Amy Claire Wild and Ron talk about Amy's experiences. She is a graduate of the GM Institute which became Kettering University.

And thank you for agreeing to participate with us. Where I'd like to start, if I could, with you is your education and what your degree is and how you got there and just end at the process. of getting schooled? Because I think that's fascinating and something that doesn't exist today as much as it could and should do. So with that open-ended questions.

Was that a standard entry point? How did you qualify to get into that program?

Have you by chance followed our blog over the last couple of months?

Are you familiar with Ed Gordon's job shock series? has been out there for maybe four or five weeks.

Well, in that it ties together. Ed is a doctorate in history and a doctorate in economics who is a professor at Northwestern who's a rather bright man. And he's been, he's written eight or 10 books and has taken on a really serious critique of the education model in America. Yeah. And how it, is failing the business community in creating job-ready employees. And what you describe is starting at 17,18, interviewing for a job is something that I believe education is going to turn into where companies, businesses become much more active in what the education is that the student takes post high school.

Yeah. And so the interview process or the hiring process, I believe, should be starting somewhere around the 15,16 year old age. And that our industry needs to be our industry and being the construction capital goods distribution model industry needs to be more in tune with high school guidance counselors. career days, getting involved in the school, maybe even teaching in the school. I taught at junior colleges and technical schools at night so that I'd have first pick of the students. I'll use whatever devious means I know. I can, you know that. How many people came into that program every year?

So for five years, there's 1,500. Every five years, they wash another 1,500. Yep. Is it phased that you have maybe 500 start January 1,2020, and another 500 start 2021, and it just keeps on rolling 500 people out the other end?

So let me ask you the different way. How many students were there at your graduation?

OK, so that's I wasn't far off. So the company received 500 employees. Yeah. Each year.

So I don't know that you'll be able to answer this, but we have 500 people graduating as new managers, new management, new leadership. What was the total population of the leadership at GM at that time?

Just the leadership. Do you think it was 5,000 that you were 10% per year coming in?

You know, if it's 5,000, then it's 10%. If it's 50,000, then it's 1%. It's somewhere between those two numbers because there's attrition and all of the rest that goes out. Mary Barra, who's the president, I don't know that she went to Kettering, but which is now what the school is called.

Well, there you go. So she's got exactly the same background, doesn't she?

I'm not going to go any further with that one. So you know how to design cars. You know how to rebuild components. You know marketing. And I think when we were talking earlier, you talked about everything is a system. Yeah. Do you want to talk to that a little bit more? Yeah. What do you mean by that?

Yeah. Do you think that the employees that weren't management trainees? Do you think those employees were also felt that part of a team in the system?

Yeah. One of the, I guess the point I'm trying to get to is that in the distribution channel that I make a living in, we can have management understand how everything works together and that it relates to systems and interactions. But I don't know that we've got that down to, and I'm just going to call them worker bees, the people who get the work done, the people that serve the customers, the people I call heroes. I don't think that management really communicates well with those people as to what how relevant their jobs are and how important they are.

How did the people whose jobs you were working beside view you? Were you the enemy? Were you a jerk that's in the way? What were you?

How tall are you?

So here's this lady who's 5 '5", working on the floor beside guys that are, and scabs probably, I forgot the union connotation, but they were probably beasts compared to you.

Of course, it's part of the job. Sure. Well,

Well, Mary Barrow is a big change just having a woman who's the chairman. But so so how did you get involved in systems?

Which department of the government were you involved with most?

okay. So varied. It wasn't specialized. Okay. Nope. Nope. Now you weren't on K street. You were actually working there. You weren't trying to influence things.

Now was Perot involved in that before General Motors or was, I know General Motors was involved in that, but was Perot's company EDS? lobbying Washington as well, or working with Washington, trying to help?

So how did you get to enjoy the presence of Mr. Perot?

He's quite a character, isn't he?

It's remarkable. And you and I know many people like this, but Ross saw underutilization of computer power in that the job was finished at six or eight o 'clock at night and the machine was idle until six in the morning. And he was able to go in and get a very inexpensive resource that he turned around and sold. Clever devil.

It's interesting. But that never really, forgive me if I'm wrong here, but I don't know that that really was marketed. It was just, this is what we do. And we've got an advantage because we've got a cost performance thing here that's better than anybody else. So I don't need to be marketing. Is that a bad characterization?

Yeah. And that's kind of the business phases, isn't it?

So from your industrial engineering, if I can call it that background and systems perception and the marketing tool now. So we've got three different. the analysis and the design and now the, the, the, the preaching aspect, which one do you think you're happiest in?

You know, the, you know, the expression Jack of all trades expert in nothing master. Yeah. It's, it's. that kind of denigrates the generalist. I think the generalists are more who we need to have around than specialists who can't see over the wall to where the next piece of the puzzle is. It's like our bodies, you know, our brains control everything, but without the heart, you haven't got anything. Without the lungs, you haven't got anything. So how did you end up in Colorado? You went from Flint to Washington.

The tech center was kind of mature then? The I-25 tech corridor with Malone and Boyce?

Fantastic. That's a huge step, though, isn't it?

I would suspect that that would turn you on more than the comfort of the rigorous rules dominated structure.

So basically, you rise and fall every day, week, month on your skills.

Why doesn't everybody do that?

That's why I asked the questions. You know, if I had the answer to that, we wouldn't be talking, right?

it's. For those of you listening, Amy, Amy Claire AC is the nom that she goes by is a very creative individual who gets, I believe, bored quite easily. The we haven't talked about this, but when I left the business world and went out on my own and consulting in 1980, the job that I had was babysitting in politics and I didn't like, and I wasn't good at either. And I get bored horribly easily. as well, which is not necessarily a good thing. But consulting allowed me to be in a different setting every week, doing different projects. And, you know, you had to be on your toes. And this was a good thing. It was perfect for me. And our Learning Without Scars platform is trying to help people identify their potential. And once they've identified them, then try to give them the vehicles, the tools. the options to realize that potential, which is a much bigger challenge. And very few people seem to want to test themselves that way.

Understandably, it's a tough, tough thing to do. That's not for everybody. But it's still something that we try and do. Today, businesses hire workers and put them on a task. And if that worker's skill set doesn't match the needs of the task anymore. Rather than develop them, they replace them. The employee, when they come into the job, big sigh of relief, I got the job, I don't need to continue to develop as a person anymore. And that combination is lethal. We've spent trillions on technology and nothing on sociology. So we've got all kinds of dilemmas that we're confronted with and trying to satisfy. Our need for employees, where you find them, how do you attract them, how do you keep them, how do you develop them, and their lack of interest in that, both the employer and the employee. It's kind of an amazing circumstance.

Kettering selected a group of people that had that inner spark and put them in as management trainees, and I'll bet you the attrition rate was very low. I bet there was a wonderful benefit for General Motors from that.

And General Motors Institute that turned into Kettering has been around now for probably close to 150 years.

Yes. No, no, I wasn't going there. No, I mean, that's astounding, though.

Whatever the discipline is, it really doesn't matter. My birthday's in October. So when I went to university, I was 16. I turned 17 in October that year, but I didn't have a clue as to what I wanted to study or anything else. My father wanted me to be an engineer, which means I'm not going to be one. So I took mathematics and physics. And it was really funny. I think it was in the second year that I realized that it was much too specific. And if I was going to want the education to make a difference, I needed a master's or at least a doctorate. And one of my cousins had a doctorate in nuclear physics, one of maybe 10 people on the planet with that kind of education. He was a professor of McGill. and worked with Kern and JPL and all the other dogs because there's so few people that breathe that air. And you get those dudes into a room talking, it's like they're on a different language altogether. So, you know, they're from Mars for sure.

But John had the capacity as a teacher to excite people. And we all have that. Co-workers, leaders, managers, whatever, can excite people as opposed to dictate to people. So it's kind of funny. Your current business, Ground Floor Media, you pretty much decide what and with whom and on what and why you work. True?

And also as co-workers.

Well, I think also throwing in there the challenges to help those businesses identify their potential and help them realize that it's kind of like the mission we have with education or development of people. They're trying to do it for their companies, which then turns the people that are doing the work on. Yes. How can we get better? Because we got to stand up to that test, you know?

It just continues on, doesn't it?

So some time ago, you mentioned the term that you were a tech wizard. How did Harry Potter get into your life, for goodness sake?

The wizardry of it is what I was. I love the term. That's why I'm coming back to it.

Yeah, I experienced the same thing with a 10-year head start, I'm going to say. And I think every decade, individuals have the same opportunity. The computer was around prior to the 50s, but I started in the 60s. So my first experience with the internet was 1973. My first experience with a, quote, laptop was a Viking box that was four feet tall by 36 inches long by 18 inches deep on rollers, inside of which was an IBM Selectric typewriter box that if you took the cover off, had a package of cigarettes size of space utilized. The rest of it was empty. And that was the brains of the PC. It had an acoustic coupler AC. And I would dial a phone number and I'd put the phone into the acoustic coupler. And I had the magical speed of 30 baud. And a line of type was 120 characters. So it took four seconds to deliver one line of code. And we thought we were in heaven. It was remarkable.

Yeah, but the other side of that is, you know, the iPhone's only been around about 10 years. This chip shortage that we're dealing with now, there's chips everywhere. Your washing machine at home, your microwave, your Bose radio on your night table, everywhere. We're going to be completely... awash in these things. The challenge right now with this green environment, just to go a little bit further, lithium, there's one mine that is being promoted between California and Nevada that has an endangered plant on it. So now we have two competing sides of the environmental motion saying, I need the lithium for my batteries and you can't. put the mind here because of that flower. You know, we got all kinds, I mean, the world is changing. So when we think that people can say static, you know, the stuff that I learned prior to being 20 is all I'm going to need until I'm 80, get out of town.

Nasty question. How do you keep yourself current?

It's a shame. I wish everybody felt the same way. A lot of the older, and it's in my industry, mostly men. Don't want to have anything to do with the young people. They look at the young people and say, geez, they want to get too much money and they want to go to the corner office right away. They don't want to work their way up. Well, guess what? So did they. They forget 40 years ago when they started out.

Do you see that place having an end? Is there a life cycle on that, do you think, for you?

Well, retirement's a nasty word because I'm still working. You know, I say to people, you've got to retire to something. You don't retire from something. But I mean, in terms of our adaptability, when we're young, there's nothing that's impossible. We don't know what we can't do. As we become, quote, wiser, let me call it that, instead of older, we start recognizing some things that we either shouldn't do or couldn't do.

In other words, it has not come anywhere near to being capped or tapped.

And that also takes us to another channel, Excel. Most everybody uses a spreadsheet. And we've gone through the battles of the spreadsheet over the years. So there used to be about a dozen of them. Now there's basically two. And people will only understand or get to use Excel to the degree that they need to. And that's nowhere near the potential of the tool. For example, probably 10% of the people using Excel know how to use pivot tables. The rest could give a damn. That's true with a lot of us. We only go so far in learning the use of a tool device that satisfy our needs. And that's when we stop. And we don't really understand the potential that that represents either. It's an interesting.

And then you stop.

but that's why you stopped. Yeah. There's too many other things you got to try and, and that's what the challenge is, isn't it?

This has been a very fast period of time. We've been talking together for about 40 minutes.

And I'm not anywhere near done. So I hope you're going to give me the opportunity to take advantage of you in another 30 or 60 days with another of these things.

This is great. So at that, Amy, Claire, you got any words of wisdom you want to leave us with?

Even if you are Pinocchio.

That is a wonderful way to end this. And on that, let me say thank you very much.

And mahalo from Honolulu.

We'll talk to you soon.

Thank you for listening to our podcast. We appreciate your support. Should you have any thoughts or comments, please don't hesitate to contact us at www. learningwithoutscars. com. The time is now. Mahalo.