You cannot pull yourself out of the swamp.

You cannot pull yourself out of the swamp.

I have used that metaphor for years when discussing performance and change with organisations. With so many familiar certainties in automotive now being challenged, it has taken on even greater significance.

Uncertainty is high. And that is precisely when the temptation to fall back on familiar answers is strongest.

OEMs and importers are making fundamental choices about technology, portfolios, distribution and dealer networks. Existing business and revenue models are losing their certainty while new ones have yet to prove themselves.

What begins with the OEM ripples through the entire value chain. This also calls into question the position of businesses further downstream: where will they genuinely add value in the future?

Meanwhile, the organisation still has to perform today. You need the existing business model to build the next one, even as parts of it are losing their former relevance.

Tomorrow's transformation must be funded by today's performance.

That is why, as a dealer group, I would not focus solely on what the OEM, importer or market is going to do. What happens within your own organisation is at least as interesting.

How much performance and value are we leaving on the table?

And that brings us back to the swamp. The longer you stand in the middle of something, the harder it becomes to look at that same reality from a distance. Assumptions become self-evident: 'That is just how automotive works'; 'this dealership is different'; 'the importer determines our margin'; 'good people simply cannot be found', and so on.

Perhaps all of that is true. But what if it is only partly true?

Why does one dealership consistently outperform another? Why does one team achieve more with comparable resources? Where are we losing margin, customer loyalty, productivity or talent without knowing precisely why?

And how much variation in performance have we come to accept as normal?

That, to me, is the swamp. Not because an outsider knows better, but because you are part of the system you are trying to assess.

Sometimes you need someone who starts not with an answer, but with a question. Someone who compares, probes and occasionally simply asks: why, exactly?

We do not know precisely what automotive will look like five years from now. But we can decide what potential to realise today and what position we want to occupy in tomorrow's changing value chain.

It is crucial to answer how much potential we are leaving untapped today that we will badly need tomorrow.

Tomorrow's organisation must be built today. And today's performance must create the capacity to do so.

Drive Performance. Create Value.