Thinking Forward
‘I rise at 4:30am every day thinking, “How am I going to beat my competition?” I’m fiercely competitive and so are our lawyers.’ – Bradley Gayton, general counsel, Ford Motor Company.
The legal function might not traditionally be associated with the phrase ‘competitive edge’, but many of the general counsel we spoke to are aiming for exactly that. In the here and now, the pressure is on for GCs to be watching competitors, hoping to learn from their successes and mistakes, while also thinking about how to get to the answers to tomorrow’s questions before anyone else.
‘I think of it in three phases – now, near and far. I draw a circle for “now”, I draw a bigger circle around it and I call that “near”, and I draw an even bigger circle around “near” and I call it “far”,’ explains Gayton.
