In this episode, you'll meet one of the most well-known figures in the automotive industry. Jason Stein, Publisher of Automotive News, has spent decades interviewing automotive industry leaders, now he’s on the other side of the mic.  

We learn about his journey from a small-town sports reporter, to becoming the publisher of the most well-respected source of automotive news today. We’ll hear what he’s learned about leadership from his own experience, as well as from the many automotive leaders he’s interviewed. We discuss the challenges of changing the well-entrenched culture in the automotive industry and why it’s imperative to evolve. 

00:50 The interviewer is now the interviewed 

02:42 Jason’s story 

05:07 Starting a car column in Fort Wayne Journal Gazette Morning newspaper 

08:10 From Reporter to Publisher 

10:43 Ex-pat assignment’s effect on leadership style 

17:06 Leaders Jason has interviewed that inspired him 

21:25 The need for traditional auto companies to evolve 

23:25 The obstacles to changing the way the automotive industry operates 

27:12 Building a foundation of trust to spark innovation 

32:38 Jason’s interpretation of Gravitas 

34:27 Failures and lessons learned 

39:43 How Jason starts his day and how he avoids distraction 

43:26 Advice to 20-something self  

[Transcript]

Jason: [00:01:42] Jan, it's a pleasure to be with you.

Jason: [00:01:53] The shoes on the other foot here. I'll admit that I was talking to a friend just prior to this taping. And the friend said to me, well, that must be easy for you. You don't have to worry about being on the other side of it now. And I said, actually, it's going to be really hard because it's not something that I typically do.

Jason: [00:02:14] You’re stretching me today. Yeah, you’re stretching me. Well done.

Jason: [00:02:42] Well, I would say first and foremost, thank you for having me on this program, Jan, and it's a real opportunity. We've had the chance to share the stage together and now we get to share a microphone together. I'm not sure that my story is nearly as interesting as those who I interview, but, I'm honored.

I'll just start with the fact that most probably wouldn't know, and likely because my accent doesn't give it away because of your spent out of the country, but I am from Canada. Born in Canada, educated in Canada, and have never worked a day of my life in Canada, outside of a coffee shop or a gas station. My career has had numerous twists and turns, but it all started in a 10,000 person town on the edge of Grand Lake in Northwest Ohio. In Celina, Ohio, not far from where Neil Armstrong actually is from, which is Wapakoneta just, uh, North of Dayton.

You know, I was a sports writer and I went there as a political science student who didn't really know if I was going to end up in Ottawa, working on Parliament Hill as a, either a lobbyist or some member of the government. But I ended up covering the Ohio state Buckeyes and Celina Bulldog football. In a town rabid for high school sports and Ohio sports in general. And all of a sudden, a bit of a fish out of water in a very beautiful area. And so that's, that's kind of where it all started. And now you say, well, how in the world are you sitting here?

Jason: [00:04:13] After a quick stint there, I was hired by a newspaper in Fort Wayne, Indiana, The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette Morning newspaper. Actually, the town still has two newspapers amazingly, and was charged with being the Sunday sports editor. I laid out the pages throughout the week, the Sunday paper in a joint operating agreement with the afternoon paper, our morning edition was the Sunday paper. And so it was actually one of the longest joint operating agreements in the United States. So Sunday was a big deal. Sunday was very, it was full of classifieds and car ads and things of that nature. And I was the person who had to put the paper together. So again, a bit of a fish out of water because I had never done layout really before I was now managing a small staff in my early twenties Here I was in the middle of Northeast Ohio in the middle of the country, in the Heartland, if you will, and it was an enormously great experience. Became a sports writer ultimately again, there.

So I took on the roles and responsibilities of covering the biggest beats at the paper, ultimately, the Indianapolis Colts, the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team, Notre Dame football, Indiana Pacers, and I wrote my car column. So I would get test cars that I would take from, you know the manufacturers would set them in droves. I didn't even know such a thing existed. I all of a sudden had three test cars in my driveway. Neighbors thought that I was a drug dealer for sure. And I was driving these test cars, these really fancy new cars from South bend, Indiana to Bloomington, Indiana to Indianapolis and exchanging them every three days.

Jan: [00:06:35] Wow. Amazing. So, then what happened? I’m not gonna let you get away with a short story, you know. You’re going to have to go all the way. I want to know everything.

And about six months after joining the paper, I was asked by former editor, Dave Sedgwick to take the General Motors job. That was a big leap. I mean, I went from marketing to covering GM, which at the time was, I think still 25 to 27% market share and just kind of cresting over the hill on its way towards some pretty unfortunate things that would happen at the end of the decade, obviously. But we were writing about some of the, you know, we were at the forefront of that.

I did that for about a year or so, and then Keith Crain asked me if I wanted to go to Europe in order to be an additional sets of set of eyes and ears on the ground in Munich, working for Automotive News Europe as a reporter. So I did that and I went right from General Motors to covering Volkswagen as it was going through a number of its issues, early issues and the interactions with the Porsche family -Piëch family. And covered that for about a year or so as a reporter.

And that was a very fascinating journey. One that taught me a lot, formed some incredible relationships with our staff. Still have those. You know, the Canadian kid now running the publication. And that was fascinating in its own right, because now I had to learn about sales and marketing, circulation audience, the website development, none of which I had done the day before they asked me to do that.

The benefits of a family run company, you know, you have the opportunity to really make some unique decisions. Is what I would say. And Keith and Peter Brown, my predecessor were both incredibly instrumental in my growth and development and gave me the opportunity to do things I could never have imagined.

Jan: [00:10:01] Yes, it has indeed. Well, the Automotive News is the publication in the industry. And I often think fondly of the days early on in my career, when I would look at the leading women publication, the first time that was done and think, oh my gosh, you know, I can't imagine being there someday. And then I was, right? And then as you said, we were on the stage together at the event in Dearborn and it's been such an important part of my career. I feel a very fond attachment to it. It's a family run business and the automotive industry is tight. You know, it's got that sort of personal interconnectedness to it.

It is enormously tight-knit, it's very small. I've seen my share of folks come and go in various roles, but they ultimately stay in the industry. I've seen outsiders come into the industry and, you know, organ rejection. They're no longer part of the industry. I think we all know those folks.

You know, it starts with the Crain family and it is a family. It's a wonderful family, treats its employees extremely well. We are very lucky to be part of this Crain family that is operating under the principle, has always operated that the reader comes first. And they care about their employees and they care about the industry. They care about the community.

Keith always said industry's best friend and its biggest critic. And I think we operate that way. Very few places these days would allow for something as adventurous as an ex-pat journey, but also clearly being able to recognize that they wanted to move me in a certain direction. And I was a willing participant. I still am.

Jason: [00:12:36] Yeah, Jan, it's a great question. You know, because I think it's the most under, um, underplayed or under-emphasized part of that, is the cultural assimilation. And I think what you learn through the experience is that you have to have tolerance for different cultures. We sort of operate in, and every country does this I believe, you operate in your own native silo, your own way of conducting business or dealing with people.

And what it taught me is patience and perseverance and acceptance of different cultures. I had already gone through an ex-pat experience, which is underplayed, but had moved from Canada to the United States, which may all seem like it's similar in terms of our methods of doing business or the, you know, we all kind of look and sound the same, but it's very, it's a very different cultural experience in that, actually we can talk a little later about my Automotive News Canada side of this as well, which was eye-opening. I think my experience in Germany and dealing with world leaders or leaders in different parts of the world who were global automotive leaders, but also trying to fit into that culture was equally, I learned just as much from that experience as I did from trying to understand the different businesses around the world.

So it was a personal journey as well as a professional journey. And I think that what's under represented is that appreciation of other cultures that you then take with you back to a North American experience. And that's what an expat journey does. Somebody once said to me, once you have an ex-pat experience, it lives, some portion of it lives with you every day, going forward. It can be a little part, it can be something that's very un-noticeable to most, but it's true.

And I think even if I reflect on 12 years later, since my Munich days, there are things that I apply in my business relationships that I learned in Europe that would go relatively unnoticed. It's the conversation you have with someone, it's a difference in style listening skills, it's the difference in communicating. And you form a bond with others who have done it too, because they understand what it means to be thrown into a country where you don't speak the language. I certainly didn't speak German before I got to Munich. I probably didn't speak German after I left Munich.

it definitely gives you a greater sense of the global community. And then when those folks are deployed to North America, you have a connection with them as well. It was a beautiful program that we have called the European rising stars. And we started naming these rising stars, gosh, more than 10 years ago while I was still there.

And these are executives who have moved up in their various companies or within the industry, but we're all tied in back together because we recognize them as a rising star when they were in Europe. And then they end up in North America. Now they're on an ex-pat assignment and you have a bond with them.

It's extremely gratifying. I cannot overestimate the power of doing something like that. And I know it's costly from a business perspective. I know that it's disruptive because you're taking people out of their jobs. It probably wasn't easy to have to find another General Motors reporter when I was only, you know, in it for a year. Not saying that it was my skill, but it's disruptive and they did it. I owe everything to that experience.

Jason: [00:16:21] And even dealing with, I spent a lot of time in Japan and in China through that ex-pat experience and even dealing with those cultures, I wouldn't have had the same level of understanding as I do today. So I think that's important.

One other thing that happened to me too, is that my leapfrogging of various individuals within the organization was completely baptism by fire. I mean, not only was I in a new culture, in a new environment, but now I was tasked with leading these folks and working side by side when organizationally that doesn't typically happen, that someone will go from reporting to four or five people to those four or five people reporting to you. And it really took a lot of understanding and patience and communication. I think probably a thoughtfulness that I developed over time.

So I have to believe that you've learned a thing or two, because you've been doing it a lot longer than I have. So would you share with us please, some of the leadership traits that you've seen and experienced through your interviews during your time in Automotive News? Who are those leaders? Let’s talk a little bit about the leadership traits that really resonated with you and you thought, yes, I really like the way this person does that.

I can think of Mark Fields who was the, you know, the former Ford CEO and Mark and I, our careers kind of geographically mirrored each other in that we were overseas kind of around the same time. And he was running North America when I was named the editor of Automotive News and we spent a good amount of time together. He's still a dear friend of mine. Mark and his ability to really clearly communicate to his team what he wanted out of them, and to strategically decide that they were going to go in a certain direction. And then it was that constant level of communication to make sure that everybody understood where the pathway was and drilling down into some of those details as well. Mark also has an empathy, which I really admire in a leader. He has the ability to understand. Certainly in my dealings with him, obviously I didn't work for him, but I could see that the empathy that Mark shared for his employees was real.

I had the chance last summer to spend almost 90 minutes interviewing Elon Musk, which was the second time in five years that I had interviewed him. And I'm proud to say that we're one of the few who he has chosen to talk to, which is wonderful. It's a wonderful compliment to the brand, and that's a completely different approach. There's a mind there that is unlike any other and a fascination for imagining the possible and brainstorming what could be really an unconventional approach, I would say.

Being willing to say, as he said to me, when I asked the question about, will he go into other products, and his response was well sure. You know, we'll probably do a minivan because no-one's really built a great minivan so far. And it's that irreverence, which I sort of somewhat admire. And it's the creativity and it's the persistence and drive that individuals have, who I have interviewed in the case of Elon is really unlike any other.

Well, I would say Jan, every individual who I've had the chance to interview, especially on the podcast, over the course of the last year, they all come with the laser focus. They all know exactly what they want, and they are prepared to rally their teams around that mission. They're clear, clear is kind as they say, and they're clear about what they want and they are all hugely dedicated to the industry that they're in. So, communication, dedication, enormous intelligence, I think, to run a car company or to be in a leadership position in this industry is very challenging. And you have some of the brightest, most amazing individuals.

A good friend of mine in the retail space, Mike Maroone is a giant. He is considered one of the retail legends. He was a former chief operating officer at AutoNation, and now is out on his own. Mike has, I think, a dedication to perfection, an understanding of who his employees are, and a willingness to find the best talent that exists. Really differentiating yourself as a leader by wanting to stand apart from your competition and by hiring the best talent around you.

Those would be some names that come to mind, there are many names. Those are, those are some of the few.

And when you talk to a leader in a EV space, more of a startup Tesla type, Canoo, Velocity, somebody in that more of a California Silicon Valley culture. Yes they're laser-focused yes, they have that in common with traditional auto, but it's the how they do it. It's the how they galvanize the team around the vision.

Traditional auto tends to be more command and control. I would say Silicon Valley type culture is more inclusive, more collaborative, less of we have to fit a corporate mold and wear a corporate mask. How do you see the traditional auto companies evolving? Because my fear is if we don't evolve faster than we're going right now, we're not going to be able to get the talent into the industry. What are your thoughts on that?

The influx of Silicon Valley individuals into those companies has not gone well. We've seen it over the course of time. And it's almost like what I said earlier, it's almost the organ rejection to some extent, because you're not from Detroit because you are not from a traditional automaker, you don't know how we do it here. That's not how we do it.

Now there've been numerous attempts there are ones that are ongoing with Detroit car companies setting up shop in California and trying to fit in, but the most classic example, and just in terms of employee engagement, and this would lead to your question on attraction is that the mindset that exists, that I've seen out of the tech sector and startup space. It's very inclusive. It's very sharing. It's very much, I'm working on a project today and I'm going to share that with you at a cocktail party, when we used to do those things. I might be on a different project next week and the different project might be with your company. And I might not even be with a company for very long because my loyalty level is relatively low.

But you and I both know that the Detroit companies or the traditional auto sector, if we can say that, has a different philosophy. It's all around, you know, these are my secrets and my intellectual property and you're on board with me or you're not, or you're my across town competitor. My goodness, the amount of time and effort that has gone into the Ford versus GM rivalry is numerous. And I would think wasteful to some extent, because by the way, those aren't the two largest auto companies in the world anymore. And so there needs to be a different approach to trying to attract talent and it is less bureaucratic and it is more inclusive and more Silicon Valley. But the bottom line is that that requires a whole different mindset because even in Silicon Valley things that Detroit companies would hold dear, performance reviews, succession plans, all the sort of corporate basics that the Fortune 500 would insist on, Silicon Valley and tech startups are not really interested in. I mean, they're lucky if they have an HR department. Everybody kind of does their own thing and then it all comes together. And there's usually a visionary at the top of those companies who is very strong, who's leading those efforts. You see it now. You see it in the fact that not only Elon Musk and RJ Scaringe at Rivian, this is his, it's his company, it's his vision. And they have very unconventional approach to trying to make vehicles.

And you see it with numerous other startups too. And you see, you know, at Carvana it's Ernie Garcia, Jr. and Ernie Garcia, Sr. Making sure that you've completed your performance review in time, that's not really their concern. And so I think to attract young key talent, the traditional automakers are going to have to think of things in a different way, but not only think of them, but act on them. And that's going to require changing the bureaucracy that's existed for a very long time.

And that's where you focus and then people feel that right, it's palpable. And then people want to be on board with something like that. They don't want to be on board with a company that has a vision statement that says, oh, well, we're going to be the world-class manufacturer of this shiny metal widget. And we're going to sell 50 million of them. That's not very inspiring, but again, that fits the corporate mold.

So we've got to get leaders in auto outside of the traditional corporate mold so that they can be more inclusive, they can be more collaborative and they can form this foundation of trust. And, you know, I was in it for over 30 years. There's this fear of, if I do this or don't do this, they might not like me, worse, they might fire me. So I'm going to do what I see leaders above me doing. I'm going to emulate that behavior because that's the path to success. So now I'm following the corporate mold. So it just repeats and repeats and repeats.

We've got to get beyond this idea of trust and put this foundation of trust in place. And the other thing that is definitely related to that, which is innovation. You've got to eradicate fear from these companies if you really want innovation. Innovation is by definition, you try and you fail and you try and you fail until you get one idea out of maybe 99 or 10,000.

But if you don't have trust in your culture and you have a lot of fear, nobody is going to want to put that idea forward because they're afraid to get their head taken off. And that's a huge difference that I see with the Silicon Valley culture as compared to traditional auto,

Jan: [00:29:31] Yeah, you're right. And this idea of failing, you know, it's an F word that, I mean, you just don't want it. You just don't want to be anywhere near it. It feels bad. If you fail, you're made to look incompetent. There's a problem with this person. We have to get rid of this person. But what if that person was merely trying something new and different and failed, and we looked at it as something that we've learned. We've learned something about our process, about our people, about the business, about the product.

Jan: [00:30:06] Yes. If we could get that part right, that would be tremendous. But I do hear you loud and clear though. You know, the traditional order, we're making money, we're put out great product and we're making money. But I think sometimes when you do that, you get somewhat complacent because there's this, why do I need to change then if everything's going so well, why do I need to change?

But the world is changing. And again, I go back to Gen Z and I've got an 18 year old at home with me studying at Wayne State. She would not touch the automotive industry with a 10 foot pole because she’s seen me on conference calls all the time, and she's been in the, you know, maybe in the baby seat in the back of the car, the toddler seat listened to some of these conference calls over the years. And this idea of going into an office, which of course is now challenged, we won't have so much of that, we'll have more flexibility in the future, but that idea of work to her is, Oh No.

And again, Gen Z I think is more in tune with the gig economy that we see coming at us fast and furious, challenging the traditional employer employee model. And that's another thing that we're going to have to get on board with, you know, companies like Mercer, PWC, all talking about the gig economy. I'm a gig worker. You're not going to hire me as an employee, but you're going to get a little piece of me for this company and that company. You're going to pay me for the skillset for a determined period of time. That's the gig economy and it's coming hard and fast, which will totally blow away the traditional employer employee model.

Jan: [00:32:05] Let's talk about authentic leadership. You know, that's my platform, its what I talk about every single day of my life. Gravitas is the hallmark of authentic leadership. And it's one of those words that has a very different meaning to different people. Some people haven't heard that word in a while, or, yeah, I’m not sure what it means. I get to redefine it because it's the name of my business. So it is what I say it is. And I say it's the hallmark of authentic leadership. So given that as the definition, Jason, what is Gravitas in leadership to you?

Jan: [00:33:56] Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a great definition. Let's go back to your early days in leadership, your first leadership position. Two questions for you and that is, what did you learn? Did you make some missteps? Did you, I'm going to use the F word, did you fail at anything? And then I'm going to move that to what advice would you give to your 20-something self on a broader basis, but let's start off with, what did you learn as a leader at such a young age?

And so I think I learned very quickly that by empowering those around you, the entire project, the entire operation would get easier. Failures. Sure. Yeah, probably I tried to do too much of it myself early on. I think a big failure in terms of leadership, and maybe at the time I was trying to rally the support of those around me, who I was now in charge of them.

I was mistaken. I thought I needed friends as opposed to teammates. And I think there's a big difference there. And I think it obviously depends on your personality style. I like working with everyone who I work with. I probably consider them friends as much as colleagues, but there is a firm line between those two things. And sometimes you have to make some tough decisions that involve colleagues who are probably not your friends per se. And I think I believed early on if everybody was, if I was getting along with everyone, that we were then on the right path. And the bottom line is that we probably a couple of times weren't on the right path and you have to make hard decisions and that sometimes fractures relationships. Probably best to not go into business with your friends. You can become friends afterwards. I always said, is that a good way to harm a friendship is by hiring somebody. And some of my lifelong friends have been friends who I've gone on the journey with only after we became colleagues. That was probably the biggest failure that I, that I can think of was sort of overplaying over playing the role of a friendship in a business relationship. It's business.

So again, it comes back to trust, learning to trust somebody else to do it. And will they do it the same way that you would do it? No, absolutely not. They're different people, different human beings, but learning to trust and being there to support people early on, as long as they take on some responsibility, that's the tough part, right? Because we're all afraid, Oh, it's going to come back on me, but we have to trust if we are going to empower people and build a collaborative team.

Jan: [00:37:45] One of the things I've loved about the remote working is that those people who didn't trust their employees or their team members and fought the work from home, had to deal with it. They had get over it

Jan: [00:38:23] And I also think the pandemic has brought a level of humanity to the table that we've never seen before. If you've been this buttoned up corporate person all your life, and now you're on a zoom call and there's a kid screaming behind you or the dogs run in, you know, or something, you're much more human. You're much more relatable. And yes, you're much more authentic as a leader.

And the bottom line is that we've been more innovative, more effective. We've communicated more than ever. And it's forced us to look at the world differently and to, I think, create. The creativity that's come out of this has just been fabulous and we still maintain and do what we were doing before. We just do it in a better way, in a more efficient way. And I think amazingly we're just as collaborative now, as we were before,

Jason: [00:39:43] Well, hopefully in the gym, I'm about a four to five day guy in the gym. That's something I've only really done in the last few years. Cause I think, you know, you get older, you realize you can't kind of do what you used to. Golden rule that somebody once told me is, you know, have financial health and have physical health. Because if you've got both of those going for you, then you're not going to have much to worry about in the future because you'll be able, you'll be mobile and you'll be able to go wherever you want. From a personal standpoint, the ability to get in the gym every day is an important one. You know, I've been actually going to the office since last March. The office is close to where I live and I find that that kind of routine was important for me. And we haven't had that many people actually coming into the office. It's a safe environment. We have all the forms to check out and make sure everybody's safe, but going to my office just everyday was important. So I've, I've tried to keep that schedule just to, for my own sort of mental wellbeing.

Jason: [00:40:57] I, I think I, I just like to keep a schedule that is somewhat consistent, but also knowing that it's probably not the best idea to be answering emails at midnight. My predecessor, Peter Brown always talked about sort of logging off at a certain reasonable time. So let your brain rest a little bit.

I like to subscribe to that theory as much as I possibly can. I think it's important to read outside of just the space that you're currently absorbed by and with so reading outside the automotive world. And I'm a big music guy in another life, I would have loved to have hosted a podcast that was all about music every day. And I probably could fill eight hours of that every day. Just my fascination with the music industry. So I've got friends who are musicians, friends who are in bands, pretty successful ones. And so I like to stay connected to them and just keep that side of me, you know, that creative side kind of going.

And I'll tell you that doing the podcast over the course of the last year has been extremely fulfilling and that I get a chance to communicate and connect with so many folks in our world who I'm no longer seeing who I haven't seen in the last 12 months. And that's not only important for our audience, obviously, but it's important for me. I mean, it's a touch point as you well know. I think that that side of it keeping those relationships going, I'm a big relationship guy. I check in with, I’ve got a handful of people who I am in touch with every week. Every week, those relationships are, are really key. And I think that kind of keeps you going as well.

The idea is that the mission of my podcast is for everybody to share their authentic leadership journey and stories and what they do to lead in a more authentic way so that a listener will just get a little something out of each one that resonates with them that they can take on board that will help them on their leadership journey.

So, one last question for you. Looking back, what would you say to 20 something Jason Stein today in today's environment, a piece of advice perhaps.

Jan: [00:44:40] Yeah. Keep challenging. There it is. Well, you are where you are today, partly because you are indeed an authentic leader and you have built a great team around you. And thank you for sharing your story and your journey with us today.

Jan: [00:45:00] Thank you.