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Volvo Trucks against Einride. One builds the best electric truck in Europe. The other owns no truck at all. Both now sell the same thing, kilometres, to the same customers. Last week the truck industry met in Hannover. The news that matters to anyone running a transport company was not on a stand. On 15 September Lidl put a truck with no cab and no driver on a public road in Germany, warehouse to store, with a federal permit. The truck belongs to Einride, a Swedish company with no factory. It buys trucks from Mercedes, Scania, BYD and DAF, and since this month 500 from Tesla, financed by third parties. It sells Lidl the kilometre, on contract. Since May, Volvo's autonomous division moves freight in Texas for DSV. The truck maker has become a carrier. Four minutes on what this does to a transport company's next tender, and three moves for this quarter. The one page for a transport company's managing director is in the first comment. One line, please: on your routes, who owns the kilometre today? You, your supplier, or a company with no trucks?

When I was a boy, the car in our garage was a Saab 9000 Turbo. Saab is gone. Its factory was bought by a Chinese owned company in 2012. In 1984 Volkswagen taught China how to build a car. In 2023 the pupil outsold the teacher at home. In the first half of 2026, five Chinese owned groups sold 11% of the cars in Europe, third place as a bloc. Two founders, two opposite roads. BYD owned the battery. GEELY bought a school in Gothenburg and graduated its own brands from it. Both won. This episode is for anyone who runs a brand in a country, a dealer group, or a plant, for a headquarters somewhere else. Five moves, and a test for Monday. One question, one line: BYD owned the battery, Geely bought the school. Which one is your company doing in Europe?

In August 2000, General Electric was worth six hundred billion dollars. In 2018 it was dropped from the Dow Jones. In 2021 it cut itself into three. Siemens made the same cut. By choice, with no crisis, and two record years since. The GE cut was an emergency. The Siemens cut was a plan. Today the pieces are worth several times what the whole was. And the piece Siemens let go, the one that nearly went under in 2023, is worth more today than all of Siemens was in 2020. This episode is for anyone who runs a business unit, a country or a region for a headquarters in another country. Five moves before the line reaches you. One question, answer in one line: which side of the line is your part of the company on today?

Twenty years ago, Ford Motor Company was about to lose $12.7 billion, and every chart in the Thursday review was green. Nobody was lying. Optimism was safer than truth. This episode: the meeting that saved Ford, the loan Wall Street called desperate, why Rolls-Royce repeated the move in 2023, and the seven moves I use in a leader's first 12 months. Number seven is the one most leaders skip. The data got faster. The courage did not. The full guide, A Managing Director's First 12 Months, and the new First 12 Months Scorecard are on our site. If you'd rather I send them directly, message me.

Last year one of the most desired car brands on earth had the best year in its history. Record cars delivered. Record revenue. And its profit went down. That is Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A.. 10,747 cars, more than any year in its history. 3.2 billion euros of revenue, a record. And EBIT fell 8%, with the margin going from 27% to 24%. 30 minutes up the road, Ferrari sold fewer cars than the year before, and its EBIT went up 12%, at a 29.5% margin. Same road. Same year. Same customers. Exactly the same American tariffs. So the tariff is not the answer. Here is the arithmetic, and you can check it in ten minutes in their own results. Ferrari sold 112 fewer cars and made 222 million euros more. Lamborghini sold 60 more cars and made 67 million euros less. And there is a good story behind this rivalry. Ferruccio Lamborghini built tractors. He owned Ferraris, was unhappy with one, and drove to Maranello to complain. He did not get the answer he wanted. So in 1963 he started his own. Which means Lamborghini exists because Ferrari said no to a customer. 60 years later, the difference between their accounts is still about who says no. Now let me be clear about something. A 24% EBIT margin is spectacular. Bentley made 8.3% in the same year. So this is not a story about a company doing badly. It is a story about two companies doing brilliantly, and one of them going backwards anyway. That is where most of us actually live. And I know what you are thinking. You cannot cap your volume, you need it, your margin is thin so the quantity has to be big. You are right. Almost nobody can be Ferrari. But almost everybody has been through Lamborghini's year. So hear me on this one. Volume is not the enemy. Volume you do not own is. A warning too, because I got this wrong myself once. Sometimes the price should go up. But if it goes up and the customer walks, you never had a pricing problem. You had a value problem, and the price was hiding it. To Benedetto Vigna at Ferrari, one question. You came from semiconductors, not from cars. You got to see Maranello with fresh eyes once, and only once. What did you notice in that first year that nobody inside could see any more? To Stephan Winkelmann at Lamborghini, one question. If you had to give back either the delivery record or the revenue record to keep the margin, which one goes? And the same question sits on your desk. How much is every unit you have ever sold still paying you, today? Most CEOs can tell me this week's sales in seconds. Very few can answer that one. That gap is where your year is decided.

Two of the biggest tyre makers in the world hit the same wall. One got bigger. The other got smaller. Both think they are right. Michelin and Continental. Same storm, a market going soft and going electric. Then they did the exact opposite of each other. Michelin is reinventing by addition. Last year it sold fewer tyres, yet cut its debt and threw off 2.1 billion euros in cash. While everyone watched the tyre, it was building a second company, high-tech materials at close to 15% margin, higher than the tyre. A business already worth 1.25 billion euros in sales. The best time to build your second business is while the first is still strong enough to pay for it. Continental is reinventing by subtraction. It is splitting into focused parts, cutting loose everything that is not the tyre, to become one thing, the best premium tyre company in the world. The group earned 10.3%. The tyre inside it earned 13.6%. The best part was carrying the rest. So it chose to be smaller, and sharper. But a split like this is never won in the strategy. It is won in the execution, in the handoffs between teams. That is where reinvention lives or dies. Two opposite bets, and I keep coming back to two questions. To Florent Menegaux at Michelin: building the next business while the first still pays for it is exactly how it is done. The only question is commitment. Will the new engine get his best people, or just his spare attention? To Christian Koetz at Continental: choosing to be the best at one thing takes rare courage. The real test comes after the split. Can Continental become the best in the world at that one thing, and never let the distractions pull it back? Two CEOs. Two opposite bets. One test. Not the strategy on the slide, but whether they can pull it off. And the same question sits on your desk. Are you adding, or subtracting? Both can win. The one move that never works is standing still, and calling it safe.