The Automotive Leaders Podcast

Automotive built the procurement playbook. Structure, process, category management, sourcing discipline. Compressed margins forced it, and every penny had to be defended. The problem is that the same discipline that made automotive procurement world-class is now the thing slowing it down.

Phil Ideson, Founder and Managing Director of Art of Procurement, has seen both sides of that. He started his career in automotive purchasing at V...

Tariffs bought this industry a window. Ramiro Gutierrez, President of North America, ZF Group, is not convinced we are using it.

He has spent 30 years in the automotive industry, and he left it once. Aerospace turned out to be slower than he expected, with cycles running roughly five times longer, and he returned to ZF for engineering. What he came back to is a company spending around 8% of revenue on R&D and now under real pres...

In the automotive industry, we often focus on the vehicle itself, the technology within it, the smart factories, and artificial intelligence. Ford is leading the way in all these areas, even reimagining the assembly line that Henry Ford created back in 1913. However, that is not the whole story. The hardware has never been the main focus.

The real story lies in the culture; it's about how more than 100,000 individuals think, act, an...

In 1976, an 11-year-old girl from a small farm in Wales stood before a glass case in Greenwich, England, staring at strange uniforms and a document called the Constitution. The exhibition was titled "The British Story of the American Revolution." That was all Jan Griffiths knew of America, what she could see through the glass.

Decades later, she sits in the engine room of that country, in Detroit, at the heart of the auto industry.

T...

In Part 1, Jim Voss, CEO of Tenneco, took on a company in need of a turnaround. In Part 2, he hands you the playbook behind it.

This is the Tenneco Way. Not a poster on a wall. Not a slide deck someone presents once a month. It’s the operating system running a 100-year-old company with more than 60,000 people across 28 countries. And as Jim puts it, it is the company's sustainable competitive advantage.

Jim sees culture as the ...

How do you take a 100-plus-year-old automotive company with 158 manufacturing sites, operations in 28 countries, more than 60,000 employees, and over 30 brands and transform it into a top-performing company?

That’s the question at the heart of Tenneco’s remarkable turnaround story.

In less than three years, under the leadership of CEO Jim Voss and his team, Tenneco doubled its EBITDA margins, becoming a leader within its ...

Season 7 of the Automotive Leaders Podcast is officially coming to a close, and Jan Griffiths is taking a moment to reflect on the journey, the lessons, and what’s ahead for the automotive industry. In this short solo episode, Jan shares why stepping back matters, how the team is preparing for an even stronger Season 8, and why listener feedback is shaping the future direction of the podcast.

Jan also gives a preview of the po...

For the first time in 26 years of the Working Relations Index, every single North American OEM moved up the chart. Ford, Toyota, Stellantis, Honda, GM, and Nissan all scored higher than the year before. That has never happened. Not once.

In this special episode, Jan sits down with Dr. Angela Johnson, principal at Plante Moran responsible for the WRI, along with Sig Huber, Chief Commercial Officer of Elm Analytics and former supplier...

What does it really mean to lead at the highest level in the automotive industry today?

In this episode, Jan Griffiths sits down with Phil Biggs, the man quietly trusted by more than 100 CEOs across automotive and beyond. Known as the “CEO whisperer,” Phil has spent nearly a decade creating a confidential space where leaders can speak openly about the pressure, uncertainty, and responsibility that comes with the top job.

...

What happens when a 100-year-old luxury brand decides to think like a startup?

In this episode, Jan Griffiths sits down with Joaquin Nuño-Whelan, President of Lincoln, live from Newlab at Michigan Central. This is not a conversation about cars. This is about leadership, culture, and what it really takes to transform a legacy brand from the inside out.

Joaquin shares how he’s doing exactly that. Building a team-first culture roo...

The USMCA review is fast approaching, uncertainty is building across the automotive industry, and leaders are asking a critical question: Is the agreement that binds North America together at risk?

Colin Bird, the Consul General of Canada in Detroit, United States, brings clarity. This is not a collapse or a dramatic reset. It is a built-in review designed to test whether the agreement still works in a world that has fundamentally c...

Q1 was a wild ride. Tariffs. Geopolitical shocks. Supply chain chaos. And now Q2 is here, and the question no one's asking out loud is: are you walking into your quarterly review meetings with the same playbook you've always used?

Are you making decisions the same way? Operating the same way? Thinking the same way?

Because if you are, this episode is for you.

In this solo episode, Jan Griffiths lays out five things every automotive le...

Reinvention in the automotive industry is no longer optional. It is survival. In this episode, Jan Griffiths sits down with Lori Lancaster, Vice Chair of Emotiv Mobility, to break down what reinvention really looks like when you are living it, not talking about it from a distance. The old playbook is cracking, and incremental improvement will not get us where we need to go. Yet many leaders are still holding on, waiting for ...

If you had told Jan a year ago she would bring a member of Congress onto this show, she would have said you were crazy.

But this isn’t about politics.

It’s about survival.

It’s about supply chains, tariffs, China, semiconductors, and the reality that policy decisions now move faster than most production lines.

In this episode of the Automotive Leaders Podcast, Jan Griffiths sits down with Congresswoman Haley Stevens, ...

Download the full webinar slides here

Special Audio from the February 20th Seraph Webinar

Tariffs were struck down.

So why does the pressure still feel the same?

If the Supreme Court ruled against IEEPA, why aren’t costs meaningfully lower?

This special episode is different.

It is the full audio recording from the February 20th Seraph IEEPA Tariff Revocation Impact Webinar, led by Ambrose Conroy, CEO of Seraph.

In this epis...

This conversation goes straight at the tension every legacy leader feels but rarely names.

How do you build something new inside a company designed for stability?

How do you move fast inside a system built to control risk?

How do you create urgency without burning out your team?

In this episode of the Automotive Leaders Podcast, Jan Griffiths sits down with Ted Cannis, former CEO of Ford Pro and longtime executive at Ford Motor Company...

This conversation doesn’t sugarcoat anything. The auto industry is under real pressure, and leaders can’t afford denial or delay.

In this episode of the Automotive Leaders Podcast, Jan Griffiths sits down with Jamie Butters, now an independent journalist, speaker, emcee, and content creator who has spent decades reporting from every corner of the automotive ecosystem.

Jamie brings a clear, grounded view of where the indus...

Re-industrializing America sounds bold. Necessary. Inevitable.

But on factory floors across the country, automation keeps stalling before it ever delivers real value.

Robots sit unused. Projects drag on for years. Leaders know automation is essential, yet decisions stall, risks get avoided, and the same problems repeat. This episode goes straight to the heart of why.

Jan Griffiths is joined by Søren Peters, CEO of HowToRobot, a global...

2025 didn’t just challenge the automotive industry.

It exposed it.

Tariffs that shifted overnight. Another chip crisis. A sudden rethink on EVs. Then Ford dropped the bomb: nearly $20 billion in charges as it pivoted away from EVs, stranding capital across the supply chain. And on top of it all, AI is moving faster than most leaders can keep up with.

In this solo episode, Jan Griffiths presses pause on the noise and calls it wha...