has a prescription for avoiding leadership spats. Having read about the Tata-Mistry clash, Ford said, “There is no magic formula, it is about two people. People have to work at relationships... Trust is important, communication is very important.” In a freewheeling chat with Ketan Thakkar and Satish John after the inauguration of Ford’s R&D centre in Chennai, Ford is unfazed about the outcome of the US elections, and is upbeat on India , and expects the country to play a bigger role beyond making and selling cars to being a ‘great laboratory’ to develop connected and autonomous car solutions. Edited excerpts:I did vote, I voted absentee.I went to see and I met with him because, he had been making statements, which were inaccurate, I just wanted to have a discussion on broader issues like trade, taxes, manufacturing and be helpful to him, as he was thinking through his position on these issues. Who knows, who is going to win tomorrow, but one thing is for sure, At Ford, we have been around for 113 years, and we have dealt with every government that has ever come in and have always had a good relationship. I would expect, regardless of who wins tomorrow, that will continue.We had a very good meeting. He was a very good listener, he asked a lot of good questions and I felt that he left understanding our issues. One of the things, that I believe, in many ways, we should be a company that politicians celebrate. We didn’t go bankrupt, we took a big chance, we took a big borrowing, we paid back all our debts. We are investing in US, we have invested over $12.5 billion dollars since 2011, added 28,000 jobs – both white and blue collar jobs and we are adding jobs in the other parts of the world too. We have been an international company since our founding. My great grandfather (Henry Ford) believed very strongly, that we should build cars, where we sell them. So Ford has always been a very international company.I have read about it a little bit. There is no magic formula, It is about two people. People have to work at relationships. It is one of the hardest things, any company has, is to make sure that its management is working well and seamlessly. There are lots of egos, personalities and lots of different viewpoints. The part of leadership is allowing all that to happen and then it is like an orchestra, making all instruments come together and produce something that is really excellent. I don’t really know much about what is going on there (at Tatas), but I do know that certainly with Alan (Mulally) and Mark (Fields) , I spend a lot of time on personal relationships. Trust is important. Communication is very important. And if there is an issue, we bring it up right away. That is something I spend a lot of my time on, in making sure, that there are no surprises. That I don’t surprise Mark or he doesn’t surprise me.No. However, the product development centre is a big step. We are not just making in India, now we will also have the intellectual capacity. This hub will help us in global product development strategy. While I don’t know what the next product is going to be, but the fact that we have a big presence is really important. Because it gives us a different viewpoint than the one we get from China, Dearborn or Cologne. We will learn a lot here.At a certain point, you would like to make money, but markets develop at different paces and we don’t always understand each market as we should. That is the part of the learning company. Our goal has to be to understand the Indian market better as we go forward, understand the customers and government better and how we can help them with the problems that they are facing. We have been around 113 years, in many of those years, we haven’t had great results in some of the markets. But at some time, they will turn around and at some point, India will as well.It is mixed. Like any market, there are some good things and bad things. We have built a very good employee base, we export out of India and we are growing. This year has been a great has been terrific, but as you pointed out, we would have liked to have better business results. That is something for us to work on.India is great laboratory for all that. You have so many of the important pieces in solving these issues, you have real intellectual capital, trained engineers and got issues to work on. So India, will be a very important place for Ford. We are looking at Indian market through different lenses, selling cars and trucks, making cars and trucks and providing mobility solutions. We will have to do all of those and do them all well. And that will be fun. Many emerging markets face the same issues, but they are in different severities, all have slightly different aspects to it like infrastructure and government control, some have local control and some have central control and that requires different approach from us in partnerships.I think none of us have understood the market, perhaps as well as we should have including the supply base and customers. India is a very different place. But that is our challenge for the future, to figure out and make a business model that makes sense for us and to really serve the Indian customers in the way they feel, they get good value. If we do that, we will be fine.