Q&A: Ford’s futurist knows kids today see status in their smartphones, not cars

There can't be many job titles out there cooler than "futurist." And earlier this week, I sat down with Sheryl Connelly, who holds that position at the Ford Motor Company.

Connelly has been with Ford for two decades now, spending a few years in marketing before moving on to cover global trends and futuring 12 years ago. Her job isn't to think about the cars and trucks of tomorrow, though. "The company has no shortage of subject matter experts in that area," she told me. Rather, it's her job to look beyond the industry, identifying how patterns and forces in the wider world will influence consumer behavior. "Those are typically slow-moving, deeply societal-rooted trends, things like aging population, increasing urbanization. But we also try to engage more with the public about micro trends (that last two to five years rather than two to five decades)."

Ford recently released its 2016 trends, a list built after a series of workshops and consultations with experts around the world. Connelly said that when work began on the current collection last year, she saw there was a lot of disillusionment out there—the economy, a rise in global violence, widespread attention to police misconduct here in the US, and so on.

"We open with a statistic that two-thirds of adults today say the world is a worse place to live than when they were growing up. That's sad, but not surprising," she told Ars. "We believe that every trend has a counter trend, so if people were feeling disillusioned and frustrated, we wondered how they'd pick themselves up in 2016."

Three themes are repeated throughout the 10 trends identified in Ford's report: inspiration, ingenuity, and identity. Disillusionment with civic and political leaders may mean we replace them with "everyday heroes" and further consider what it means to be a good citizen or neighbor. Mindfulness, an acceptance for misfits, and the recognition that we need to be better about our waste problem are more positive trends, as is the "Swiss Army Life"—a desire from consumers for the stuff that they buy to have that trifecta of quality, versatility, and durability. Other trends identified by Ford highlight the way that wireless modems and our always-connected lives are changing the workplace and our downtime in ways that most of us can identify with. For example, nearly half of adults under 35 say they feel compelled to check their work e-mail during off-hours.

To better understand what this report may mean for all of us, the humble auto enthusiasts and consumers, Connelly happily fielded our questions on everything from her background to everyone's favorite automotive future endeavor—the autonomous car. (The Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity and flow).

Ars: Outside of TED conferences, it's still quite unusual to meet a futurist. I'm curious to know—how did you arrive at your career?

Connelly: I'm a Gen Xer, so I never thought to "follow my dream," I wanted a paycheck. Originally I wanted to study art, but didn't think that was financially prudent, so I went the extreme opposite way and studied finance. That never caught on—I still don't balance my checkbook! I went to law school after undergrad because there were no jobs at the time, but even in law school I could see the writing on the wall (the impending crisis of too many law school graduates and too few jobs for them). I hedged my bets and got an MBA, and I practiced law just long enough to know I made an expensive mistake.

I don't regret it, because it fundamentally changed the way I look at the world—the steps of logical thinking and how you build a persuasive case are really strong underpinnings for how I approach the work. If you're going to dare to call yourself a futurist, you better be able to back it up. It's really abstract, it's subjective, and it's qualitative in nature, so some people might call that fundamentally flawed. So when I do put forth a trend, I try to do it with that same legal reasoning: here's my rule of trend, what's the rationale behind it, here are the implications.

I wrote to Ford to ask if I could work in tax compliance—naively I thought that was the intersection of my degrees and that they'd find me irresistible. They did not. My resume got passed around and I ended up in marketing sales and service. Even they said, "We're not quite sure why you're here," but I needed a job. I told them I was still waiting to hear from finance and they said, "Didn't anyone tell you? You didn't get your MBA from a school we recruit from, and you don't have any extraordinary work experience which would cause us to make an exception, but if you come in through marketing, you can always switch." I'm not saying they were being disingenuous any more than the army recruiter who tells you you'll get posted to Hawaii, but it was very unlikely.

I didn't think Ford would be my life's work, but I was challenged; it was all completely new to me. I worried because I'm not a traditional car person, certainly in the context of the typical car employee. I thought I would never be successful and had a crisis of confidence—if you don't truly love the product, how will you flourish in the company? I never fell in love with the product, but I did fall in love with the people. My coworkers were great, the dealers looked at me, knew instantly that I knew nothing about cars, their business, or the industry—but they patiently taught me.

Do you think that outsider's perspective is helpful in your role?

Yes, it continues to help me. Most people who come to work in the car industry have a true passion. There's no shortage of enthusiasts who love being a part of the industry, but not every customer loves their car. So when you try to tell someone that's how a would-be customer might look at it, you're basically telling them they've got an ugly baby—it's a hard message to digest.

I've come to think of my job as being a polite contrarian. If I haven't made it plain yet, I can't predict the future. It's not with the goal of proving anyone wrong, it's with the goal of trying to say "what happens if the assumptions built into our business case turn out to be wrong?"

For example, a typical conversation over the last decade has been around the assumption that millennials weren't buying cars because they didn't have the money to do so. For some, that's true. But more and more young people are saying they don't need a license. They might never own a car.

It makes perfect sense when you look across generational cohorts. For Boomers, getting a license was a big deal, and when you got your first car, it was like the gateway purchase into adulthood. Boomers continue to look at their car with all the romantic imagery of freedom and independence. Compare that to a 16-year-old today. Their gateway purchase into adulthood is a cellphone, and it happens way before they're 16—at least that's what my children tell me—but that's their pathway to freedom. The car for a boomer was the universal status symbol; young people don't feel that way.