The Automotive Leaders Podcast · Jan Griffiths

From Power to Partnership: Why Automakers Have to Reinvent How They Do Business

·35 min·2 clips

A supplier refused to share data with an aerospace buyer because its commercial division's power-based mindset put half a billion dollars at risk.

1. The Automotive Leaders Podcast episode "From Power to Partnership" connects Ford's 2027 plan for a $30,000 electric pickup to the question of how automakers negotiate with suppliers and unions. 2. Host Jan Griffiths, who cites over 35 years in the auto industry, interviews Kate Vytasik, a 25-year researcher of collaborative agreements and architect of the vested methodology. 3. The core thesis is that if Ford can reinvent its product after Jim Farley's 2022 teardown of the Mach-E against the Tesla Model 3, companies can also reinvent how they do business, moving from "value extraction" to "value creation." 4. Vytasik traces the history from Michael Porter's Five Forces and the 1983 Kraljic matrix, which favored leverage, through 1980s books like "Start with No" and "The Art of the Deal," to the mid-1990s "Getting to Yes" and her own 2014 book "Getting to We." 5. She argues that power-based wins cause "shading," where the losing party works to get even, and she cites GM's concessions from the union during its bankruptcy and the union's gains in the most recent UAW negotiations. 6. On timing, she says a collaborative process using the vested methodology takes about six to seven months, with four the quickest she has seen, and she calls the idea that collaboration is slower "another myth." 7. She describes Island Health, a Canadian health authority whose relationship with its hospitalists began with 85% negative adjectives such as "adversarial, toxic, opaque, bullying" and shifted to "collaborative, win-win, trusting, transparent" after the process. 8. Vytasik explains that parties write a statement of intent with a shared vision, six social norms and desired outcomes, which flows into five rules and 10 contractual elements so that "what we wanted is actually what we bought." 9. She tells of an aerospace company with about $1 billion in spend, where a supplier refused to share data across defense and commercial divisions and went back to power-based dealing, and she picks "ego" over lack of trust as the faster deal killer. 10. Suited to supply chain leaders, procurement professionals and auto executives rethinking negotiation.

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