What do you think the biggest challenges facing businesses in the future will be?

I think it’s the rapidness of change. And two things in particular. One, is how customers get information. Today there are so many, many different sources, and even those that have gone away have come back. It’s just a plethora of resources. So as a business, it’s really hard to keep up. We’re always trying to figure out, how do we talk to customers in the way that is most relevant to them, that is most timely for them, that is most important to them. Customers today could have any number of different ways that they acquire information. I even think about myself. I might get information from a podcast or a social media channel. So, I think that the plethora of information sources and how rapidly they come on board, is one big challenge.

The impact that they can have is the other side of it to me. Whether it’s media sources, news sources or new tools and other resources that are available to us, they are expediting things so quickly. For years we have been looking at building up the perfect ecosystem of tools to use. Some of them are web-based. Some of them are databases. They all work together. And then AI has come in and changed everything in one fell swoop, So we are now gathering data and information and opinions from completely different sources. Businesses are still over here trying to catch up and trying to keep on track with this plan that they’ve built and keeping up with all these new tools and resources that are coming upon us, while trying to get real focus. And then, just when you think you got it, boom, you have to completely revise how to do things. 

It’s not just keeping up with it, it’s keeping up with the way that it’s changing how customers expect to get information. I talk a lot to my internal staff, my colleagues, our dealers, about how every time Amazon makes a change, we are expected to make a change. Is it because we’re competing with them? No. Is it because our customers are completely online?  No, it’s just the way that Amazon delivers sets the expectation for every brand. Everybody should have a website like that, everybody should be able to deliver as quickly as they can, everybody should be able to anticipate your needs and have it available rapidly. Customers’ choices, customers’ demands, are coming at us in such a different way than ever before, that really keeping up with it, and being able to manage that change is very difficult. So, I think, both the rapid pace of change and the type of change are probably the things that are going to be most difficult for all of us.

What do you think customers are going to want, demand and expect in future from businesses in the future?

I think that they are going to expect that you change on their terms, not yours, and customers will think the best brand in their mind is what they expect from all brands. They have less patience because they can have less patience. They have higher expectations, because they are the customer, and they are the decision maker. I had a conversation with my son yesterday. He said. “I want to start a business. How do I do that?” And I said, “Well, you have to give someone something they need that no one else can give them.” So, we talked about how when you enter a crowded market you must be able to give people something that the others can’t, and that’s getting more and more difficult every day. Because we can all offer new products to meet the product challenges. We can all offer different experiences. We can all offer different price points. But a business today cannot be a leader just on price or experience or product. You have to be everything to everybody. So, customers are demanding that if they’re going to purchase from us, we have to be everything that they want, and that net is very, very wide. And it’s very diverse, based on the age, the gender, the experience, the application that customers are using, It will be very hard for companies that are maybe more niche to survive. And it’s also hard for companies who can do all those things to be focused on what is most important and what they can do best as a business. 

I’m said to be a bit impatient, and that we’re always changing. But that’s not my desire to change. It’s the rapidness of our dealers and our customers and all those consumers that want us to change, and we have to be able to react and quickly pivot.

What do you think society more generally is going to expect from the companies in the future?

I think that we have certainly seen in recent years a desire for companies to be more than their products and services. I think that there is still a general feel by people at every level, of every political inclination, that they want companies who are going to do the right thing, They want companies who treat people well, who treat the environment well. You know, we live this belief of ‘let’s leave the world a better place for the next generation’. So, I think that society does expect brands to be good stewards, and to be thinking about more than themselves. We used to have manufacturing plants that were pouring chemicals into water streams. We corrected that not just because it hurt people, but because it’s wrong and we care about it.  I think that businesses that care have a lot more affinity to customers and to consumers as a whole. So, I think brands are expected to do the right thing and to be good corporate citizens, We’re in neighborhoods. We’re employing moms, dads, brothers, sisters, kids, and we go out into those communities every day.

What will investors and shareholders want? How might success be defined in the future of a business? 

I think that in the world of business the almighty dollar will always reign supreme. But brand is more important today than ever before, and brand is all the rest. It’s what people think about when they hear your name or see your product, in our case, skid steer loaders. They think not just about our product but about everything that our product does to help them do their job better.  There is an absolute truth that you can’t have the revenue you want if you don’t provide the experience customers need. If you don’t provide the quality, the level of product, everything that comes with it. At the end of the day, we have to make money, but we can make more money by doing it differently than others. 

Of course you must provide value back to your shareholders, and whether that’s to do with the corporate ownership structure, whether that’s public funding whether that’s debt holding, there’s a whole plethora they all want. They’ve given you money because they want money back. They want the return. But I think there’s definitely an emerging role of brand that gets us out of the crowded market of lots and lots of producers. How we show up, whether it’s in our local communities, whether it’s as a customer-first brand, whether it’s as a good person to do business with, as someone who cares about leaving the world a better place, that all matters, That is what will continue to change and emerge over the coming years. Corporate social responsibility has been here for a long time, and it will keep on going. We want to go outside and see the sky, so clear and bright. That’s something we want our kids to have, and our grandkids. We want the next generations to be able to experience something that we have been blessed with.

What do you think you as a leader will have to focus on in in future to ensure success.

For years, our long-range plan has been 5 years, and that has become more and more difficult.

For a while it was because we knew that we didn’t need 5 years to do some of this stuff.

But now it’s more because we don’t really know what’s going to happen 2 or 3 years from now. Who could have expected Covid? Who could have expected even the situation that we’re in the United States right now with an administration making very quick judgments and moves. We always in marketing said we want to be able to react. We want to be able to predict, we want to be able to know before they know. We have to be ready for whatever could come. And that is the challenge. We don’t know what could come. It’s not just about who that customer might be 3 months out from purchasing, who we want to be in front of. We have to know if they’re going through a financial crisis, how their dollars are allocated, what jobs they might have coming up. So, there’s so many more variables today than ever before, I’m sure my dad, in his days of running a business, was probably thinking the same thing. But the rate of change is so significant that we have be able to respond so quickly, make decisions quickly, move forward and trust the decision that we’ve made will take us as far as we need to go, and then still be able to pivot. I think that’s a real hard thing for businesses. Because so many have long had an approach that says “Here’s my 5-year plan. I will not veer from it,” Now, we have to be ready because something’s going to come up that makes that plan unsustainable, so you must be able to ‘zig’ so that you can ‘zag’ back and stay on course, It’s a very volatile environment that we are in as business leaders. And if we think we can just turn our gaze away from the quick changes we’re wrong, and the US administration is proving us wrong every single day.

What are the skills and mindsets you will need from employees in the future?

I split it into competencies and capabilities; I think an ability to operate in ambiguous spaces is very important. We often talk about black and white or gray and quantitative or qualitative right? You have to be able to pull together a lot of information – or not have a lot of information – and be able to get through that and make the best decision and trust that decision and champion that decision, but also not be afraid to say “oops I messed up. I didn’t have all that information”. I often say I make the best decision I can with the information I have available. If more information becomes available, I reserve the right to change my mind, So you need confident leaders who are not afraid to say “I’m wrong”, and who can pick it up and pivot and go to the next spot. You need a whole team who’s willing to think like that. Who are OK to fail fast. I’d rather fail fast than get to the very end and make it a complete failure, right? But being able to operate in ambiguity is really important. And however you do that, whether you can get in quick and crunch the data, or you can weed through the different opinions that you’re getting, you have to come up with the best plan you can pull together.

The world is changing at such a rapid rate. I talk about my son. My son is in a class at his school called Logic and Rhetoric, It was called Splendor of Truth. Now they’ve changed it because they recognize schools and colleges probably don’t understand that. But it’s about recognizing that what you hear may not be the truth, and they use an example where they said: “all cats are orange, tigers are cats, so all tigers must be orange”. Well, that’s wrong. They’re trying to teach the next generation – and it’s what I wish I could teach – that you can’t just trust one data point. You have to be able to take a lot of different data points, put them together and then make the best decision based on all the information.

So, I think we need leaders who can do that, who are willing to do that, and who are willing to learn and evolve. I think when it comes to technical capabilities, prompt engineers are going to be very important. The ability to use tools and resources quickly to adapt to the new sources that are available. Had I used my AI properly this morning, my co-pilot, I would have prepped for this meeting. I’m trying to teach myself every day: ‘Go in and prompt.’ So, I think that there is technical change management that can’t be underestimated as critical for leaders to be successful in keeping up with all that’s happening. I get a series of notes from a meeting, and I don’t have time to read those emails anymore. I need the quick AI review, the highlights that I missed. And it might be 75% right but that’s better than not being prepared at all. So, the ability to keep up with the changing times means lifelong learning and education is important on the technical and capability side. Be willing to learn and understand that you might not know everything, and you got to get better.

What do you think people will want from the future of work? 

The pandemic changed our worlds. And, for a period of time, it was hard to meet employees’ needs. I look for people to help energize me. So, I need to be able to read people and their body language.  I think that the remote workplace works really well for call centers, Get the work done. Boom, boom, you know. I don’t think it works very well for the type of leadership that I was talking about. For a while we were basically told, “well, tough luck! The employees rule. The business of remote workforce is here to stay, and you have to deal with it.” I think that now we’re getting back some kind of a balance. I think we’ll see a little level setting of this. 

I travel to Asia, and individuals there are in the office, and they work crazy hours. I travel to Europe, and it’s very different. And I think the US has gone. “Oh, let’s be like Europe. Or ‘Oh let’s be like Asia” and it’s kind of finding its balance right now to say you can do either.

Businesses will probably start to perform differently. I think that in those businesses where people have always been in office for the most part, there’s a little bit of unsaid. “if you’re not in the office, your options for growth, your opportunities for growth, are somewhat more limited because facetime is important”, If you want to grow and manage people and develop and build a team and maybe some more of the soft skills, then you’re going to have to be more in person. And you’re going to have to recognize that you have to grow and evolve in your role. 

If you’re going to go more down the technical track and maybe more high tech, then, to be honest, I wonder if those jobs will exist because of the power of AI. I think the next 12 to 18 months in the United States will be really, really interesting. As AI takes a greater hold, and, as you know, businesses can make more decisions based on changing policies. And the reality is, there’s unemployment rising with federal workforce changes. So what that looks like, I don’t. know. I know what employees want today. I think that some of what they have been able to demand is changing at the top level.  But whatever I think employees will be able to find their spot. 

I think there’s this underlying part that really got good over the last couple of years, which is it’s not work to live. It’s not live to work. It’s find a balance. It’s have a life and have a job. And there’s those of us who are going to love our job so much that kind of gets to be blurry, but if you don’t love your job, it’s still okay to do your job and do your life.

What do you think the role of technology will play? 

I would just say the mighty phone, right? Our whole lives are controlled by that. A colleague of mine said a couple of weeks ago, ‘everything starts with the system’. Whether that system is an app, the way you dial a phone number, whatever it is, it’s technology. We are so beholden to technology in our life. So it will continue to play an ever-increasing role. It’s going to get quicker and easier for consumers to use. So we, as business leaders, must be able to figure out, how do we keep up with that. You can’t ignore it. You can’t turn a blind eye to technology. You must be embracing it and getting better at it every single day. I marvel that schools are not teaching keyboarding as a required class; that says to me they’re not recognizing what future generations need. It’s different than when we were growing up. I kind of joke that my kids will probably have a chip in their head, and they won’t even need to use the phone someday.  The technology is changing fast, and it is incumbent on us to constantly keep on top of it. Never in my mind did I think my 90-year-old father would be using a smartphone, but he was on it all the time. So, it will keep changing, and we must keep changing with it.

How important: for businesses will truth, trust and transparency be in in the future.

Very important.  I’m speaking as a business leader in a business that has always focused on telling the truth and making sure that the correct facts and the correct information are out there. I came from the world of politics before, where there’s a lot of mistruth and ‘distruth’.  We recognize how important it is for customers to be able to make the best decision with the information available. We want customers, we want future employees, we want future dealers, we want future shareholders of any shape to understand who we are. So, we must make sure that we say what we know as soon as we know it. That’s very important, especially, if you want your customers to trust you.

Business leaders must consider how truthful, how trustful, how transparent they are. Because it’s integrity. That’s what builds a decision to work with someone, whether it’s an individual, or whether it’s a business. 

We say we want to grow big, but we want to act small because acting small is what’s gotten us to where we are today. I think the best businesses are the businesses that care about what people think about them. I have a colleague who I worked with many, many years ago, and he would say, “I don’t care about being liked. I care about being respected”. And I would say, ”I don’t think those are mutually exclusive”. You must have the soft stuff to have the hard stuff. So for businesses too, if you only care about the bottom line, if you only care about the financials, then you’re not going to be a business that attracts the best talent, that attracts the best employees, that attracts the best customers, 

But it’s a real hard spot to be in today, because there are very strong extremes in our world. You might work with customers that are very politically inclined one way.  You have to know who you are and how that makes it acceptable to work with people on one side and makes it acceptable to work with people on another side. We just went through an experience working with an organization that is more religiously aligned. And that’s not something that we are. So, we had to sit down and say, “What does it mean? Why are we working with different organizations?” And I think you just always have to reflect on who you are, and make sure that you stay true to what that is, and that’s what gets you in the door, and that’s what keeps you in the door.

What will the role of brand and purpose be in future?

I shared some remarks at a conference a couple weeks ago and said, “brand is not a trademark. It’s not a logo; it’s not a paint color. It’s who we are”. Brand is the external image that you share but it’s also the internal workings of who you are. It’s your DNA. We can sell products all day long. But it’s the heart that’s put into those products. It’s the heart that brings those products to customers to help them solve their problems, to keep them up and running, because at the end of the day we exist to help customers do something. And that’s what brands do.

Our brand serves a larger purpose than just getting work done. We’re helping them get work done so they can build their families. So that they can build their businesses. So they can hand that off to next generation. So we can improve communities. So we can improve recreational areas. So we can help in disasters. We have a great brand. I’m fortunate that we get to do some real, amazing things, but I also have friends who work in soft drinks, in fast moving consumer goods, in alcoholic beverages, and the best brands do more for their communities and stand for quality. They stand for a great customer experience, they stand for more than the product can stand for when it stands alone. We all are in market because we are either selling a product or selling a service. What brand does is differentiate how you do that, and how you enable consumers to be better, happier, healthier.

What is your personal wish for the future?

We all have lived different lives and different experiences, and I often say that I hope that I’ve lived this life for a reason: that what you’re going to go through, I’m here to help you. I’ve lived through that experience so I can help. I’ve helped people who are growing as females in the manufacturing world, who are growing as new executives in a leadership team. I am a true believer that I want the world to be a better place, and I think that we have an obligation to help do that as individuals and as businesses. So, my goal, if I can, is to help make someone’s experience better and make the world a kinder place.

There was an article written about me many years ago that said just do it with kindness. I’ve a big focus on ‘gotta get the job done’, we have to deliver results. But, gosh! Do it as a nice person. Just be kind.