Henry Ford said, “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.”

The modern automotive dealership moves at a relentless pace. Every day is a race against the clock with a frustrated service customer demanding help, a sales manager asking for support on the current complex deal, parts delay threatening productivity, and a technician shortage creating bottlenecks in the shop. For dealership leaders, the constant urgency can create a dangerous cycle.

When you spend all your time reacting to problems, you lose the ability to think clearly and lose sight of the future. This has significant risk to the dealership with inconsistent performance, declining morale, stalled innovation, and an overall sense that the store is working hard but lacks efficiency.

To break this cycle, leaders across industries have adopted practices that help them step back, regain perspective, and stay focused on long-term vision.

For the automotive dealer, let’s call this Strategic Pit Stops.

First let’s address what it is not; not a vacation, not a leadership retreat, and not an excuse to hide from daily responsibilities.

The Strategic Pit Stop is a structured and planned period for leaders to temporarily step out of the operational noise to observe the dealership with fresh eyes, engage with employees on the front lines, capture the truth of what’s happening, and then analyze that information to align with strategic goals.

A Strategic Pit Stops begins with something surprisingly simple: walking the dealership.

Most leaders walk the store every day, but they walk it on cruise control — moving from the sales tower to the service lane, from the F&I office to the shop, always headed somewhere with purpose but rarely stopping long enough to notice the details around them. This practice asks you to walk the dealership differently. Instead of moving with urgency, you walk as an observer.

Stand in the showroom and imagine you are a customer walking in for the first time. Look around the service write-up area as if you were a service advisor about to face a morning rush. Step into the BDC and listen to how customers are greeted on the phone. Look at the shop through the eyes of a technician who relies on efficiency and communication to thrive.

When you change your vantage point, you begin to see things you’ve walked past for months without realizing the impact of small breakdowns, inconsistencies, missed opportunities, and cultural signals that numbers alone can’t reveal.

Next the Strategic Pit Stops transitions into conversations with employees.

These are not interrogations, performance reviews, or corrective discussions. They are simple, authentic, five-minute check-ins where you ask the people who live in the daily operations what is truly happening. A technician may mention a slow parts process that’s bottlenecking productivity. A salesperson may point out a step in the CRM workflow that creates confusion. A service advisor may share insights about customer frustrations that never reach your desk. These quick conversations build situational awareness to help leaders understand not just what the numbers show, but why the numbers look the way they do.

Your people know the truth long before it hits a report. They see friction, inefficiencies, and cultural dynamics in real time. Listening to them with curiosity and with a nonjudgemental attitude becomes your strategic advantage.

The next step is where most leaders quit and don’t capture what was observed.

Even powerful insights are quickly forgotten when pulled back into the demand of operations. During or immediately after your walk, take time to record what you saw and heard. Write down observations about culture, behavior, customer experience, process gaps, environmental issues, and insights. Organize your notes by department or theme so that later, when you analyze them, you can see patterns instead of isolated issues. This act of recording is what transforms perspective into actionable intelligence. It is essential to developing a plan of action.

With notes captured, schedule time protected on your calendar to review results and identify root causes. Nearly every challenge in a dealership can be traced to one of three areas: people, process, or priorities. A people issue might involve accountability, training, communication, or role misalignment. A process issue might include unclear steps, outdated documentation, inconsistent execution, or unclear handoffs between departments.

A priorities issue often emerges when the team is working hard but not on the right things, often because leaders are not aligned on what truly matters. Filtering observations through these three categories brings clarity and prevents leaders from reacting to symptoms instead of addressing causes.

Now it is time to zoom out and reconnect with the bigger picture of where the dealership is headed. The big question to ask is, “What does success look like in the next one to three years?” How will you grade your dealership?

Compare this long-term vision to what you observed on your walk. Identify obstacles that threaten your progress and pinpoint what is going well that you can leverage. Every dealership has areas of excellence that can be scaled. A strong process in F&I may be a model for sales; an exceptional advisor in service may offer insights that reshape training; a well-run BDC may reveal best practices that can be replicated elsewhere. Strategic thinking is not only about fixing problems—it’s also about amplifying strengths and eliminating barriers.

The final step in the Strategic Pit Stop is slapping the wheels on and executing with decisive action.

Select one to three high-impact items based on what you’ve observed and analyzed. These should be specific, measurable, and connected to the dealership’s long-term vision. A few focused improvements executed well will move the dealership further than a long list of ideas that never materialize. Be consistent and align your action plan to support improvements that include follow ups. Don’t expect what you don’t inspect.

The dealership environment will always be hectic with constant fires always popping up. But leaders who develop the habit of stepping back, observing the store with intention, listening deeply, and thinking strategically create dealerships that are not only more profitable, but healthier, more resilient, and better aligned with their vision for the future.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got,” Henry Ford said.

A Strategic Pit Stop is how leaders break that cycle and build something better.

Ryan Jennings is national sales director for ARC, which offers consulting, training, 20 groups, reinsurance, warranties, and VSA’s for both independent and franchised dealers. More details can be found https://arcnation.com/