Ask Alison Jones, the newly promoted senior vice president for the circular economy at Stellantis, what makes a great leader in the rapidly changing automotive world and she will tell you it is someone who is not afraid of the unknown.

“I think it’s a requirement of our industry that you’re comfortable with unpredictability,” she said in a recent interview for a skills research project my company is currently conducting. “You have to be entrepreneurial and inquisitive and be able to lead when you can’t follow a path that has worked previously. To find a path forward, to find the growth, the competitive advantage or the revenue opportunities, you have to be really comfortable with unpredictability and ambiguity.”