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00:00:01
Welcome to The Auto Ethnographer first episode
56 Plays2 months ago
John Stech, The Auto Ethnographer, introduces the concept of autoethnography and how it became "auto ethnography" with a focus on cars. On this podcast we tell the human stories behind the famous automotive and vehicle brands, spanning continents, countries, and cultures across the globe. We unlock the mysteries of local culture, values, and approaches to success in the vehicle industry.
Derived from Tony E. Adams’ definition, "autoethnography" is a research method leaning on the experiences of individuals to analyze assumptions, culture, communication, local norms, traditions, emotional impact, and how they mesh with greater culture and society where they operate. Normally, "auto" relates to the self – as in "autobiography". But we put wheels on it and focus on vehicles.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Auto Ethnographer
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Auto Ethnographer. I'm John Steck, the host on this journey. Every week we travel the globe to bring you stories about the impact of culture on the global automotive industry. Get out your passport, fasten your seatbelt, and let's get started on this week's episode.
Cultural Differences in the Automotive Industry
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Auto Ethnographer. My name is John Steck and I will be your host on this exciting journey today and on very many more in the future.
00:00:36
Speaker
The Auto Ethnographer is dedicated towards looking at and studying culture across the automotive industry. what makes different cultures tick and what makes different cultures work and frankly not work sometimes um across the globe in an industry that is so large and seemingly monolithic yet when you scratch the surface you find out that in every location around the world it works slightly differently because of the local culture
00:01:12
Speaker
What we'll do in the autoethnographer is between myself and many guests, ah quite interesting guests, we will have a conversation about their experiences in these different countries around the world.
00:01:28
Speaker
We will touch practically every continent on the planet and have exciting conversations about culture and about how how this impacts their work in the auto industry in that particular location.
Expat and Local Interactions
00:01:44
Speaker
Now, we're going to talk to people who have come from the headquarters and are essentially expats living in a foreign land. But perhaps even more interesting, we're going to have conversations with people who are from a particular country who are hosting those expats and working for a foreign brand that is operating in their country.
00:02:04
Speaker
and how they navigate that that communication with ah with a foreign headquarters whose culture is undoubtedly very different from their own. So those are the conversations and those are the types of people that we're gonna talk to.
00:02:19
Speaker
The people that I'm trying to reach with this podcast that I hope will find this really interesting are going to be experts, people who are out there, who are professionals working internationally.
00:02:30
Speaker
And it could be the auto industry, but it could also be something very different because in a way, business is business um in many ways. And, you know, and cultural interaction is is going to be cultural interaction.
00:02:45
Speaker
So this is for the travelers, so but this is also... focused on the people who are working in a particular market, who have this, let's say, foreign brand coming into their country, where they are the host, and how do you interface with with this foreign brand?
00:03:03
Speaker
And hopefully there will be some interesting conversations so to spark some ideas how it works for you, something that that that's of interest for you in your everyday you know work life.
00:03:17
Speaker
Also trying to reach not just experienced people, but people who are just getting started out. You know, somebody who's trying to navigate being in the auto industry or or any other industry in a more international capacity, working together with people from other cultures and and trying to figure out how does that work? How can they be effective within that sphere?
Understanding Autoethnography
00:03:39
Speaker
So let's also talk about autoethnography. What is it? If I'm the autoethnographer, surely there has to be something called autoethnography. Technically there is.
00:03:49
Speaker
There is officially a a type of sociological research called autoethnography. It's always spelled as one word. um I have taken the liberty to separate it into two words because I'm focusing on the auto industry.
00:04:04
Speaker
However, the approach of autoethnography that I'm taking is very similar to the, let's say, the true autoethnography. And what is that? Well, the word auto in that case is like autobiography. It's a study of the self.
00:04:18
Speaker
and And what What autoethnography does is it literally looks at the self of a person who is in a culture, ah looking at the traditions, the norms, the customs, the communications, and then everything that goes along with the culture and figures out what is their place in it? How do they fit into that big picture?
00:04:41
Speaker
And that's why I thought it was so exciting when I came upon this concept of autoethnography, which is exactly what I want to do. I want to explore different cultures around the world in conversations, listening to people telling their stories about what they did in different circumstances around the globe and working with with different brands, different companies and and different people and cultures along their own personal journeys.
00:05:09
Speaker
So autoethnography is this study, and this is exactly the the route that we're we're going to take, having these conversations with people. um We're going to target here having a conversation with ah very interesting guests from different brands, from different countries, from different locations where they're currently located ah around the planet on a weekly basis.
00:05:33
Speaker
We're going to try to target having episodes that are about 30 to 45 minutes long with those guests. I will also throughout the week ah have one, possibly two additional episodes where I can convey some of my experiences.
John's Passion and Career Beginnings
00:05:50
Speaker
and And let me give a little bit of an introduction to myself as to what my experiences have been. So I was born in Germany.
00:06:00
Speaker
I immigrated to the United States when I was quite young, not even quite four years old. And I always knew from the beginning that I was a little bit different from my American friends.
00:06:12
Speaker
We celebrated holidays differently. We had different traditions. We had different traditions. I guess, household rules of things we could or could not do at home um that were just very different from from my friends.
00:06:26
Speaker
And so I grew up being very aware that that people from different places are very different from each other, even even if you look very much the the same. um There's something inside that ticks and thinks and and calculates things in ah in a different way.
00:06:43
Speaker
So I grew up that way simultaneously ah while I was still living in Germany and very, very small. I already learned all of the different brands, the logos on cars.
00:06:55
Speaker
So when my mother would take me to the playground in the town where I was originally born, um we would pass through the parking lot of the playground and I was already able to identify the logos on the the Fords and the Citroens and the Renaults and the Mercedes Benz and the BMWs and so on, um even at a very, very young age.
00:07:18
Speaker
and And I loved cars. I played with them when I was a boy. I had toys. I always had a car collection of scale models throughout my throughout my life um I try to always cut back that scale model collection periodically, but somehow it always manages to grow back. And I think many of you out there know exactly what I'm talking about.
00:07:38
Speaker
I'm sure you all have collections on the shelf somewhere ah behind you right now as well. Well, I turned both my my personal culture as well as my love for cars into a 30-year career in the auto industry.
Global Career with Major Automotive Brands
00:07:51
Speaker
I started with Mercedes-Benz. Mercedes-Benz was launching its factory in Tuscaloosa, Alabama area in 1996. I arrived there at that time to help launch the M-Class, which was the SUV, the first generation of that SUV. Today, that vehicle has been renamed. It's the Mercedes-Benz GLE.
00:08:14
Speaker
After Mercedes-Benz, I worked for Chrysler. At Chrysler, which was at that moment in time in the early 2000s, a company that had merged together with Mercedes-Benz under the name Daimler Chrysler, I was working at the global headquarters responsible for global volume planning um for all of the countries that were not in the then NAFTA region.
00:08:38
Speaker
So this gave me a lot of exposure to speaking to people all over the planet, discussing their sales volume plan, production volume planning, and so on. From Chrysler, I had a wonderful opportunity to have my first expat experience, which was to move to Egypt with my young family. I had two young children at that time.
00:09:01
Speaker
And to live and work in Egypt for a little bit over over one year. as the managing director of Daimler Chrysler Egypt, where I was responsible for both Mercedes-Benz and the various Chrysler brands, including Jeep, Dodge, and Chrysler.
00:09:18
Speaker
After the company split, Daimler Chrysler, I opted this time to go with the Chrysler side. I thought that there could be a different sense of adventure, a different sense of development and learning, ah going with a company that at that time didn't have so many international thinking people within the organization. I thought I could contribute more to Chrysler after the separation than I could to Mercedes-Benz.
00:09:46
Speaker
Well, the first thing the company did was to offer me the opportunity to move to Moscow. And so therefore, I relocated to Moscow for Chrysler and I worked as the managing director of Chrysler Russia for five years.
00:10:00
Speaker
At the end of those five years, I had the opportunity to shift over and work for Volvo Cars. And I was the managing director for Volvo Cars Russia for approximately two years before heading back to the United States, which I used then as a base.
00:10:16
Speaker
to lead the Latin America organization as well as as Canada, essentially all the countries in the Americas, minus the United States.
00:10:27
Speaker
This gave me a ah phenomenal opportunity to travel around and to visit much of Latin America. I had 22 countries under my purview, and I visited many of them, though not all of them, ah throughout my four years of of leading that organization.
Shift to Consulting and New Ventures
00:10:45
Speaker
Following my time at Volvo, I left the company and I started my own consulting company. That company is called Shiftgate Consulting. I still manage that company today.
00:10:56
Speaker
Shiftgate Consulting is is active in various strategic sales, marketing-oriented, commercial-oriented consulting ah activities in the automotive industry.
00:11:09
Speaker
I did take a six month break working with my consulting organization to go and work for VinFast Automotive. VinFast Automotive is the electric vehicle brand located and started in Vietnam.
00:11:24
Speaker
It is a startup company. I had the opportunity to work at the executive level at that company and and had a lot of exposure to the founder of the company and a lot of the talented young staff that they had, as as well as the and incredible breadth of international staff that they had at that point in time, who came in to help launch the company in in the the most successful way.
00:11:51
Speaker
After leaving Minfast, I went back into my consulting work, which is what I do today.
Cultural Insights and Industry Challenges
00:12:00
Speaker
And I continue to do my consulting, but I also made the decision to finally live out my dream, which is to share with more people what I find to be such an incredible thing, which which is global culture and and cultures around the world.
00:12:20
Speaker
And again, I wanted to put those all into context of the auto industry. um It could really be any business, frankly, not just automotive, but How do people interact with each other in in different parts around the world and how to do that successfully?
00:12:37
Speaker
Now, that being said, we're also going to have absolutely some cultural bloopers where people, either expats, have made really terrible mistakes from a cultural perspective. i know I know I'm guilty of that, at least on a few occasions.
00:12:52
Speaker
And also, yeah. how How do the local staff successfully or unsuccessfully manage their expat? I think there are some great stories in some of the conversations that we're going to have with some of our guests in the future.
00:13:08
Speaker
That's the autoethnographer. that is autoethnography, to look from a personal perspective at the culture and the tradition and the norms and the customs around us and put that into the context of the automotive industry and to bring the world a little bit closer to everybody who has this fascination with either auto industry or culture or a mix of the two.
Episode Conclusion and Audience Engagement
00:13:40
Speaker
So that's our first episode, just an introduction. I hope that you'll join us again. The next episode that we feature is going to have a guest and that will be announced in the nearest future who that guest is going to be.
00:13:54
Speaker
You'll find that on our YouTube channel and you're available also on other podcast channels in case you want to listen to audio. Looking forward to seeing you again next time. Keep on driving.
00:14:09
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on today's journey. I hope you found the episode both informative and entertaining. Please remember to like and subscribe to The Auto Ethnographer and leave us a rating or comment.
00:14:21
Speaker
Please visit our website at auto-ethnographer.com. You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.