Adaptation or Whiplash? What Startup Leaders Can Learn From Detroit's EV Retreat

Russ Powell
7 days ago
7 min read

a lone car on a long, winding road — lone vehicle on long, winding road

There are no simple villains in Detroit's electric vehicle story—and that's exactly what makes it useful.

A recent New York Times Magazine article, "The American E.V. Has Been Crushed. Will It Take the U.S. Auto Industry With It?", traces Detroit's uneven response to electric vehicles: bold investments, shifting political winds, slower-than-expected sales, canceled programs, and a renewed emphasis on the trucks and SUVs that remain highly profitable.

It's a complicated story with no easy answers—which is precisely what makes it a useful case study in Middle Path leadership and the S-Loop.

Because it isn't only about electric vehicles. It's about how organizations respond when the future is uncertain, the stakes are high, and the evidence points in more than one direction. Startup managers face versions of these questions constantly:

Are we seeing an important shift—or reacting to temporary noise?
Should we protect what's working today or invest in what we may need tomorrow?
Are we making a disciplined pivot—or changing direction under pressure?

These are the questions of leading through uncertainty—and they're exactly what the S-Loop is built for.

Here are five connections I noticed.

1. Past success can become a source of blindness

The beliefs behind Detroit's earlier success may have made it harder to recognize how the market was changing. Automakers had made enormous profits from large trucks and SUVs; it made sense to keep trusting those products and the strategies that had worked before.

But experience can quietly lead us into the Knower Trap—which appears when confidence crowds out curiosity, when we become so certain about what's happening that we stop looking for evidence that might challenge our thinking.

Startup managers face the same risk. The product that won your first customers may not carry the next stage of growth. The communication habits that worked at 15 employees may create confusion at 75. A founder who once needed to approve every decision may become the reason decisions slow down.

The problem isn't confidence. Leaders need confidence. The problem is confidence without humility.

Useful Sensing questions: What are we noticing right now across the business—in the numbers, in our teams, in ourselves—before we start explaining any of it? And what are we actually seeing in the market, as distinct from what we expect to see?

Useful Sensing questions: What are we noticing right now across the business—in the numbers, in our teams, in ourselves—before we start explaining any of it? And what are we actually seeing in the market, as distinct from what we expect to see?

2. Real constraints can become the whole explanation

The automakers face genuine obstacles. Policies change. Charging infrastructure remains uneven. Battery development is expensive. Overseas competitors have major advantages in cost, scale, and speed.

Recognizing those realities is part of good Sensing. The danger comes when external conditions become the entireexplanation: customers aren't ready, the policy environment makes success impossible, competitors have too big a head start.

That's where managers fall into the Victim Trap—not because the constraints are imaginary, but because focusing only on them obscures what remains within our influence. Startup managers have their own versions: The founder will never let go. Our customers resist change. We can't find strong managers. There's never enough time to train people properly.

Any of those may hold truth. But they don't yet tell us what to do.

A more useful question: Given these conditions, what remains within our influence?

A more useful question: Given these conditions, what remains within our influence?

We can't change the funding environment, but we can sharpen our priorities. We may not be able to hire immediately, but we can clarify roles and strengthen delegation. We escape the Victim Trap when we shift from blame to agency.

3. Today's business or tomorrow's capability is a false choice

Much of the E.V. debate gets framed as a stark either/or: chase an uncertain electric future, or protect the trucks that have always defined the company.

That's a classic Sucker's Choice—and like most of them, it hides a values question underneath. The value Detroit named was American ingenuity. The value it actually served may have been short-term profit. When those two quietly diverge, an "either/or" starts to look inevitable—because you're protecting something you haven't admitted to yourself.

And the irony is that the choice was false from the start: one of the hottest EV categories in the U.S. right now is the full-size, three-row electric SUV. Detroit was retreating to trucks at the very moment the market was asking for electric ones.

A Middle Path question: How do we protect today's business while building the capabilities we may need tomorrow?

A Middle Path question: How do we protect today's business while building the capabilities we may need tomorrow?

This doesn't remove the tension. It gives us a better tension to solve—one that appears in every growing company: How do we preserve cash while continuing to experiment? Serve our strongest customers without becoming trapped by their preferences? Give managers more authority while keeping appropriate oversight?

The Middle Path isn't a compromise where each side gets half of what it wants. It's an attempt to honor what matters on both sides and find a more integrated answer.

4. Reacting to data is not the same as understanding it

When E.V. sales failed to grow as fast as expected, manufacturers delayed or canceled major programs. Some of those decisions may have been justified. But the story raises an important Seeking question: what, exactly, did the disappointing numbers mean?

Was the problem electric vehicles themselves? Or the price? The size? The range? Charging access? Interest rates? Incentives? The customers being targeted? Those are different problems, and they require different solutions.

Growing companies make the same mistake. Sales slow, so the team needs training. A launch disappoints, so the product must be wrong. Turnover rises, so employees must lack commitment. Perhaps. But the first explanation is rarely the only one.

A useful question: What else might account for what we're seeing?

A useful question: What else might account for what we're seeing?

The quality of our solutions depends heavily on the quality of the questions that precede them.

5. Adaptation is not the same as whiplash

This may be the most important lesson in the article.

The S-Loop is a learning loop: we sense what's happening, seek to understand it, choose a response (solving), put that response into practice (starting), then learn from what happens next (sensing again).

Changing direction isn't necessarily evidence of failure. In fact, refusing to change course when the evidence has shifted may be the Knower Trap in action. But there's a difference between adaptation and whiplash. Adaptation means changing direction because new evidence has challenged our assumptions. Whiplash means repeatedly overcorrecting in response to immediate pressure—without a stable goal, clear decision criteria, or a long-term strategy.

Startup leaders are constantly told to move fast, stay flexible, and pivot. That's often good advice, but it's incomplete. Motion is not progress. Changing priorities every quarter may feel responsive while making it impossible for teams to build momentum. Canceling an initiative before agreed-upon milestones may prevent the organization from ever learning whether the idea could have worked.

Before acting, agree on a few questions: What outcome are we trying to create? What assumptions are we testing? What evidence would tell us to continue, adjust, or stop? Who owns the next step? When will we review what we've learned?

Without those agreements, a strategic pivot becomes little more than a reaction to the loudest pressure in the room.

Staying in the learning loop

The American E.V. story may ultimately be less about choosing the right technology than about staying in the learning loop long enough to understand a changing system.

That's hard for automakers under political, financial, and competitive pressure. It's just as hard for startup managers facing limited runway, impatient investors, fast-growing teams, and founders who feel responsible for every decision.

The challenge isn't to move slowly. It's to move with enough curiosity and discipline that speed doesn't become reactivity.

Where do you see the Knower, Victim, or Sucker's Choice traps showing up on your team?

Where does your team move too quickly through Sensing, Seeking, Solving, or Starting?

For a closer look at the framework behind this piece, see the S-Loop primer—an introduction to this collaborative problem-solving approach and the three traps that most often derail it.

Most teams don't stall for lack of talent.

They stall when attention is treated like a mechanical resource—something to allocate, optimize, or force.

This shows up as:

priorities that look aligned but aren't
decisions that drag—or get made too fast and revisited
meetings that circle without resolving the real issue
difficult conversations avoided, rushed, or mishandled

Leadership and the Middle Path helps leaders shift from managing people like machines to leading teams like living systems.

Participants build practical leadership skills, including:

listening well under pressure
noticing patterns instead of chasing symptoms
making clearer requests and agreements
solving problems collaboratively
navigating difficult conversations without losing trust

Refined across more than 150 startups and Fortune 100 companies.

Join the next series—and bring your team.

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Sometimes leaders need more focused support—not because they lack capability, but because the stakes have changed.

This moment often looks like:

decisions that feel heavier than they used to
recurring patterns you can see but haven't shifted
assumptions and agreements that keep breaking down
important conversations you're preparing for—or avoiding

In those moments, the issue usually isn't effort or intelligence. It's where attention narrows under pressure—and what gets missed as a result.

Coaching creates space to slow things down just enough to notice what's actually happening—in you, in others, and in the system—so you can respond deliberately rather than react on autopilot.

I offer developmental, performance, and transition coaching for leaders who want to: