The Automotive Leaders Podcast · Jan Griffiths

Built by People: The Cultural Transformation Behind Cooper Standard’s Global Success

·37 min·2 clips

Jeff Edwards says culture is "built from the shop floor and then understood in the boardroom and supported."

1. The Automotive Leaders Podcast episode "Built by People" examines how Cooper Standard, a 65-year-old, $2.7 billion supplier with 22,000 employees in 20 countries, approaches culture and organization design. 2. Host Jan Griffiths, who cites 35-plus years in the auto industry and a purchasing background, interviews Jeff Edwards, chairman and CEO, who refers to a 13-year tenure. 3. Edwards's thesis is that the company is "the people within it," and that culture is built on the shop floor, where about 18,000 of the 22,000 employees work, then understood in the boardroom. 4. He says culture is not an HR function: the global leadership team owns the vision, purpose and values, which serve five stakeholders (customers, shareholders, employees, communities and the supply base) and have only been tweaked in language over 13 years. 5. He describes the January restructuring into three presidents running P&Ls for fluid, sealing and an industrial specialty group, which he calls "mini CEOs," and says employees responded with "how's that going to help us do better?" rather than "what did we do wrong?" 6. He says the global leadership team is the smallest in company history, with no "scholarships" for membership, and that "we hire adults" who care about both results and how they are achieved. 7. On leadership traits from the "21 traits of authentic leadership," he stresses character, transparency, integrity, resiliency and empathy, and says leaders must be approachable and consistent to earn trust. 8. He says the industry's development timelines have shrunk from three to five years to months, that Cooper Standard has spent "hundreds of millions of dollars" on IT and financial infrastructure, and that AI will move employees beyond "Excel spreadsheets and napkins." 9. He predicts that within 10 years 50% of vehicles will be hybrid or electric, calls that an opening for fluid-systems innovation, and says a total safety culture produced zero accidents in over half of plants last year. 10. Suited to automotive executives, plant leaders and anyone studying culture-driven organizational change.

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