Suzy Deering has been preparing to take the business world by storm since the second grade, and she certainly has. She’s shaped powerhouse brands like Verizon and eBay, and now serves as the Global CMO of Ford. Learn how Suzy’s experience shepherding landline customers to wireless is informing her marketing strategy around electric cars, and why your car isn’t just a car— it’s a lifestyle.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to math and magic production of I heart radio.
My advice to people, especially females. We are trained to
make sure that we were protecting ourselves right like not
putting ourselves into places that we feel like that we
could be exposed, and I've learned you have to push
(00:23):
yourself to those uncomfortable places because you'll never grow and
you'll never learn and you hold yourself back from so
much good opportunity if you don't get uncomfortable. Hi, I'm
Bob Diffman. Welcome to math and magic. Stories from the
frontiers and marketing, where we explore the lessons learned from
those who use the analytics and creativity of marketing to
(00:46):
drive business and societal successes. Today we have someone who's
used the marketer's mind across many industries and has always
come up a winner. It's susie daring, global CMO for four.
Susie grew up down south and went on to have
a pretty remarkable career all over the US and industries
ranging from Telco to home improvement to tech. She joined
(01:07):
four in the middle of the pandemic, so I'm certain
she'll have some lessons about learning a new job in
those conditions. She's tackled tough challenges again and again, but
always has done it with her famous smile, thoughtfulness and empathy.
She's definitely a one of a kind. Welcome, Susie. Oh,
thank you, Bob. It's so exciting to be here with
(01:27):
you today. Well, we've got a lot to cover today
on this episode, but before we jump in, I'd like
to do you in sixty seconds. You ready to go?
I'm ready. Do you prefer early riser or night owl? Both?
MIAMI OR ATLANTA? Atlanta, introvert or extrovert? Absolutely extrovert. Silicon
Valley or the motor city? A little bit of both,
(01:49):
because it's merging. CEO OR CMO? CMO. Call her text.
Definitely text. Disney world or Disneyland? Disney world, slow and
steady are pedal to the metal, pedal to the metal.
Bulldogs are gators? Bulldogs for sure. Okay, it's about to
get harder. Childhood hero, my mom, favorite Disney movie, Lion King.
(02:14):
First job, babysitting. First car, MAZDA GLC. The smartest person
you know besides you, ha ha, Jim Farley. Favorite food, Mexican.
Favorite model of car right now my Mustang make e
GT guilty pleasure, chips and dip. And the final one,
(02:36):
your favorite place to visit in the entire world. Italy,
the coastline of Italy. which part of coastline? The Amalfi coast? Okay,
let's start with today and what's in the news electric vehicles.
I think we must have hit the inflection point when
my elderly cousin in Mississippi was first in line to
(02:57):
get the electric F pickup. How is the consumer thinking
about electric cars and are we really at that moment
when it all begins to change? We are at that
moment when it all changes and I think that a
big part of the why we're at that moment is
because of the f Lin fifty lightning. It changed everything.
It took what was very familiar in the most popular
(03:20):
and best selling truck in the country and it went electric.
And all of a sudden that was something that people
could look at and say, hold on, that's familiar to me,
that feels comfortable, I can make that step. And because
it was so dramatically different than what they were the
competition was, for those that were early adopters it was
(03:41):
an easier transition too, because it gave them something more
than what they had today. You mentioned the point that
this is the familiar. What is the consumer afraid of
in this pivot? The biggest fear is range anxiety and
the charging aspect. Instead of running out of gas, everyone
is fearful of running out of battery and we know
(04:03):
that that's a big challenge because for consumers, they know
where a gas station is. They don't necessarily see charging
stations the same way or at the same amount that
they see gas stations, and so that's the biggest barrier
from a mindset perspective that customers have to to start
to accept. And I'd add one more thing to that. Yes,
(04:25):
public charging is a big component of it. But what
the big shift that we know that we need to
educate consumers is you actually are basically leaving your home
every day with a full tank, a full charge, and
you tell me how many times in a week do
you leave the house every day with a full tank
of gas? Probably not. Ever, it's very often that you've
(04:47):
got a quarter of a tank or a half a tank.
So it's a big shift as to how we use
our vehicles and the expectations of how we're actually maintaining them,
and the shift from gas to electric. It sounds like
that as a market or your real challenges to get
people to realize they really don't need charging stations that much.
But how big a problem is it for travel or
(05:11):
how many times will they really need that charging station?
And how does that infrastructure get built? Is it public
or is it private? Yes, we still do need public charging.
The infrastructure does need to be built because you are
going to need to take your vehicle on long distance.
I think the balance there is a couple of things, Bob.
(05:32):
One is yes, we are working very closely with the
government and with many partners within the energy space to
ensure that we can get the right infrastructure obviously deployed
across the country, very similar to early days of having
to build out gas stations, because obviously when the model
t was created and we saw the adoption of cars,
(05:56):
that created a whole other stream of infrastructure, highways and,
you know, gas stations and so forth. We're at that
same pivot point with electrification. So it's going to be
a combination of obviously many different entities coming together working
collectively to solve that infrastructure challenge of the future. How
(06:18):
does the consumer think about the electric car are they
excited about it? Do they enjoy driving it? What is
it that interest them? There we know if we can
get a customer inside the cab and behind the wheel,
it's game over and it's so exciting for me when
I can sit in a cab with someone who's never driven,
(06:39):
you know, an electric vehicle and it's almost like their
eyes just light up. It's like being a Disney world
and you go on that first you know, space mountain
ride or you know, you get to have this incredible
experience that you weren't expecting. That's the feel of it
and I think I can describe it, but until you
actually experience it you can't get the full appreciation. So
(07:00):
does the test drive take on a new importance? Yes,
and it's interesting because I would say that it's maybe
a little bit more about not test driving the actual
one vehicle. It's about test driving electric but I think
initial stages is getting people to just experience it from
a category perspective of electrification. And you know, Bob, I
(07:22):
will make a really interesting parallel to this, which I
think you and I have talked about this in the past.
The parallels of US going from ice to electric are
so incredibly similar for me as going from landline when
I was at verizon, going from landline to wireless, and
you know, it's infrastructure challenges and same thing in this regard.
(07:46):
You know, wireless phones, nobody really understood why do I
really need it? Until there was that need or you've
got the first experience. There were differentiations, you know, between carriers,
just like there's differentiation between the vehicles and the design
line and the overall structure of the vehicle. But really
out of the gate it's getting those people who say,
(08:07):
I don't really understand what the buzz is all about.
They just need to experience electric. So talk a little
bit about the difference in strategy. How do you contrast between,
you know, the pure electric car companies and the other
auto giants that are also making a shift? What sets
forward apart? Well, I think number one, are hundred and
(08:27):
nineteen years of experience and know how an expertise sets
us apart from many of the startups. Number one, because
we understand the discipline that goes into, you know, building
vehicles and building quality and building vehicles that people really want.
(08:47):
You know, we've been making seats inside the vehicle and
interiors and paint and all of the metal for years
and years and years, and now with a lot of
the the startups, those are all learning curves. Right now.
They're doing a lot of other things that we, as
an o e m, are just now really starting to perfect,
(09:07):
which is digital and, you know, transforming software and creating services.
You take the competitors, that are the startups. That's where
they started and then they built a shell around it,
whereas we're the complete opposite of that. You know, the
know how and the expertise that we have of building
quality vehicles for safety and other things and making it
(09:28):
so that it's the interiors or pleasure and it gives
you that that incredible welcoming sense when you step inside.
Now we're having to combine that with the know how
of digital expertise and software, as well as understanding the
hardware side. So it's a really interesting kind of balance
of what we're seeing. So I want to take a
(09:49):
step back and talk about the car. Second most expensive
purchase after a home, and more people obviously on a
car than own a home, something most people use a
lot every day. Often it's a part of work as
well as getting the work. How do you see this?
Fundamental relationship of a car and the customer. I see
(10:09):
the relationship evolving dramatically. I'm not sure if you'll remember this,
that when I first took the job, you and I
were having a chat about, you know, the excitement of
what this role could be and how exciting from a
time frame, you know, of coming in and the transformation
and disruption. And one of the things you and I
talked about was, you know, it's a lifestyle and really
(10:32):
wanting to embrace becoming a lifestyle brand, and I really
believe that's one of the biggest pivots for us right now,
because lifestyle brands become part of your everyday life. We've
been that, but it's been more in a functionality Um
component versus it truly being in a surprise delight but
(10:53):
your everyday moments. We now have the opportunity to truly
make this ecosystem, you know, that is connected digitally to
help create experiences. That transforms us into a lifestyle brand
and so that, to me is a real massive pivot
from a marketing perspective and also one that starts to
(11:15):
introduce a very different relationship with our customer. And there's
a very different customer when we're talking to our retail
customers versus our commercial customers, the vehicles that create that
are part of work, that become part of our commercial story.
There's a very distinctive purpose and capabilities and productivity that
(11:36):
we need to ensure that we're creating on behalf of
that customer. And so we're taking all of those pieces
and saying then, you know what, how do we continue
to lean in on that and create this lifestyle brand
that becomes an ecosystem for you, as a owner and
as a customer to forward versus it just being sheet metal,
(11:56):
and that's a really unique place for us to lean into.
You know, it's interesting coming post pandemic. I think all
of us, every company, you're looking at what is the
new work environment? We know it's not going to be
what it was, and at our place I think we
are seeing so many of our folks using their car
as sort of a mobile office. If you will, can
(12:18):
you give us the download on the connected car? And,
as you mentioned, twenty years ago a mobile phone was
for making calls. We certainly moved our phone from making
calls to managing our life activities. What do we have
in store for us with this car of the future. Yeah,
I think that what we have in store is very
similar to what we've seen in the transition from, you know,
(12:39):
cell phones are being sent to end and then the
transition to taking photos, and then the transition to data
and utilizing the Internet and now managing, to your point,
pretty much multiple aspects of your life, working and personal.
The other interesting thing that I think here is the
vehicle has always been more geared towards the draw iver,
(13:00):
not as much to the passengers. You're starting to see
that change inside the vehicle now. I think that that's
where this pivot starts to happen very quickly, because content
can be consumed in many different ways, in shapes and
forms inside the vehicle. I start to look at it
more if it's your office from a commercial standpoint, where
we're obviously putting in even in our fund fifty trucks,
(13:22):
we have a desk that can fold out, you can
actually do your paperwork and so forth in the comforts
of the cab. We do that with the back and
the tailgates where we create services for you to be
able to to obviously work. But you're singing that same
exact thing on the retail side. Of the house, where
it's becoming a lot more integrated into your multiple facets
of your life. Can you take the best Webex call
(13:44):
from your car? Yeah, you should be able to do that.
Can you multitask if you're sitting, you know, stationary somewhere
where you can leverage the screens in the car? Yes,
you should be able to have that capability. So I
think that's really where this connectivity and the data that
we can capture to better predict those moments for you,
you know, just as our phones have become that that's
(14:06):
really where I believe we have the most opportunity and, candidly,
from a customer standpoint, is super exciting. Moral Math and
magic right after this quick break. Welcome back to math
and magic. Let's hear more from my conversation with Susie deering.
(14:30):
I'm want to go back in time to get some
context on you. You're from Miami. moved to Atlanta when
you were fourteen, two cities that have major transformation since
that time. Can you paint the picture of that time
and those places? Absolutely, growing up in Miami, I was
still born into a family that was a southern family.
My family was from Kentucky, but we lived in Miami
(14:52):
and Miami had obviously so much vibrancy to it. I
grew up very low middle class, but I would have
never been able to tell you that Bob a child
because I felt like I had a wealth of love
and support. So I never felt like I did without
and that love and support. You know, when my mother
made the decision that she felt like it was better
for us to move to Atlanta, she was doing it
to give us a better wife. She felt like that
(15:14):
she could get a job, she was a primary breadwinner,
she had been married twice and she had four kids
that she raised on her own. You know, managed to
go to work and cook and clean and take care
of us and ran us back and forth to events
and everything else. And I had a very tight knit
family and my grandmother and I were very, very close,
my aunts, we were very close. So when we made
the move, the entire family made the move. Everyone made
(15:35):
the move to Atlanta. I had always thought that I'd
live and die in Miami because that's what I knew
and I loved it. And then when we moved when
I was fourteen, where we moved in Atlanta was just
a suburb called Roswell. It was such a quaint community
and everything was wrapped up in that community. When I
lived in Miami, we can I commuted to school because
my mom wanted to put us in a private Christian school,
(15:57):
so it was a long commute. Um then all of
a sudden I lived and went to school and my
my whole world was around the city, this little Roswell,
and I fell in love. It was just easy. I watched,
you know, my mom flourished from a professional perspective. She
just had a lot more opportunities and it was just
(16:17):
really fascinating, you know, to watch that as a child
and candidly as a young woman, to see such a
strong woman who had managed through so much hardship and
came out on the other side of that. And I
think that, to me, is what when I think back
in those two kind of moments in my life, Gosh,
I feel really blessed. Well, it sounds like your mom
(16:40):
is the major influence, but what other major influences were
at work that created the you of today and what
in your childhood would best predict what you are today
in business? Yes, my mom was a huge influence. My
grandmother was a massive influence, she ran a company she
we're gonna gift shop when I was younger, called the
(17:02):
Bee Hive in Miami Beach and as a child I
can remember, three and four years old, going to the
bee hive that I was so excited to watch her
work and she'd give me jobs like ompening up the
packages that would come in, helping sort, you know, all
the items. Gosh, I loved the adding machine. I remember
as a child learning the old fashion adding machine. I
learned how to do that really quick because I loved
(17:24):
the sound of it, like when she would be doing bookkeeping.
And then even it was so silly. I can remember
when I was in second grade we had our desk
like you would do boardwork and Bob I would literally
set my desk up like an office. I would pull
out things and set it up. My teachers would always
ask what I was doing and I'd be like it's
(17:44):
my office, and then I'd go to work. I would
do my board work. So I think that it was
just always inherently in me. I think some of the
other influences were when I was in Atlanta, my aunt
worked for the Coca Cola Company and she worked in
marketing and I can remember early on just being so
mesmerized by the customer stories that she would tell and
(18:06):
the product introductions that she was working on, and I
fell in love with it. It was like a good novel.
Every Sunday night, when we had our family dinner, for
her to come to the House and tell the stories
of what she was working on just felt like I
was reading a good book. So I think that those
were bits and pieces of it. But you know, there's
many people in my life that I look at, mainly women,
(18:26):
strong women in my life, but you know, as my
career started, were you know even you know, I worked
all the way through high school. I paid my way
through college. There are so many people along that journey
that I just stopped and think about often and they
don't even probably realize how big of an impact they had.
You have this, as you probably well know, your reputation.
(18:49):
Have this infectious smile and you're always seen as this
really positive person, positive frame of mind. Where did you
get that? I think I get that from my faith,
which came from my grandmother. Oh Gosh, you want to
talk about a smile. She had an amazing smile and
she had these blue eyes that just absolutely sparkled when
she smiled and she was always that person that you
(19:12):
went to, you know, with whatever challenge you faced, you
went to her because the very first thing that you
would see is that smile would open up and it
just embraced you. You know, you could talk about some
really challenging and troubling things, but there was always that warmth.
When I look back, I feel like that spirit, in
that mindset really did come from her. My Dad was
(19:33):
a methodist minister, so I always have a great interest
in religion. Did you grow up with it, did you
discover it or did it discover you? I grew up
with it and then I would tell you that I
discovered it. It was part of our rituals. As a child,
we were in church every Sunday morning, very often Sunday evenings,
and back again on Wednesday nights. But I think, Bob,
(19:55):
when I graduated from college, I remember feeling that there
was this void and that's when I would say that
I feel like I discovered it. I really discovered what
I had always had but all of a sudden had
such incredible purpose. Late eighties, early nineties, you went the
University of Georgia, you studied advertising. Were you preparing for
(20:16):
this career? I wasn't preparing necessarily for this because, wow,
I had no idea. I was preparing for Disney. I
wanted to get a university of Georgia, I wanted to
be an advertising and marketing major and I wanted to
work at Disney, and I did that. That was what
I was preparing for. Ob Honestly, I did those three things,
(20:37):
and I mean I wouldn't have traded it for the world,
because it was the best stepping stone for me to
really truly get a sense of customer and marketing and
the empower of experience and brand right fresh out of college. Well,
you actually worked with customers. You were on the front
line there and some of your jobs, or at least
(20:59):
part of the job. Yes, in fact, I did my
internship with Disney and the college program which they put
you into the parks. You're either working attractions or food.
I worked at the emporium on Main Street and so
you had day to day interactions with the guest and
then when I came back, I was brought back on
a program called career start. So I came back in
(21:19):
the same thing and they put you back out into
the park, because at that point in time you could
never have just walked into the marketing group, and it
was there that I met the director of marketing who
invited me to come in and, you know, see what
it was all about, and that's what opened up the
door to my marketing career at Disney. After Disney, you
worked at on Atlanta Ad Agency, where you worked on
(21:41):
the air touch salut or account, and then you joined
verizon in two thousand and one. Did you see this
huge Telco Revolution coming? No, I definitely did not. In fact,
the funny little secret of that is when I left
Disney and I went to the agency side, I had
never thought of myself being on the agency side, but
I realized at that point in time that it was
(22:02):
good for me to understand the full aspects of marketing
and advertising and seeing on both angles. So I went
to the agency side. I was working on Atlanta Braves
and new business and they came to me and said Hey,
we think that we really would be great working on
the air touch business, and I laughed because I was like,
oh Gosh, how boring. I remember thinking this is awful.
(22:24):
I just went from entertainment too. Now I gotta go
work on this wireless stuff. Well, needless to say, I
was a little wrong on that one because I quickly
realized it was anything but boring. But I didn't see
it at first, I really didn't, but I will tell
you it quickly came. I was right there at day
(22:45):
one when the true transformation from a wireless standpoint started,
and as soon as you saw it taken off, it
was like, okay, this is a rocket ship. We gotta
hold on. What did those lessons at that moment tell
you about a connected car revolution? You mentioned a couple
of them, but it seems to me that probably of
your background, that this probably is the most relevant to
(23:08):
what you're doing today with a connected car. It definitely
is the one real obvious place that I look at
and think marketing wise is the customer pain points. Dropped
calls was one of the biggest areas of pain for
the customer because you could give me this device, I
could pay this money, but now I can't even hold
(23:30):
a call for very long because that infrastructure, the network quality,
wasn't there. We're in that same exact place when I
look at the shift from, you know, combustible engines to
electric because infrastructure is a barrier. You know, the mindset
of you know, understanding how to utilize the vehicle the
(23:50):
right way, the services, what we provide from a service perspective.
There's all pain points and barriers there that are very,
very similar to the same thing that we saw on
the arless side. Left Verizon, you did a short stand
at home depot and then you took over a CEO
of the largest digital advertising agency in the southeast. How
did it feel making the jump the CEO and taking
(24:13):
on the ultimate P and l responsibility, and any advice
from that you'd give folks making that jump for the
first time? It's funny because one of the very first
responses I had when I got the call from my
dear friend Dave Pinsky about the role, I said, I
don't know anything about running an agency or a company.
He was like, what are you talking about? Yes, you do.
You've been doing this your entire career. I just need
(24:35):
you on the other side of the table for once.
And my husband was the first one who looked at
me and said, why are you shutting yourself down so fast?
You can do this. You got it, and I think
that's my advice to people, especially females, we are trained
to make sure that we were protecting ourselves right like
not putting ourselves into places that we feel like that
(24:57):
we could be exposed. And I've learned you have to
push yourself to those uncomfortable places because you'll never grow
and you'll never learn and you'll hold yourself back from
so much good opportunity if you don't get uncomfortable. Ebay,
you became CMO in two thousand fifteen. You moved to California.
(25:17):
I mean you really went into your discomfort zone. You
were all in. I remember your time there and wow,
are you articular about it. What attracted you and what
was the biggest challenge there? That obviously got you excited.
What attracted me there was how Lawton, who I had
worked with for a very short period of time at
emp depot and he and I just hit it off
(25:39):
and stayed in touch. When I had left emp depot
and went to Moxie. He took the job as president
of ebay right after the paypal split, and so he
called and said, Hey, look, I'm out here and I
really want you to come join me as the CMO.
It was really exciting because at that point in time,
because of the split from paypal. It was giving a
new life to Ebay. Ebay had been giving everything to
(26:03):
build paypal for so long and that now it was
time to put the time and the money and the
energy back into building Ebay and the brand and repositioning it.
And so the opportunity was just phenomenal and I kept thinking,
there's no way I can't make that move to California.
I had said no too many Disney jobs in the
past that would have taken me to California. And at
(26:25):
this point my daughter was a second semester junior in
high school and my son was at seventh grader and
we had already moved a couple different times before, and
so I thought this is not gonna be good. She's
not going to talk to me for the rest of
her life and moved across the country and shockingly enough,
I offered it up to Madison. I said here's the
opportunity that has come to me. She said, mom, you
(26:46):
should absolutely go take a look at it. I would
be all supportive because I'm going to go to college.
So what's the difference? I just make it sound like
that I go one year earlier, which blew me away,
and so I did. I went out, they were all in.
I was all in. So let's talk something about your philosophies.
What role does corporate culture play for you and how
do you design it and use it? Corporate Culture is
(27:09):
challenging because there's so many different flavors of it. I
think the part for me and my philosophy is I
need to be true to my leadership style and I
want to ensure that I'm building an organization and a
team that doesn't lead from fear, but they lead from Opportunity.
I want to ensure that there's a safe place to
(27:29):
where you know there can be very honest conversations, because
one thing I will tell you that has always been
very evident to me is in order for there to
be transformation, you have to have respect and you have
to have transparency and you have to make sure that
everybody feels that they're aligned. And I may not be
able to influence that across the entire corporation, but if
(27:51):
I can establish that within my own team and influence
the teams around me, then great, but I won't falter
from really making sure that I can at least establish
that piece of it that I can have direct influence over.
How about diversity? What's the special power that comes to
a company from a strong focus on diversity and inclusion? Well,
(28:14):
it becomes a secret power because, I mean, if you
imagine that you can bring in diverse thinking and diverse
people and cultures and backgrounds and really apply it differently
to your to one just you personally, it makes you better,
it makes you a better leader, it makes you a
better human. I know there's so many stats out there
(28:36):
about the more diverse the leadership team is, the more
profit the company sees. Candidly, I feel like that we
still treat it as a pet project and I don't
think that's what it is. It's part of your strategy
and it's part of how you just operate, think and perform.
I know you put a great value on family. How
do you manage that work life balance? Well, I first
(28:59):
realized that it isn't balancing. If I was striving for
something impossible, that was never gonna, you know, gonna help Um.
I do look at it as making sure that there's
as much harmony and that I can, you know, live
up to the priorities that I set for myself and
I'm very straightforward with my team about that and to
(29:20):
those that I work with that my priorities are God,
family and work in that order. If the first two
things get out of whack, the third thing gets really
messed up. And so as long as I can keep
myself honest to that, and I expect even my team
members and my family to hold me accountable to those priorities,
that because my guide post, doesn't mean that there aren't
long hours there, doesn't mean that there's not moments that
(29:42):
I have to pull away from the family to take
care of something. It's just that I do that with
respect and understanding as much as I possibly can. Can't
tell you get it right all the time by any means,
but you know, I also expect that I get back
those moments and being present when I am with my family,
because if I'm doing that for work, then it at
least expected that I can make sure that I'm doing
that back for my family. Let's go back to Ford,
(30:06):
one of the Great American Business Success Stories. Very rich
backstory about a founder whose family is actually still central
to the company, very rare in business. How have you
found it and how did you find your way into
that very tight neck club? There's something very, very special
(30:26):
about the forward family that I don't even know that
I can truly put full words to explain it. You
mentioned earlier, you know, coming into auto industry, which I
am not. That's not my background, as we've just established.
The other thing was I came into Ford during covid
every one of my interviews was conducted via video and
(30:51):
what I found really fascinating was immediately, I mean even
through the interview process and then even my first week
on the job, Bill Ford reached out, as at Soul
Ford reached out, Elana Ford reached out, each family member
reached out to create a personal connection and that was
mind blowing to me. It's really pretty special and something that,
(31:13):
you know, I had the pleasure of speaking with bill
before I took the role and I was amiss, a
little kind of awe struck, if you will, and now
just to think that, you know, it's an every day
that involvement that the Ford family has in one way
or another is really very unique and special and it's
truly what I look at and say it's one of
the key differentiators for us as a brand, not just
(31:36):
as an automotive company, but as a brand, because there's
a signature, a Ford signature that is stamped on every
single one of our products and there's a Ford Signature,
a human signature, that I get to see prominently on
the building and prominently in every artifact within our company
that just keeps reminding you of the humanity, the humanity
(31:59):
that are and stands for. You, as you mentioned, started
your job in the pandemic. What did you discover during
that experience that has changed really the work conditions, and
what of those change work conditions do you think are
probably permanent and positive changes to the new work environment?
(32:20):
I think the biggest thing for me was that it
taught me very quickly the power of relationships and breaking
the screen. I immediately jumped on a plane two weeks
into my role. Even when they told me headquarters was
closed and that I couldn't come into the building, I said, okay,
we're still going to let me into the city of Detroit,
so I'm coming. So I I came here. I said,
(32:43):
I don't care, even if I just stay in the
hotel and I work all day, it doesn't matter. I'm gonna,
you know, reach out to people to see if we
can go on walks, and I did. I started meeting,
you know, other team members. I was able to go
into the facilities that you know, we still had front
line workers, even a pete see into our production facilities,
and so I dove into where I could because I
(33:05):
knew for me, it's not just that I was coming
in during the pandemic. I'm coming into a company that
has most people. The longevity here is like twenty five years. So, Bob,
I was walking into relationships that were deep, deep rooted relationships,
and I could be the organ that they completely spit
(33:27):
out if I wasn't careful and didn't take it with
the same energy and pride of understanding that I needed
to learn and that I needed to acknowledge and I
needed to be part of this culture and this family
of people. I can't let you leave today without asking
you if you could give your twenty one year old
(33:48):
self some advice, what would it be? Don't be so
hard on yourself. I think very often I'm probably my
worst critic, which I like in many respects, but I
think some times I beat myself up way too much.
And I've talked often about the impostor syndrome, because it does,
it festers that you know it'll infester this thing of
(34:10):
Oh my gosh, I'll doubt myself. If I could be
my twenty one year old self now. I wish somebody
had given me that advice and almost kind of saved
me for myself. In many regards. We end all episodes
of math and magic with a shout out to our
heroes and influencers, and we break it into two categories.
Those who are the greats and looking at the world
(34:31):
of business through analytics, we call those are the math people,
and those who see the world or business through the
prism of wildly creative ideas, call them the magicians. Can
you give me your choices for the shout out for
the math side person and the magic side person? Absolutely
my math side would be Gary Vynerchuk. I think he's
(34:54):
just amazing. Great Business Person, great marketer, Great Leader. He
really has just a special combination to him. And on
the magic side, the person who comes to mind, and
this is really very funny, is Ryan Reynolds. I have
been absolutely amazed by someone who is very skilled, creative,
(35:17):
talent Um. One of my dear friends works for him
and very closely is his his partner, and I just
had been so shocked because there's a lot of obviously
you know, actors that try to get into other professions,
but he has such a skill and creativity to him
that he's created almost new Ryan Reynolds lookalikes or kind
(35:39):
of little models because of just how many different businesses
he's been able to really expand himself into. So I
really admire that. Susie, you have had a great career
and I'm inspired and challenged so many folks along your journey.
Thanks for sharing your insights and experiences and congrats on
all your successes. Thank you, Bob, and you've been a
phenomenal partner or a mentor for me, so I really
(36:01):
appreciate it. Here are a few things I picked up
in my conversation with Susie. One, turn challenges into opportunities.
The pandemic has affected every business, and forward is no exception.
During this time of change, susie is helping forward adapt
(36:22):
to consumers needs by creating new offerings that transformed forward
vehicles into mobile offices and match this new behavior. Two,
history does repeat itself. To develop the marketing strategy for
electric cars at forward, Susie is borrowing from retirement for rising.
When the mobile phone replaced the wire line, susie learned
(36:44):
the principles of getting consumers to make that transition is
the same no matter the technology or product. Three, get uncomfortable.
Susie's biggest piece of career advice is to speak up
about your biggest ideas, even if it scares here. It's
the only way that you can truly grow and four,
(37:04):
less work life balance and more work life integration. Instead
of separating the most important parts of your life, integrate
them into how you drive your business. This has been
a successful strategy for both Susie and at Ford, where
the influence of the Ford family brings a powerful layer
of humanity and continuity to the company. I'm Bob Pittman.
(37:27):
Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so
much for listening to math and magic, a production of
I heart radio. The show is hosted by Bob Pittman.
Special thanks that Susan Ward for booking and wrangling. Are
Wonderful Talent, which is no small fiel Marissa Brown for
pulling research, our editors, Derek Clements, Mary do and Ryan Murdoch,
our producer, Morgan Levoy, our executive user, Nicky eat word and,
(37:50):
of course, Gail Rhul Eric, Angel Noel and everyone who
helped bring this show to your ears. Until next time,
You're listening to math and magic production of I heart radio.
My advice to people, especially females. We are trained to
make sure that we were protecting ourselves right like not
putting ourselves into places that we feel like that we
could be exposed, and I've learned you have to push
(00:23):
yourself to those uncomfortable places because you'll never grow and
you'll never learn and you hold yourself back from so
much good opportunity if you don't get uncomfortable. Hi, I'm
Bob Diffman. Welcome to math and magic. Stories from the
frontiers and marketing, where we explore the lessons learned from
those who use the analytics and creativity of marketing to
(00:46):
drive business and societal successes. Today we have someone who's
used the marketer's mind across many industries and has always
come up a winner. It's susie daring, global CMO for four.
Susie grew up down south and went on to have
a pretty remarkable career all over the US and industries
ranging from Telco to home improvement to tech. She joined
(01:07):
four in the middle of the pandemic, so I'm certain
she'll have some lessons about learning a new job in
those conditions. She's tackled tough challenges again and again, but
always has done it with her famous smile, thoughtfulness and empathy.
She's definitely a one of a kind. Welcome, Susie. Oh,
thank you, Bob. It's so exciting to be here with
(01:27):
you today. Well, we've got a lot to cover today
on this episode, but before we jump in, I'd like
to do you in sixty seconds. You ready to go?
I'm ready. Do you prefer early riser or night owl? Both?
MIAMI OR ATLANTA? Atlanta, introvert or extrovert? Absolutely extrovert. Silicon
Valley or the motor city? A little bit of both,
(01:49):
because it's merging. CEO OR CMO? CMO. Call her text.
Definitely text. Disney world or Disneyland? Disney world, slow and
steady are pedal to the metal, pedal to the metal.
Bulldogs are gators? Bulldogs for sure. Okay, it's about to
get harder. Childhood hero, my mom, favorite Disney movie, Lion King.
(02:14):
First job, babysitting. First car, MAZDA GLC. The smartest person
you know besides you, ha ha, Jim Farley. Favorite food, Mexican.
Favorite model of car right now my Mustang make e
GT guilty pleasure, chips and dip. And the final one,
(02:36):
your favorite place to visit in the entire world. Italy,
the coastline of Italy. which part of coastline? The Amalfi coast? Okay,
let's start with today and what's in the news electric vehicles.
I think we must have hit the inflection point when
my elderly cousin in Mississippi was first in line to
(02:57):
get the electric F pickup. How is the consumer thinking
about electric cars and are we really at that moment
when it all begins to change? We are at that
moment when it all changes and I think that a
big part of the why we're at that moment is
because of the f Lin fifty lightning. It changed everything.
It took what was very familiar in the most popular
(03:20):
and best selling truck in the country and it went electric.
And all of a sudden that was something that people
could look at and say, hold on, that's familiar to me,
that feels comfortable, I can make that step. And because
it was so dramatically different than what they were the
competition was, for those that were early adopters it was
(03:41):
an easier transition too, because it gave them something more
than what they had today. You mentioned the point that
this is the familiar. What is the consumer afraid of
in this pivot? The biggest fear is range anxiety and
the charging aspect. Instead of running out of gas, everyone
is fearful of running out of battery and we know
(04:03):
that that's a big challenge because for consumers, they know
where a gas station is. They don't necessarily see charging
stations the same way or at the same amount that
they see gas stations, and so that's the biggest barrier
from a mindset perspective that customers have to to start
to accept. And I'd add one more thing to that. Yes,
(04:25):
public charging is a big component of it. But what
the big shift that we know that we need to
educate consumers is you actually are basically leaving your home
every day with a full tank, a full charge, and
you tell me how many times in a week do
you leave the house every day with a full tank
of gas? Probably not. Ever, it's very often that you've
(04:47):
got a quarter of a tank or a half a tank.
So it's a big shift as to how we use
our vehicles and the expectations of how we're actually maintaining them,
and the shift from gas to electric. It sounds like
that as a market or your real challenges to get
people to realize they really don't need charging stations that much.
But how big a problem is it for travel or
(05:11):
how many times will they really need that charging station?
And how does that infrastructure get built? Is it public
or is it private? Yes, we still do need public charging.
The infrastructure does need to be built because you are
going to need to take your vehicle on long distance.
I think the balance there is a couple of things, Bob.
(05:32):
One is yes, we are working very closely with the
government and with many partners within the energy space to
ensure that we can get the right infrastructure obviously deployed
across the country, very similar to early days of having
to build out gas stations, because obviously when the model
t was created and we saw the adoption of cars,
(05:56):
that created a whole other stream of infrastructure, highways and,
you know, gas stations and so forth. We're at that
same pivot point with electrification. So it's going to be
a combination of obviously many different entities coming together working
collectively to solve that infrastructure challenge of the future. How
(06:18):
does the consumer think about the electric car are they
excited about it? Do they enjoy driving it? What is
it that interest them? There we know if we can
get a customer inside the cab and behind the wheel,
it's game over and it's so exciting for me when
I can sit in a cab with someone who's never driven,
(06:39):
you know, an electric vehicle and it's almost like their
eyes just light up. It's like being a Disney world
and you go on that first you know, space mountain
ride or you know, you get to have this incredible
experience that you weren't expecting. That's the feel of it
and I think I can describe it, but until you
actually experience it you can't get the full appreciation. So
(07:00):
does the test drive take on a new importance? Yes,
and it's interesting because I would say that it's maybe
a little bit more about not test driving the actual
one vehicle. It's about test driving electric but I think
initial stages is getting people to just experience it from
a category perspective of electrification. And you know, Bob, I
(07:22):
will make a really interesting parallel to this, which I
think you and I have talked about this in the past.
The parallels of US going from ice to electric are
so incredibly similar for me as going from landline when
I was at verizon, going from landline to wireless, and
you know, it's infrastructure challenges and same thing in this regard.
(07:46):
You know, wireless phones, nobody really understood why do I
really need it? Until there was that need or you've
got the first experience. There were differentiations, you know, between carriers,
just like there's differentiation between the vehicles and the design
line and the overall structure of the vehicle. But really
out of the gate it's getting those people who say,
(08:07):
I don't really understand what the buzz is all about.
They just need to experience electric. So talk a little
bit about the difference in strategy. How do you contrast between,
you know, the pure electric car companies and the other
auto giants that are also making a shift? What sets
forward apart? Well, I think number one, are hundred and
(08:27):
nineteen years of experience and know how an expertise sets
us apart from many of the startups. Number one, because
we understand the discipline that goes into, you know, building
vehicles and building quality and building vehicles that people really want.
(08:47):
You know, we've been making seats inside the vehicle and
interiors and paint and all of the metal for years
and years and years, and now with a lot of
the the startups, those are all learning curves. Right now.
They're doing a lot of other things that we, as
an o e m, are just now really starting to perfect,
(09:07):
which is digital and, you know, transforming software and creating services.
You take the competitors, that are the startups. That's where
they started and then they built a shell around it,
whereas we're the complete opposite of that. You know, the
know how and the expertise that we have of building
quality vehicles for safety and other things and making it
(09:28):
so that it's the interiors or pleasure and it gives
you that that incredible welcoming sense when you step inside.
Now we're having to combine that with the know how
of digital expertise and software, as well as understanding the
hardware side. So it's a really interesting kind of balance
of what we're seeing. So I want to take a
(09:49):
step back and talk about the car. Second most expensive
purchase after a home, and more people obviously on a
car than own a home, something most people use a
lot every day. Often it's a part of work as
well as getting the work. How do you see this?
Fundamental relationship of a car and the customer. I see
(10:09):
the relationship evolving dramatically. I'm not sure if you'll remember this,
that when I first took the job, you and I
were having a chat about, you know, the excitement of
what this role could be and how exciting from a
time frame, you know, of coming in and the transformation
and disruption. And one of the things you and I
talked about was, you know, it's a lifestyle and really
(10:32):
wanting to embrace becoming a lifestyle brand, and I really
believe that's one of the biggest pivots for us right now,
because lifestyle brands become part of your everyday life. We've
been that, but it's been more in a functionality Um
component versus it truly being in a surprise delight but
(10:53):
your everyday moments. We now have the opportunity to truly
make this ecosystem, you know, that is connected digitally to
help create experiences. That transforms us into a lifestyle brand
and so that, to me is a real massive pivot
from a marketing perspective and also one that starts to
(11:15):
introduce a very different relationship with our customer. And there's
a very different customer when we're talking to our retail
customers versus our commercial customers, the vehicles that create that
are part of work, that become part of our commercial story.
There's a very distinctive purpose and capabilities and productivity that
(11:36):
we need to ensure that we're creating on behalf of
that customer. And so we're taking all of those pieces
and saying then, you know what, how do we continue
to lean in on that and create this lifestyle brand
that becomes an ecosystem for you, as a owner and
as a customer to forward versus it just being sheet metal,
(11:56):
and that's a really unique place for us to lean into.
You know, it's interesting coming post pandemic. I think all
of us, every company, you're looking at what is the
new work environment? We know it's not going to be
what it was, and at our place I think we
are seeing so many of our folks using their car
as sort of a mobile office. If you will, can
(12:18):
you give us the download on the connected car? And,
as you mentioned, twenty years ago a mobile phone was
for making calls. We certainly moved our phone from making
calls to managing our life activities. What do we have
in store for us with this car of the future. Yeah,
I think that what we have in store is very
similar to what we've seen in the transition from, you know,
(12:39):
cell phones are being sent to end and then the
transition to taking photos, and then the transition to data
and utilizing the Internet and now managing, to your point,
pretty much multiple aspects of your life, working and personal.
The other interesting thing that I think here is the
vehicle has always been more geared towards the draw iver,
(13:00):
not as much to the passengers. You're starting to see
that change inside the vehicle now. I think that that's
where this pivot starts to happen very quickly, because content
can be consumed in many different ways, in shapes and
forms inside the vehicle. I start to look at it
more if it's your office from a commercial standpoint, where
we're obviously putting in even in our fund fifty trucks,
(13:22):
we have a desk that can fold out, you can
actually do your paperwork and so forth in the comforts
of the cab. We do that with the back and
the tailgates where we create services for you to be
able to to obviously work. But you're singing that same
exact thing on the retail side. Of the house, where
it's becoming a lot more integrated into your multiple facets
of your life. Can you take the best Webex call
(13:44):
from your car? Yeah, you should be able to do that.
Can you multitask if you're sitting, you know, stationary somewhere
where you can leverage the screens in the car? Yes,
you should be able to have that capability. So I
think that's really where this connectivity and the data that
we can capture to better predict those moments for you,
you know, just as our phones have become that that's
(14:06):
really where I believe we have the most opportunity and, candidly,
from a customer standpoint, is super exciting. Moral Math and
magic right after this quick break. Welcome back to math
and magic. Let's hear more from my conversation with Susie deering.
(14:30):
I'm want to go back in time to get some
context on you. You're from Miami. moved to Atlanta when
you were fourteen, two cities that have major transformation since
that time. Can you paint the picture of that time
and those places? Absolutely, growing up in Miami, I was
still born into a family that was a southern family.
My family was from Kentucky, but we lived in Miami
(14:52):
and Miami had obviously so much vibrancy to it. I
grew up very low middle class, but I would have
never been able to tell you that Bob a child
because I felt like I had a wealth of love
and support. So I never felt like I did without
and that love and support. You know, when my mother
made the decision that she felt like it was better
for us to move to Atlanta, she was doing it
to give us a better wife. She felt like that
(15:14):
she could get a job, she was a primary breadwinner,
she had been married twice and she had four kids
that she raised on her own. You know, managed to
go to work and cook and clean and take care
of us and ran us back and forth to events
and everything else. And I had a very tight knit
family and my grandmother and I were very, very close,
my aunts, we were very close. So when we made
the move, the entire family made the move. Everyone made
(15:35):
the move to Atlanta. I had always thought that I'd
live and die in Miami because that's what I knew
and I loved it. And then when we moved when
I was fourteen, where we moved in Atlanta was just
a suburb called Roswell. It was such a quaint community
and everything was wrapped up in that community. When I
lived in Miami, we can I commuted to school because
my mom wanted to put us in a private Christian school,
(15:57):
so it was a long commute. Um then all of
a sudden I lived and went to school and my
my whole world was around the city, this little Roswell,
and I fell in love. It was just easy. I watched,
you know, my mom flourished from a professional perspective. She
just had a lot more opportunities and it was just
(16:17):
really fascinating, you know, to watch that as a child
and candidly as a young woman, to see such a
strong woman who had managed through so much hardship and
came out on the other side of that. And I
think that, to me, is what when I think back
in those two kind of moments in my life, Gosh,
I feel really blessed. Well, it sounds like your mom
(16:40):
is the major influence, but what other major influences were
at work that created the you of today and what
in your childhood would best predict what you are today
in business? Yes, my mom was a huge influence. My
grandmother was a massive influence, she ran a company she
we're gonna gift shop when I was younger, called the
(17:02):
Bee Hive in Miami Beach and as a child I
can remember, three and four years old, going to the
bee hive that I was so excited to watch her
work and she'd give me jobs like ompening up the
packages that would come in, helping sort, you know, all
the items. Gosh, I loved the adding machine. I remember
as a child learning the old fashion adding machine. I
learned how to do that really quick because I loved
(17:24):
the sound of it, like when she would be doing bookkeeping.
And then even it was so silly. I can remember
when I was in second grade we had our desk
like you would do boardwork and Bob I would literally
set my desk up like an office. I would pull
out things and set it up. My teachers would always
ask what I was doing and I'd be like it's
(17:44):
my office, and then I'd go to work. I would
do my board work. So I think that it was
just always inherently in me. I think some of the
other influences were when I was in Atlanta, my aunt
worked for the Coca Cola Company and she worked in
marketing and I can remember early on just being so
mesmerized by the customer stories that she would tell and
(18:06):
the product introductions that she was working on, and I
fell in love with it. It was like a good novel.
Every Sunday night, when we had our family dinner, for
her to come to the House and tell the stories
of what she was working on just felt like I
was reading a good book. So I think that those
were bits and pieces of it. But you know, there's
many people in my life that I look at, mainly women,
(18:26):
strong women in my life, but you know, as my
career started, were you know even you know, I worked
all the way through high school. I paid my way
through college. There are so many people along that journey
that I just stopped and think about often and they
don't even probably realize how big of an impact they had.
You have this, as you probably well know, your reputation.
(18:49):
Have this infectious smile and you're always seen as this
really positive person, positive frame of mind. Where did you
get that? I think I get that from my faith,
which came from my grandmother. Oh Gosh, you want to
talk about a smile. She had an amazing smile and
she had these blue eyes that just absolutely sparkled when
she smiled and she was always that person that you
(19:12):
went to, you know, with whatever challenge you faced, you
went to her because the very first thing that you
would see is that smile would open up and it
just embraced you. You know, you could talk about some
really challenging and troubling things, but there was always that warmth.
When I look back, I feel like that spirit, in
that mindset really did come from her. My Dad was
(19:33):
a methodist minister, so I always have a great interest
in religion. Did you grow up with it, did you
discover it or did it discover you? I grew up
with it and then I would tell you that I
discovered it. It was part of our rituals. As a child,
we were in church every Sunday morning, very often Sunday evenings,
and back again on Wednesday nights. But I think, Bob,
(19:55):
when I graduated from college, I remember feeling that there
was this void and that's when I would say that
I feel like I discovered it. I really discovered what
I had always had but all of a sudden had
such incredible purpose. Late eighties, early nineties, you went the
University of Georgia, you studied advertising. Were you preparing for
(20:16):
this career? I wasn't preparing necessarily for this because, wow,
I had no idea. I was preparing for Disney. I
wanted to get a university of Georgia, I wanted to
be an advertising and marketing major and I wanted to
work at Disney, and I did that. That was what
I was preparing for. Ob Honestly, I did those three things,
(20:37):
and I mean I wouldn't have traded it for the world,
because it was the best stepping stone for me to
really truly get a sense of customer and marketing and
the empower of experience and brand right fresh out of college. Well,
you actually worked with customers. You were on the front
line there and some of your jobs, or at least
(20:59):
part of the job. Yes, in fact, I did my
internship with Disney and the college program which they put
you into the parks. You're either working attractions or food.
I worked at the emporium on Main Street and so
you had day to day interactions with the guest and
then when I came back, I was brought back on
a program called career start. So I came back in
(21:19):
the same thing and they put you back out into
the park, because at that point in time you could
never have just walked into the marketing group, and it
was there that I met the director of marketing who
invited me to come in and, you know, see what
it was all about, and that's what opened up the
door to my marketing career at Disney. After Disney, you
worked at on Atlanta Ad Agency, where you worked on
(21:41):
the air touch salut or account, and then you joined
verizon in two thousand and one. Did you see this
huge Telco Revolution coming? No, I definitely did not. In fact,
the funny little secret of that is when I left
Disney and I went to the agency side, I had
never thought of myself being on the agency side, but
I realized at that point in time that it was
(22:02):
good for me to understand the full aspects of marketing
and advertising and seeing on both angles. So I went
to the agency side. I was working on Atlanta Braves
and new business and they came to me and said Hey,
we think that we really would be great working on
the air touch business, and I laughed because I was like,
oh Gosh, how boring. I remember thinking this is awful.
(22:24):
I just went from entertainment too. Now I gotta go
work on this wireless stuff. Well, needless to say, I
was a little wrong on that one because I quickly
realized it was anything but boring. But I didn't see
it at first, I really didn't, but I will tell
you it quickly came. I was right there at day
(22:45):
one when the true transformation from a wireless standpoint started,
and as soon as you saw it taken off, it
was like, okay, this is a rocket ship. We gotta
hold on. What did those lessons at that moment tell
you about a connected car revolution? You mentioned a couple
of them, but it seems to me that probably of
your background, that this probably is the most relevant to
(23:08):
what you're doing today with a connected car. It definitely
is the one real obvious place that I look at
and think marketing wise is the customer pain points. Dropped
calls was one of the biggest areas of pain for
the customer because you could give me this device, I
could pay this money, but now I can't even hold
(23:30):
a call for very long because that infrastructure, the network quality,
wasn't there. We're in that same exact place when I
look at the shift from, you know, combustible engines to
electric because infrastructure is a barrier. You know, the mindset
of you know, understanding how to utilize the vehicle the
(23:50):
right way, the services, what we provide from a service perspective.
There's all pain points and barriers there that are very,
very similar to the same thing that we saw on
the arless side. Left Verizon, you did a short stand
at home depot and then you took over a CEO
of the largest digital advertising agency in the southeast. How
did it feel making the jump the CEO and taking
(24:13):
on the ultimate P and l responsibility, and any advice
from that you'd give folks making that jump for the
first time? It's funny because one of the very first
responses I had when I got the call from my
dear friend Dave Pinsky about the role, I said, I
don't know anything about running an agency or a company.
He was like, what are you talking about? Yes, you do.
You've been doing this your entire career. I just need
(24:35):
you on the other side of the table for once.
And my husband was the first one who looked at
me and said, why are you shutting yourself down so fast?
You can do this. You got it, and I think
that's my advice to people, especially females, we are trained
to make sure that we were protecting ourselves right like
not putting ourselves into places that we feel like that
(24:57):
we could be exposed. And I've learned you have to
push yourself to those uncomfortable places because you'll never grow
and you'll never learn and you'll hold yourself back from
so much good opportunity if you don't get uncomfortable. Ebay,
you became CMO in two thousand fifteen. You moved to California.
(25:17):
I mean you really went into your discomfort zone. You
were all in. I remember your time there and wow,
are you articular about it. What attracted you and what
was the biggest challenge there? That obviously got you excited.
What attracted me there was how Lawton, who I had
worked with for a very short period of time at
emp depot and he and I just hit it off
(25:39):
and stayed in touch. When I had left emp depot
and went to Moxie. He took the job as president
of ebay right after the paypal split, and so he
called and said, Hey, look, I'm out here and I
really want you to come join me as the CMO.
It was really exciting because at that point in time,
because of the split from paypal. It was giving a
new life to Ebay. Ebay had been giving everything to
(26:03):
build paypal for so long and that now it was
time to put the time and the money and the
energy back into building Ebay and the brand and repositioning it.
And so the opportunity was just phenomenal and I kept thinking,
there's no way I can't make that move to California.
I had said no too many Disney jobs in the
past that would have taken me to California. And at
(26:25):
this point my daughter was a second semester junior in
high school and my son was at seventh grader and
we had already moved a couple different times before, and
so I thought this is not gonna be good. She's
not going to talk to me for the rest of
her life and moved across the country and shockingly enough,
I offered it up to Madison. I said here's the
opportunity that has come to me. She said, mom, you
(26:46):
should absolutely go take a look at it. I would
be all supportive because I'm going to go to college.
So what's the difference? I just make it sound like
that I go one year earlier, which blew me away,
and so I did. I went out, they were all in.
I was all in. So let's talk something about your philosophies.
What role does corporate culture play for you and how
do you design it and use it? Corporate Culture is
(27:09):
challenging because there's so many different flavors of it. I
think the part for me and my philosophy is I
need to be true to my leadership style and I
want to ensure that I'm building an organization and a
team that doesn't lead from fear, but they lead from Opportunity.
I want to ensure that there's a safe place to
(27:29):
where you know there can be very honest conversations, because
one thing I will tell you that has always been
very evident to me is in order for there to
be transformation, you have to have respect and you have
to have transparency and you have to make sure that
everybody feels that they're aligned. And I may not be
able to influence that across the entire corporation, but if
(27:51):
I can establish that within my own team and influence
the teams around me, then great, but I won't falter
from really making sure that I can at least establish
that piece of it that I can have direct influence over.
How about diversity? What's the special power that comes to
a company from a strong focus on diversity and inclusion? Well,
(28:14):
it becomes a secret power because, I mean, if you
imagine that you can bring in diverse thinking and diverse
people and cultures and backgrounds and really apply it differently
to your to one just you personally, it makes you better,
it makes you a better leader, it makes you a
better human. I know there's so many stats out there
(28:36):
about the more diverse the leadership team is, the more
profit the company sees. Candidly, I feel like that we
still treat it as a pet project and I don't
think that's what it is. It's part of your strategy
and it's part of how you just operate, think and perform.
I know you put a great value on family. How
do you manage that work life balance? Well, I first
(28:59):
realized that it isn't balancing. If I was striving for
something impossible, that was never gonna, you know, gonna help Um.
I do look at it as making sure that there's
as much harmony and that I can, you know, live
up to the priorities that I set for myself and
I'm very straightforward with my team about that and to
(29:20):
those that I work with that my priorities are God,
family and work in that order. If the first two
things get out of whack, the third thing gets really
messed up. And so as long as I can keep
myself honest to that, and I expect even my team
members and my family to hold me accountable to those priorities,
that because my guide post, doesn't mean that there aren't
long hours there, doesn't mean that there's not moments that
(29:42):
I have to pull away from the family to take
care of something. It's just that I do that with
respect and understanding as much as I possibly can. Can't
tell you get it right all the time by any means,
but you know, I also expect that I get back
those moments and being present when I am with my family,
because if I'm doing that for work, then it at
least expected that I can make sure that I'm doing
that back for my family. Let's go back to Ford,
(30:06):
one of the Great American Business Success Stories. Very rich
backstory about a founder whose family is actually still central
to the company, very rare in business. How have you
found it and how did you find your way into
that very tight neck club? There's something very, very special
(30:26):
about the forward family that I don't even know that
I can truly put full words to explain it. You
mentioned earlier, you know, coming into auto industry, which I
am not. That's not my background, as we've just established.
The other thing was I came into Ford during covid
every one of my interviews was conducted via video and
(30:51):
what I found really fascinating was immediately, I mean even
through the interview process and then even my first week
on the job, Bill Ford reached out, as at Soul
Ford reached out, Elana Ford reached out, each family member
reached out to create a personal connection and that was
mind blowing to me. It's really pretty special and something that,
(31:13):
you know, I had the pleasure of speaking with bill
before I took the role and I was amiss, a
little kind of awe struck, if you will, and now
just to think that, you know, it's an every day
that involvement that the Ford family has in one way
or another is really very unique and special and it's
truly what I look at and say it's one of
the key differentiators for us as a brand, not just
(31:36):
as an automotive company, but as a brand, because there's
a signature, a Ford signature that is stamped on every
single one of our products and there's a Ford Signature,
a human signature, that I get to see prominently on
the building and prominently in every artifact within our company
that just keeps reminding you of the humanity, the humanity
(31:59):
that are and stands for. You, as you mentioned, started
your job in the pandemic. What did you discover during
that experience that has changed really the work conditions, and
what of those change work conditions do you think are
probably permanent and positive changes to the new work environment?
(32:20):
I think the biggest thing for me was that it
taught me very quickly the power of relationships and breaking
the screen. I immediately jumped on a plane two weeks
into my role. Even when they told me headquarters was
closed and that I couldn't come into the building, I said, okay,
we're still going to let me into the city of Detroit,
so I'm coming. So I I came here. I said,
(32:43):
I don't care, even if I just stay in the
hotel and I work all day, it doesn't matter. I'm gonna,
you know, reach out to people to see if we
can go on walks, and I did. I started meeting,
you know, other team members. I was able to go
into the facilities that you know, we still had front
line workers, even a pete see into our production facilities,
and so I dove into where I could because I
(33:05):
knew for me, it's not just that I was coming
in during the pandemic. I'm coming into a company that
has most people. The longevity here is like twenty five years. So, Bob,
I was walking into relationships that were deep, deep rooted relationships,
and I could be the organ that they completely spit
(33:27):
out if I wasn't careful and didn't take it with
the same energy and pride of understanding that I needed
to learn and that I needed to acknowledge and I
needed to be part of this culture and this family
of people. I can't let you leave today without asking
you if you could give your twenty one year old
(33:48):
self some advice, what would it be? Don't be so
hard on yourself. I think very often I'm probably my
worst critic, which I like in many respects, but I
think some times I beat myself up way too much.
And I've talked often about the impostor syndrome, because it does,
it festers that you know it'll infester this thing of
(34:10):
Oh my gosh, I'll doubt myself. If I could be
my twenty one year old self now. I wish somebody
had given me that advice and almost kind of saved
me for myself. In many regards. We end all episodes
of math and magic with a shout out to our
heroes and influencers, and we break it into two categories.
Those who are the greats and looking at the world
(34:31):
of business through analytics, we call those are the math people,
and those who see the world or business through the
prism of wildly creative ideas, call them the magicians. Can
you give me your choices for the shout out for
the math side person and the magic side person? Absolutely
my math side would be Gary Vynerchuk. I think he's
(34:54):
just amazing. Great Business Person, great marketer, Great Leader. He
really has just a special combination to him. And on
the magic side, the person who comes to mind, and
this is really very funny, is Ryan Reynolds. I have
been absolutely amazed by someone who is very skilled, creative,
(35:17):
talent Um. One of my dear friends works for him
and very closely is his his partner, and I just
had been so shocked because there's a lot of obviously
you know, actors that try to get into other professions,
but he has such a skill and creativity to him
that he's created almost new Ryan Reynolds lookalikes or kind
(35:39):
of little models because of just how many different businesses
he's been able to really expand himself into. So I
really admire that. Susie, you have had a great career
and I'm inspired and challenged so many folks along your journey.
Thanks for sharing your insights and experiences and congrats on
all your successes. Thank you, Bob, and you've been a
phenomenal partner or a mentor for me, so I really
(36:01):
appreciate it. Here are a few things I picked up
in my conversation with Susie. One, turn challenges into opportunities.
The pandemic has affected every business, and forward is no exception.
During this time of change, susie is helping forward adapt
(36:22):
to consumers needs by creating new offerings that transformed forward
vehicles into mobile offices and match this new behavior. Two,
history does repeat itself. To develop the marketing strategy for
electric cars at forward, Susie is borrowing from retirement for rising.
When the mobile phone replaced the wire line, susie learned
(36:44):
the principles of getting consumers to make that transition is
the same no matter the technology or product. Three, get uncomfortable.
Susie's biggest piece of career advice is to speak up
about your biggest ideas, even if it scares here. It's
the only way that you can truly grow and four,
(37:04):
less work life balance and more work life integration. Instead
of separating the most important parts of your life, integrate
them into how you drive your business. This has been
a successful strategy for both Susie and at Ford, where
the influence of the Ford family brings a powerful layer
of humanity and continuity to the company. I'm Bob Pittman.
(37:27):
Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so
much for listening to math and magic, a production of
I heart radio. The show is hosted by Bob Pittman.
Special thanks that Susan Ward for booking and wrangling. Are
Wonderful Talent, which is no small fiel Marissa Brown for
pulling research, our editors, Derek Clements, Mary do and Ryan Murdoch,
our producer, Morgan Levoy, our executive user, Nicky eat word and,
(37:50):
of course, Gail Rhul Eric, Angel Noel and everyone who
helped bring this show to your ears. Until next time,
Host
Bob Pittman
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