Driving Culture Change in the Automotive Industry with Jon Husby

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This episode is brought to you by Lockton. Lockton redefines business insurance and people's solutions with a personal touch. Their global team of 11,000 is driven by independence, not quarters, to tailor success for your business. Discover the Lockton difference, where your goals become their mission. Independence, it's not just how you think but how you act.

Today is a very special episode of the Automotive Leaders Podcast. We are live at ADAC here in Grand Rapids, Michigan. What's different about this episode is I have had the opportunity to walk through this beautiful facility and actually see and feel authentic leadership in action. You may know ADAC, they're known for vehicle access systems. They're known for door handles, but they are, oh, so much more than that, and they are well on their way on their transformational journey in terms of culture. I'm here. I see it. It's all around me. So, let's get inside the mind of the leader, the CEO of ADAC. Today, we welcome to the show, Jon Husby. Jon, welcome to Automotive Leaders.

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But, I'll tell you, talking about being an imperfect leader early on, and even when I went to college, and my wife joked with me all the time, you were in every single club, and you wanted every single title. And there was a part of my early leadership days that were a bit of that chasing the title, chasing the recognition. And what I started to learn eventually over time was it can't be about that; with great power comes responsibility, too. And you need to be able to be that more humble, vulnerable leader. Once I started to get that, the whole world of leadership changed for me. It became about working with others, empowering others, always trying to learn, etc. And so, this journey as I went through my college days of being involved in a lot of clubs and organizations, I was so blessed that I'll be in college to be able to go into four different internships, and it was those internships that I was able to work with amazing leaders early in my career. And these were leaders who would sit there and they would take the time to coach you. They would take the time to explain. They would say it's okay to make mistakes. How powerful as a person entering the early stages of their career to be able to have that kind of guidance to know, okay, it's going to be okay? Now, it didn't always stay that way. I went into my professional roles after that, and some of those were command-and-control cultures that I lived in for parts of my career. And what I found was, sometimes, part of leadership is figuring out what doesn't work is just as valuable as what does work. And I've had some amazing opportunities to learn. So, I went through my career. I had some amazing mentors along the way. My early days at DENSO, I had moved from HR and communications at a manufacturing site, moved into HR headquarters, moved into sales when during my Denso days. And I had an amazing mentor who would literally sit there and say, "Listen, I want to help coach you. Don't be afraid to ask any questions." And what I found, Jan, is I wanted to get to work early, not because I felt like I had to earn the stripe of the hours, but it was because I knew that that's probably my best chance to meet with that person and learn from that person, have that direct mentoring experience. And so, going through those days, I learned how to develop teams. I was one of the early youngest managers at DENSO and continue to grow my career. I then had this entrepreneurial streak. And I said, you know, hey, I'm in my upper twenties. I had a company called Tele Atlas come after me and say, "You have navigation experience." And this is back when navigation was only in 1 percent of cars at the time, right? Now, it's in all cars; it's just brought in mostly from your phone, right? But it was back when it was only like 1 percent install rate. And this company came after me, Tele Atlas, and they said, "We want you to start up automotive North America. We want you to open an office." And here I am going, I'm confident. I can do anything, right? And that's really what I went to go approach was I'm going to try this new thing. I hope I don't fail. I know I have a good background, and I can always go back to the big Tier Ones if something happens, right? And it was that opportunity where I really learned you got to be willing to try some things. And I was able to build this great team. I was able to build a team of people that were like-minded entrepreneurial people were in. And it was, frankly, some of the most fun I've ever had in my career, where it was truly a clean sheet of paper, and I try to bring people in to drive change, drive new business, and create something. And we did a great job. We grew it through the aftermarket. We then moved into direct automotive, which took a long time to go to the market to get there, and grew that business. And then, from there, I was given an opportunity. So, we liked what you've done here. Would you take over Europe as well? And I literally was going back and forth two weeks at a time, back and forth to Europe. And that was really my first entree, even though I'd worked with customers all over the world, and it was my first time leading people in a different region. That further gave me the understanding that a one-size-fits-all leadership doesn't work. You've got to adapt to the people, even within a culture, you know, in a particular country, you have to change your style. And I had to do that. And then, come along TomTom acquires Tele Atlas. And now, I'm in a whole other world. I'm moving over to Europe with my family. We're experiencing that expat life. And I'm having to relearn even there, starting to manage teams across Japan and China, in Italy and Germany, France and the US, and all over. What a great opportunity, but a great challenge to really change my leadership style. And so, I learned, again, along the way, what works and what doesn't work is pretty powerful. But every single one of those steps leading up to that point was really about how I continue to grow as a professional to be able to take more P&L General Management. And so, from there, I went into Harman International, a big Wall Street type company at the time, right? Very focused on the quarter. There are those companies that are out there. And that was a very different situation for me where I learned from some amazing leaders against some things to do some not to do, but it was still this important thing in shaping me as a leader because I learned how to be able to still deliver the results, but be genuine in doing it and not selling out who I am, right? And so, for me, it's about how do you get in there and have that authentic experience and not have to sell yourself out. Again, I'm not perfect; I've made mistakes along the way, but I've learned from those mistakes, and it's really helped me. I went on to a Chinese-owned German, wholly-owned German entity in SEG used to be at Bosch. And I stepped into that realm within SEG as the CEO of North America, really to drive all general management pieces. Still a very heavily German-influenced type company, but I had to change the culture. I was tasked with the need to make this profitable. We need to grow this business. And it was through that. And some of this, frankly, was just on-the-job learning. And I got into it, and it was really about it. I quickly had this opportunity with a particular customer, and they said, "We've had a problem with one of our suppliers. Can you help?" And my team was like, "Oh, they'll never work. It's going to take us three years to launch a program." I said, "Hold on, step back. Let's say how not no." And how do we do this? And the team all of a sudden took a breath and they say, "Oh, it's going to be okay to not necessarily follow the normal." I said, "That's right. Let's go tell the customer how we can do this." Now they have to tell us whether they're going to let us do it in that way. And what did we have within 90 days? We had a part ready to go. It's not three years. It was just a really refreshing, different mindset for that culture. And that started us on a path at SEG to start to change things, to start to think about how we innovate better. How do we become more entrepreneurial? How do we work together in a different way? Stop putting self-imposed limitations. And then, I was really blessed with the opportunity as the first non-family member CEO here at ADAC, a great family business, two great families involved here, and they came to me because of that experience at SEG, where I was able to transform cultures and really try to get people thinking. You think about the auto industry, Jan, a lot of people have struggled from the pandemic. It's been a tough period. You have the pandemic, you have semiconductor shortages, you have the Ukraine war built in there, you have this thing called the UAW strike. And oh, by the way, in the middle of all of this stuff, just after I joined, we had a cyber intrusion, as well, here at ADAC. And so, what a massive amount of tough four years for the people. So, I've had to come in as chief cheerleader to work on the morale, change some things, and keep things moving. Every single one of these steps have been amazing building blocks for me, and I embrace learning every single day. I mean, even this week here, I've had numerous lessons from people of how to think differently, networking with my peers, etc. So, every single step is important in that journey.

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We have got to transform the culture because we have to operate in this industry at a level of speed and efficiency that we have never seen before. We have five generations in the workforce. We're dealing with millennials or old hat now. We've got Gen Z in the workforce, and now we've got Gen A coming up right behind that. We cannot follow the old ways of culture and leadership. Jon, I don't know what I need to do to convince everybody else to get with the program. You're clearly well ahead of it.

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The other one is mindset. And I'm a big believer that too many times, people put self-imposed limitations on themselves and on the organization. And there has to be a different mindset. And so, when I walked into the organization, great family business, great familial type feeling when you walk through here, but the reality is we as an organization needed to make some harder decisions. We needed to really hone in on thinking differently, and that has been a massive transformation to get the mindset to step away from the glory days to how do you move faster? How do you make decisions? How do you say "how" not "no"? How do we go and approach things not from a subservient way, but solving for us as ADAC, right? We talked about "Solve for next," but we have a lot of take lines that go with it. And solving up for us, part of it, is where we have to stand up and represent ADAC properly when we're having discussions with our customers, when we're having discussions with our partners in the supply base, et cetera. And so, mindset is completely there. Just last week, we had our partner day. We did a little bit fireside chat with our Head of Procurement. I answered the question and challenged, but I first challenged the ADAC team, and I said, "I'm expecting full transparency and trust between our procurement team and our partner base." And this cannot be a transactional type piece. So, this isn't just inside our company. This is about how we're starting to interact with our customers and how we're starting to interact with our supply base as well. And it's changing, it's really changing the way, but the mindset piece is also very important for me.

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