it is here and it's time to move. Speed matters because industries are moving their competitors may be moving, but they gotta get educated and drive that throughout the organization and change on on all fronts. It's there are no magic pill. Let's either. And so, such an education opportunity and awareness and really embracing it and driving it top down. There's an urgency around that, that needs to happen.

I couldn't agree with you more. And what I really get from you a number of times in our discussion today is this idea of enterprise thinking. And that comes through loud and clear get away from the silos. It's around enterprise thinking. And it starts with leadership, and mindset change, add, creating that innovative culture.

I remember one time sitting as part of a leadership team that had all the functional disciplines. And I recall, when tough times came and everyone got their mandate of what you have to do, one leader would tweak this, which would cause at the expense over here, which is like this reaction.

Yes, I've seen it. It's exactly what I'm talking about, yeah.

And you end up with really poor decisions that if if someone who had the holistic was actually into the details drove the right, the right enterprise decision, you probably would have gotten the answer far different than what had happened. And so when you think of transforming companies and leveraging I mean, it's it's even far beyond a cloud transformation, conversation. But that's posts part of most conversations these days. I see it over and over and over again. And yes, you got to drive accountability with leaders, but you got to drive accountability on enterprise thinking and decision making, too.

Absolutely. What a perfect way to close. Wendy Bauer, thank you so much for joining us today.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for listening to the automotive leaders podcast. Click the Listen link in the show notes to subscribe for free on your platform of choice. And don't forget to download the 21 traits of authentic leadership PDF by clicking on the link below. And remember, stay true to yourself, be you and lead with Gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership