Work from home forever? with an automotive OEM?

[Transcript]

Jan Griffiths: 00:08

Welcome to the Automotive Leaders Podcast, where we help you prepare for the future by sharing stories, insights and skills from leading voices in the automotive world with a mission to transform this industry together. I'm your host, Jan Griffiths, that passionate, rebellious farmer's daughter from Wales, with over 35 years of experience in our beloved auto industry, and a commitment to empowering fellow leaders to be their best authentic selves. Stay true to yourself, be you and lead with Gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership, let's dive in!

Jan Griffiths: 00:57

Work from home forever. Wait, that was the headline in an automotive news article back in May 2022. Today, you're going to meet the C suite leader at the OEM who spearheaded that decision. I want to know how did they make that decision? Who was involved? And how do they feel now almost six months on? Is it working? So many questions to ask and to be answered? Let's meet Katherine Knight. She is the chief legal officer, the chief HR officer, the chief compliance officer, so many titles, and so much more. And she is indeed the C suite leader that spearheaded that decision at Mitsubishi North America. Katherine Knight, welcome to the show.

Katherine: 01:43

Thank you so much, Jan, it's great to be here.

Jan Griffiths: 01:46

And just to be clear, for our listeners, you are indeed, Katherine Knight, the C suite leader at Mitsubishi and not the Australian murderess who chopped up her boyfriend and fed him to his kids was in stew? That's not you, right?

Katherine: 02:02

That is correct. I am not an Australian boyfriend murderer. I am just a lawyer.

Jan Griffiths: 02:08

Well, I'm very happy to hear that because as I was researching you getting ready for this interview, I could not believe all the posts that came up. So I'm glad that we got that just in case anybody's confused. This is not the murderous, this is indeed the C suite executive at Mitsubishi North America. Well, that's a great open, I've never had to open a podcast for that before. All right. So the reason that you are on this show is because you led the charge at Mitsubishi. And I am going to quote, the automotive news article on May 1, and they said, "Mitsubishi to US employees: Work from home forever." And we're gonna get into that. But before we do, I want to get into the mind, the history, the thought process of the woman who was spearheading this initiative. So let's go right back to the beginning. So you are as you said, you said you're a lawyer. So you started as a law clerk, is that right?

Katherine: 03:13

That is correct. So I have a very, very traditional education, which is kind of interesting. Considering what I do. Now. I went to William and Mary for undergrad, Vanderbilt law school. And I really thought as I planned for my legal career, that I would be doing something very traditional high power, New York corporate trial lawyers, something of that nature. But in retrospect, I don't know why I thought that because I was majoring in Russian studies and working at a record store. And that was, that was what I was like, as I entered law school, I was the only law student at Vanderbilt, who's probably still looked like they were working at a record store. But I had this two year clerkship. And what was amazing about that opportunity was that it was the first time that I was able to see cases in real time. And you know, most employment law comes to the federal court. So during that two year clerkship, I absolutely fell in love with employment law, which really was not ever part of the plan. I never thought about it when I was in law school. So after the clerkship ended, I had already derailed myself from what I plan to do by going into employment law. So from then on, I really wasn't burdened by this idea of what I thought my career was supposed to be. I was really more free, mentally, philosophically and otherwise to pursue the things that I thought, you know, that I really thought we would be interesting and fulfilling and that that got my brain excited. So I was in private practice for several years I was a trial lawyer, but in the mostly in the area of labor and employment, also financial services, intellectual property, a whole big hodgepodge of things which became relevant later. But one thing that was frustrating about that was that, you know, when you're a trial lawyer, you have the opportunity to see how things went wrong. You don't really have the ability to influence fixing them and certainly not on the front end. So In 2010, I had the opportunity to go to an in house role. And you know, there were a lot of reasons for doing that. But the bottom line was I kind of wanted to be a fixer. I wanted to be somebody who could use my background and knowledge of how things went wrong, how things could have gone better, and try to work to influence those on the front end. So I was at one company for several years, and was lucky enough very coincidentally, to move over to Nissan as my second in-house job. And it wasn't because I'm a big car person. Nashville is not really known for being a car place, although certainly now we have Nissan and Mitsubishi. And Saturn had popped up in Spring Hill several years earlier. So we are now becoming kind of a center of the automotive world. But that really wasn't why I went to Nissan, it was more because of the opportunity to work in traditional labor relations to work in international law, and do some things that I hadn't been able to do at the prior company. So it was there for a little while. And then another opportunity basically dropped out on this dropped on me from the sky. And that was the opportunity to go to a company called USA truck, which is transportation and logistics to be the leader of their legal team, their general counsel. So I jumped on that because it was a fascinating opportunity in an industry I didn't know anything about. But when Mitsubishi made the move from California to Tennessee, and 2019, the General Counsel position at Mitsubishi became available. And I was fortunate enough to be able to join the Mitsubishi team at that time. So of course, that was November of 2019. Right before COVID. And I've been with Mitsubishi ever since then, mostly during the pandemic, we had about four months in a temporary space. But other than that, I've been leading the legal team, and now some other teams at Mitsubishi, throughout COVID. Has great. So that brings us to today.

Jan Griffiths: 06:50

That's quite quite a history. Let's go back to Nissan for a second. Japanese auto culture that was your first time in the auto industry.

Katherine: 07:00

It was.

Jan Griffiths: 07:01

So when you walked into the automotive industry, I mean, it can be quite shocking, right? But what were some of the first things that you learned, perhaps from a leadership behavioral cultural perspective, at Nissan?

Katherine: 07:13

Well, I had the fortune, as I said, of working in labor relations. And when you work in labor relations, you really gain an organic understanding of what motivates employees, what makes employees think what makes supervisors what makes men what makes managers think, what's successful, and what's perhaps not so successful. And without really diving into any particular issues that specifically I worked on at Nissan, one thing that you begin to understand is really what drives people. And it's not always compensation, it's not always benefits, although certainly those things are important. It is things like your manager treating people equitably. Things like the way that HR treats employees, the way that management treats employees, the way that management motivates employees, whether managers are transparent with employees or not whether managers deliver bad news or not whether managers understand how to explain things to employees. And so even though being in labor relations is a traditional practice of law, in some sense, you really do gain a holistic understanding of how culture impacts the way that people think the way that they work. And so for me having the opportunity to be particularly located in the manufacturing facilities, and to get to talk to so many people who were in manufacturing both managers on the plant floor, as well as so many different people in corporate, it really was eye opening to the extent that I hadn't already experienced it, to be able to experience that very close relationship, as a lawyer, with employees with managers, and really understand how that relationship works. So that was probably my main takeaway from Nissan. And so when when you're talking to employees, one on one, when you're talking to managers, one on one, you don't have as much of a sense of the entirety of the organization, you don't really experience the influence of Japanese culture. But that's not really what it's about when you're talking to talking one on one to managers, coaching them on how to treat their employees, equitably giving them that kind of training or talking to employees about what's important to you. It's very one on one. And so I've I've now taken those experiences, and they really drive some of the things that I do as an HR leader, I also was given the opportunity to lead HR at USA truck. And so this is actually the second time that I've done this and in both cases, have really drawn from from those experiences of thinking about what really drives and motivates people because that was Nissan was the opportunity for me to learn those things.

Jan Griffiths: 09:52

And it's surprising to me, quite frankly, that a lawyer, a lawyer, somebody who and somebody who's in charge of compliance for the company is? So how do I say this without offending all the lawyers on the planet, I don't mean this in a bad way whatsoever. But it's so forward thinking you would think a lawyer would be about rules and procedures and policies. And here you are spearheading this initiative. Again, that announcement that came out in May. And your CEO said, and I quote, The Automotive News article, this is a critical moment to embrace, change, motivate and retain our talented employee base. I was so impressed when this announcement came out. I was beyond excited when I saw it. But what I really would like to know and what I know my listeners would like to know is, how did you come to this decision? What are some of the things that you wrestled with some barriers, people had to be throwing up barriers left and right, because it's certainly not the norm in traditional OEMs? Could you talk us through that decision making process?

Katherine: 11:02

Absolutely. And one thing that I think is relevant is what employees really care about and what motivates them. So that type of thinking is always in the back of my mind, regardless of what the policy, whatever it is that we're talking about at Mitsubishi. But we had two years of experience. Before we really had to make a decision, we all went home on March the 16th, we were still working out of our little closet, temporary space, when we all went home, the new office in Franklin opened during the pandemic. And it's been open this whole time, but we've never actually fully and completely occupied it. But when we all went home on March 16 2020, we had in place at the time, a one day virtual office policy. So one day a week, employees were able to work from home. And even that was fairly revolutionary, maybe not so much for all companies. But for OEMs, that was already fairly unusual. And it was a product of the executive team, even before COVID, realizing when we moved to Nashville, we want to be different, we don't want to do things, the way that we have done them before, this is an opportunity to really make a break with the past. And that's not specifically why the move occurred. But it was was an outgrowth of that we have an opportunity to really redefine who we are as an employer, because we're going to have to hire about 80% of a new employee base. So we already had this virtual office policy of one day a week, and then all of a sudden virtual office became 24/7, when the virtual office policy was decided upon, at that time, there were some opponents of it, because the thought you know, was exactly what you would expect that employees wouldn't work, they would not be online, they would be doing whatever they wanted to be doing. And we wouldn't necessarily be able to trust them. Nor would we be able to have that same kind of experience to that we have together in the office, it simply was not going to work. So that type of thinking persisted for a period of two years, but it reduced and reduced and reduced and reduced over time. And we continued over that period of two years to have moments where we would say to employees, well, we're going to let you know what's happening in a matter of for eight weeks, or we're about to make a decision, or we'll let you know very soon. And one thing that that I noticed, especially when I came into the HR role in October of 2020, is that that resulted in a lot of anxiety, I think employees understood that we were trying to make the best decision for them and for the company, and that we were taking their needs in mind and that they were going to get advance notice before they had to change the way that they were working. But ultimately, that push back and push back and push back. As as right as I think it was to do that. Because we didn't want to bring people back prematurely. It was causing anxiety, because you don't know in two months am I going to have to put my kids in daycare, what's going to happen? And so we got to the point where I think we all collectively realized that we weren't going to come back full time. The question was, how many days a week is this going to be? Is it going to be two days, three days, what is going to be the mandatory number of days, and every department leader had a different opinion on this and what was going to work for their team. For some, it was an actual legitimate need to be in the office for a variety of reasons. For others, it was this notion of well, we've got to see everybody because while it's been sort of okay, for the past two years, you know, people just need to be in an office. And then other departments had the idea that they really didn't know why their employees had to come back at all. And furthermore, a lot of the leadership was concerned about recruiting. So this was a discussion that continued and continued to happen because every time we thought we had a decision, it would get pushed back due to a new variant or an increase in cases and one of the places that we operate whether HQ parts distribution center, regional offices, and so by the time we got to the spring of 2022 You, we've been operating this way for two years. And I wish that I could tell you that this was all my fantastic, amazing idea, and everybody else went along with it. But it wasn't me. It was a collective decision that we made. So I really want to give credit to the entire Mitsubishi leadership team, because almost every single person on the team had to challenge their presumptions had to challenge their assumptions, and challenge what the meaning of work was to them. I think my contribution to that discussion was to point out that if we were going to require employees to come back to the office, it had to be something that was meaningful, it couldn't just be well, we're all going to sit here because we all need to sit here and we need a schedule. And this is what it is. We needed to be having team meetings, we needed to be having interactions, we needed to be having a reason to be here, not just sitting at our cubicles on teams meetings with other people who were in other places or continuing to have virtual office but being stuck in the building. And so from that perspective, I think there was a collective realization will oh my gosh, I'm not really sure that we can give people a meaningful experience two days a week or three days a week. And so that's where the challenging of assumptions came in. And why really, do I want people to be here, and is it really necessary. So after a couple of weeks of those type of really tough conversations and tough decisions that we had to make among the leadership team, and also realizing that we weren't ever going to come to a place where all of us agreed, this is the number of days that our team needs to be in the office. So there was no way to gain consistency around that across the company. We just decided as a team, okay, let's just stay home. Let's just stay home. And so now it's almost six months later, we're still home, we had a phenomenal event back in May. So we had a large number of our employees actually choose to come into the office, it was absolutely not mandatory, but we called it kind of a family reunion. Because there were a lot of folks who had worked with us throughout the entire pandemic that we'd never met, we wanted to make sure everybody knew that the office was open, we wanted to make sure everybody knew about the resources that were available to them. And so we had this lovely party, it was great. We also had an online component, so everybody could participate in this. But I basically said to everybody who was here, we'll see you at the Halloween party, hopefully earlier, but maybe not. It's been really interesting, because we do see people in the office, everybody's here almost always by choice, we occasionally will have some form of team meeting or another where people need to come in. But by and large, this really has been a successful policy for us. But it started and became successful. Because every single person on the leadership team ultimately committed to it. And it came out of some really tough conversations.

Jan Griffiths: 17:59

It can well imagine, in automotive, we were looking for that policy, we're looking for the should it be two days a week or three days a week? What should it be? And how are we going to enforce that? And how are we going to make that happen. But here's the reality of the situation. As human beings, we all have different needs at different times in our lives. And we're different, some people like to be in the office, some people work better at home. But you need to have the choice, you need to have that flexibility. I know that when my daughter was a toddler, it would have been brutal to work from home, quite frankly, it would have been really hard because you can do work from home with a toddler running round, you don't have a partner that's at home with you, that would be really, really difficult. Now, for me, of course, working from home was great, because she's grown, she's 20 years of age, but you have different needs at different times in your life, and people are different. And you have to give people choice. I love that you're giving people the choice. But I think it puts an awful lot on leadership, not just not top level leadership, but leadership all the way through the company, to inspire people to want to do the right thing, whether it is coming to work. It puts a lot back on leadership to really inspire and motivate people, don't you think?

Katherine: 19:15

I think so. But at the same time, I think that that is coming fairly easy for our leaders, because a lot of our leaders have discovered that they actually really enjoy the flexibility as well. It's easy for them to role model, the type of motivation and the type of behavior that their employees then can be inspired by and also emulate. So for example, I'll just I'll use myself as an example because I'm the type of person who I'm sorry to say work 16 hours a day. I do not expect that from my team, but I do. But what's made that so much easier, is the fact that I can do meetings at home in the morning and then come into the office in the afternoon. I am actually a person who does is like to be in the office. But I have found that I love the flexibility of being here when it's easier for me getting my morning meetings out of the way. And then coming and being here among the employees who are also here in the afternoon, and also meeting with the executive team in the afternoon, when we all tend to be a little bit more available are in the evening. So I am not here every morning, I am showing my employees that they do not have to be here, I do not expect them to be here. And yet, we're still getting things done, I'm still getting things done. My availability is the same as it ever was. And I think that's true for most of the leadership, I do not see any member of the leadership in this office every day. So I think that it's it's really important for them, to embrace the policy and to live the policy and not be here every day. Because if you are then that sends the message that regardless of what we've said on paper, regardless of what I've told Automotive News, there's still an expectation that you're here every day,

Jan Griffiths: 20:59

You are so so right. You are right on with that. And I use so many companies out there right now that have a policy, whatever it is. But then the leadership team is in the office every single day, pretty much eight to five, right? Well, you can't do that you cannot say one thing and do another, you've got to be true to yourself and to your words, because people will see that. And people will say Yeah, well, we got this policy, but they don't really mean it, they don't really mean it, because they're there. So there's this underlying expectation that I have to be there. So regardless what's on paper, I still feel this, this pressure that I need to be in the office all the time, to all automotive suppliers out there, please leadership team, just model the behavior.

Katherine: 21:44

And the other thing that is very challenging is trying to ensure that regardless of whatever choice you're making, you have relatively the same experience as somebody who's making a different choice. So that's been that's been something that's been challenging for me personally in trying to come up with training programs, and all employee meetings, where the experience of being in the office is as similar as possible to the experience of staying home. And unfortunately, we can't make that a reality every single time, the experience of the Halloween party is just going to be different if you're here in the office versus participating in the costume contest online. But for the most part, we are continuously mindful of trying to make that experience the same, make those team meetings, the same, allow team meetings to be participatory from home as much as humanly possible. Making sure that every single time we all get together that we're still validating those choices. We don't want people to feel pressure. Again, sometimes that's impossible. I even I have had a couple of team meetings where I've gotten my whole department together. But even then I think I said please come if you can not you must be here, or else just hey, you know, we'd like to have the experience of being here in person. But it is hard to always make that happen. So one thing that I have tried to ask from our employees who are choosing to stay home is just just to understand that we're doing the best that we can, but it's not going to be the exact same for every single person no matter where you're located. And then another thing I would mention, and this is something that I'm extremely mindful of when thinking about continuing to keep people motivated, we have to make sure that nobody's getting left behind by not having that in person experience if you're choosing to work from home, or if you're simply in another office, but you're interested in moving up moving to headquarters moving up within your department or another department, that we're finding ways to make sure that you stay connected, we're connected with you, and that we don't forget that you're there. Because I think that's one of the things that can be really easy is to think about promoting the people that you see at the watercooler every day are the people who you interact with are the people who you just lay visualized on. And that's something that we really, really want to avoid. Because to your point, everybody is at a different place in their life. And it's one of the reasons why this choice, for me personally was very important because I want us to be as inclusive as possible. So there are some people who absolutely need to come to the office, whether they don't have an adequate workspace, they've got to get away from whatever's happening in their home, they also their spouse is working from home and they don't have enough workspace, whatever that is, or they just like being around people. Similarly, there are some people who may never want to darken the door of the office again, and that's okay too, because they have a comfort level at home. And that's where they're more efficient. That's where they're going to be a better employee. And so, we want to make sure that we're being inclusive of all of those choices, what are whatever they are and providing as much opportunity as we can for everybody to be as successful as possible. But To back to your original question of how you keep people motivated. The answer for me is is twofold. Number one role modeling the policy. And then number two, just trying to make sure that everybody is having as similar of an experience as possible and does not feel left behind because they've made the choice to to stay home. And I'll mention with respect to our policy, too, we do have a policy. So I did not shirk on the policy. But here's what our policy looks like our policy looks like, basically, a roadmap for how employees can successfully be compliant with other policies while working from home. So essentially making sure that we're compliant with our confidential information policy, that we're compliant with data security, that we are compliant with working out of a safe workspace, that we're ensuring that we're not putting confidential information out on a table at Starbucks. So it's really just about how to make that work long term and successfully comply with all of our other policies that are important it compliance all of those things, and, and still be able to do those things while located in your home office. So we do have a policy, I just want to throw that out.

Jan Griffiths: 26:16

It's okay. It's okay. It's all right. I know your lawyer. It's all right.

Katherine: 26:20

It's a very, it's a very different kind of policy. And it's a policy that's designed to, you know, to be able to do this long term.

Jan Griffiths: 26:27

Yeah. So we're almost six months after that announcement. I'm assuming from what you've just said, no immediate plans to change?

Katherine: 26:34

No, no, nobody has suggested it.

Jan Griffiths: 26:37

Wow, that was a very strong

Katherine: 26:40

No, no, nobody suggested it. And it's been really interesting to to see who comes into the office, because we have more people coming into the office than you would think, every day, except for Friday, where it seems to be a bit of a ghost town, I'll see about maybe 30, it's 30 to 40 people. And it's not people clustered in conference rooms, it's just people working at their desks. But I do think that we're seeing people make the choice to be here because of efficiency, or they want contact with their manager or their other co workers, whatever that is, a lot of my team comes in. And I've never told them that they have to, but we really do enjoy being together. I mean, we truly enjoy spending time together. So I think it's part of it. But even then I only see them two or three times a week. So we are getting things done. We have had visitors from our Japanese parent company, MMC, they've come to the office. So we've gathered for those things. We have not missed a beat, we just launched our new PHEV last week, you can imagine all of the preparation that goes into launching an all new vehicle. And nobody suggested Well, I think we need to stop working from home so we can launch this vehicle. We managed to do it. Now again, I've seen people in the office from time to time, but nobody has suggested we need to mandate days in the office. Absolutely not.

Jan Griffiths: 28:02

With this new policy with the work from home policy. I've gotta believe it has opened up the net for incredible talent to come in to Mitsubishi North America.

Katherine: 28:15

I would say that's absolutely true.

Jan Griffiths: 28:17

I'm just thinking some high tech whiz kid in California, you know, yeah, but it's the jobs in Tennessee, they'd be? Ah, well, I don't know about that. I don't know. As it opened up, I mean, a huge generalization. But as soon as it opened up the network a little bit for talent.

Katherine: 28:34

Well, it has. And here's how so we at the corporate headquarters, we do have a commitment to the state of Tennessee for job creation. So to some extent, we're not able to recruit nationally and allow people who occupy the positions from corporate headquarters to work anywhere, they do need to be located in Tennessee. But it does give some flexibility in terms of where in Tennessee, you live Nashville, Franklin area is very expensive. So I think we have seen the hiring in the past few months, we've hired some folks who are actually three hours away. We've hired some folks who split time between Tennessee and other areas. So we have seen an influx of people who absolutely would not have considered working here if there were mandatory days in the office. And we have attracted some really amazing talent, our marketing team, our IT team are just two of the teams off the top of my head that I can think of, in the past six months, we've attracted some really, really amazing talent. But the other thing that I think about, aside from just the ability to work from anywhere, almost anywhere, obviously need to be located somewhere in Tennessee, is what we've been talking about with respect to employee choice. I don't necessarily think that when people think about industries that innovate, they think, oh, I need to go to the automotive industry. If they think well, I want to join a tech company. Clearly I need to join an OEM because they're going to be at the forefront of policies that make sense and of ways of working. So one of the things that I think gives us an advantage, at least with respect to whether it's OEMs, or suppliers who's or a lot of suppliers in Middle Tennessee, or just other types of companies in general, is to see that we are really on the forefront of working innovation, at least within Tennessee, which is still kind of our primary hiring base, we do have other locations where we're hiring people. And I do think that it helps us nationwide, of course. But I would say in the past six months, the number of people, the number of applications has drastically increased, there was a period of time where we weren't seeing a lot of applications. And I think that was during the period where it wasn't really clear what we were going to do, the great resignation was happening at that time, and the potential employee base was spread very thin in terms of who they were willing to work for. So we're really seeing an uptick in interest in the company. And that's also from people outside of the automotive industry. And so that tells me that we're doing something right. Not that we don't want to attract people who have automotive experience, because we absolutely do and the company would not survive if we didn't have some of those people. But we also want to attract people who are outside of the automotive industry, who have maybe different experiences, different ways of doing things, different thought processes, it's very important that we have those people inside the organization too. And so if we rest on the reputation that automotive tends to have, that is, I hate to say it, but kind of old school, kind of a dinosaur, we're not going to attract new thinking, whether that's within Tennessee or outside of Tennessee, so I only have six months of data. But so far, I would say that this is really paying off.

Jan Griffiths: 31:46

Wow, well, I have to tell you, it's put Mitsubishi on the map for me, because I always thought of Mitsubishi is okay. It's just one of those companies, you know, I never really paid that much attention. Sorry, just true. I never did. I didn't. And then this, this announcement came out. And ever since I've known you, it's just it's like, wow, all of a sudden, I'm paying attention. It's showing innovation is not just about product, it's innovation in the culture and how the company operates and how you attract people. So in my mind, you are you're well on a path to do that. And you are showing, by your actions that you are indeed an innovative company. But what I want to know, Katherine Knight is what's next. So you've tackled this work from home policy, you got anything else up your sleeve, what's cooking at Mitsubishi?

Katherine: 32:36

Well, there, there are a lot of things that are cooking from a cultural perspective. And I wish I could say that they were all happening at the same time. But here's the one drawback of both being a small company and then also a small leadership team, I can't do everything I want to do at the same time, the cultural change will continue. And, and some of that may not resonate with every employee. But I think at the end of the day, change is good for everybody. So I'll mention what I mean by that may not be good for every employee, we're actually in the middle of changing our performance review process. And my personal opinion, and I say this as the head of HR is that performance reviews really aren't worth a whole lot. If you're not giving constant feedback during the entire year. Nothing on the performance review should be a surprise, nothing, you know, there shouldn't be anything on there that the employee hasn't heard before, it shouldn't be about the review, at the end of the year, it should be about the coaching. However, at some point all of that does need to be documented, it is important to document it get it down on paper, it's important that the employee understands what their goals are, and what their performance measurements are going to be for the year. But where I think that we have gone wrong in the past is equating an employee's performance with the overall departmental KPIs, equating an employee's performance with kind of how they're maybe if they're in the field, how their district performs, or how the sales were. And it's not to say that those things aren't important. But what we are doing now is more than ever connecting the employees specific efforts, the employees specific contributions to their end of year performance review. So it's not just about sort of in a vacuum, how did things go generally, how did the department do? How did the team do? Because even if the KPI wasn't met, there could be a number of external factors going on. Let's just talk about chip shortages and supply chain issues. Those things aren't necessarily going to impact my legal team or my HR team, but there are a lot of teams in the company that those things may actually impact their KPIs. So what does that mean for the employee? And can the employee get disenfranchised, from their contributions and how that's meaningful and how they're connected to their business plan? If they're completely dinged for that to the point where their performance review says, Well, you didn't perform because your department failed to do X. So the way that we have changed, this should eliminate most of that problem. And again, it doesn't mean that the departmental KPIs, team KPIs aren't important. But equally, if not more important, are the employees contributions to that? And if things weren't going right, how did they try to fix it? What were the things that they tried to do to alleviate those problems to the extent that they could, etc. So what we want to really try to get everybody engaged in is the company's performance and their place in it, not just the company's performance, not just their little eyes, on your own paper, KPIs, but connecting those two things together, so that people do feel a performance related connection, an emotional connection to the performance of the company, and have an investment in the overall performance of the company. So how do we do all of that with a little performance review at the end of the year? Well, it's again, it's not just about the piece of paper, it's about the goal setting. It's about how we write the goals, how we talk about the goals, making sure we don't have too many goals, understanding what is the prioritization so that employees really know where they need to focus. So that's all new. And I'm very excited about it. I don't know that every employee is excited about it. But I'm really excited about it, because I don't want anybody to be disenfranchised. So that's performance. And then we're doing a lot of other things. But this is where being really thoughtful. And also recognizing that I'm only one person and the leadership team is just a small team. We can't do everything together. But we have started the concept of employee resources groups, which is not new to a lot of other companies, it's new to us. But we are very slowly rolling those out, because I want to make sure that we have enough participation in the employee, the first employee resources group that we started, and it's actually got much larger participation than I thought it was going to. So that's very exciting. And that gives me encouragement to start the second one, the second, the first one is emerging leaders, the second one is going to be a women's networking employee resources group. And we'll start the third one, hopefully, at the beginning of next year. I'm not doing all of these things together, because again, I want to make sure that they're going to have enough participation, I want to make sure that they have commitment, not just from the leadership team, which they have commitment from us, but they need to have commitment from employees and participants. And it also needs to be meaningful to employees. So I'm not just going to start rolling things out just to roll them out. And without having a plan in place to actually execute and make it meaningful for employees. So the Cultural Revolution, while it's a revolution, this is a slow. It's a slow boiling revolution.

Jan Griffiths: 37:39

I love the fact that performance reviews are next because honestly, I don't know too many people out there that love performance reviews, either giving or receiving in the old traditional way, where you got some awful clunky form, either on Excel or Word or maybe you've got it online, and you got all your little boxes and your ratings. And it's all very subjective. And it's all about the number. And yes, of course, you have to deliver the numbers, you got a business to run. But you can impact those numbers in a much more meaningful way and actually get a better result. When you focus on people's behavior and culture, and how they interact with each other. And how they approach the goal, how they understand the goal, how they work with others to achieve the goal. And you're really focusing on the how which I believe that you will have a stronger impact to the bottom line to those numbers by focusing on those factors than by focusing purely on the numbers. And when you started talking about that the one thing I was thinking about is we've all come across that toxic employee in our careers, who everybody hates, because he or she is just absolutely awful, right? They nobody likes working for them. But somehow they seem to hit the number. And then the manager says or the leader says yeah, but I can't get rid of them. Because look, they've achieved their cost reduction goal or their sales goal or something. When we do that, then we destroy the culture of an organization. When we tolerate a toxic employee, it does more damage to the organization. If you have that myopic view of just purely the numbers for this person or this department, it's gonna drive you to want to accept that kind of behavior and that kind of behavior is never acceptable.

Katherine: 39:30

Well, you're so right about that. And and employees are going to see if you accept toxicity in your workforce, that your culture is essentially synonymous with the toxicity of the lowest level of behavior that you're willing to accept. So if you are willing to accept and promote somebody who behaves in a way that is toxic, that's essentially going to define your culture. People aren't going to see the good things that you're doing the Mitsubishi champions, the employee recognition, I mean, maybe they'll see it, but they'll also see, well, you know, the company is willing to put up with x as well. So, you know, maybe they're not putting their money where their mouth is. So that's something I think about a lot. And actually, I will say, this is not new, this, this was on the prior iteration of performance reviews, but we have our company values as well as MMCs values baked into the performance review. So things like execution and delivery, certainly important, but we also have leadership, teamwork, and integrity. And so those things are actually baked in to people's performance expectations. So I've been at a lot of other companies and organizations and I've seen or other organizations that have values, our values are on the performance review. And I think that most employees would be able to name at least one of MMA's values. So we really do try to emphasize that not just by having training sessions and reiterating them in our monthly all employee meetings, but actually saying, this is so important to us that your performance, just your pure performance is a certain percentage of your overall evaluation, but it's not 100%. Because if you do it in a way that undermines rather than promotes leadership, if you do that in a way that undermines rather than promotes integrity, you're not going to get A a plus 100, whatever you want to consider great performance, it's just not going to happen. Because it is that important to us to make sure that we are designing promoting the culture that we all want to to work in. And again, while I'm sort of the the face of these things, this is not without the approval of the entire leadership team. And this is actually one that there wasn't any debate about, this was not the product of tough conversations. This is how we want employees to think this is the connection that we want them to have, to their overall success to the success of the company. And this is the way that we want people to work and what we want them to keep in the back of their mind as they're doing it. It's not just about the number, it's also about integrity. If you fail, fail with integrity, you know, you'll, if you fail, maybe you don't get a 100 on your performance goal. But boy, you will get a good score with the integrity and I hate reducing people to scores. I hate it, but they're just you know, it just kind of is what it is when you're talking about performance reviews. So I just want to go on record saying I hate it. I hate assign signing people numbers. But you sort of have to, if you don't meet the goal, but you have enough integrity to say why it didn't happen, what you're going to do to fix it, you know, what you did? Do? All of those things are important. So we're really trying, and it's probably going to take more than this year to get everybody on board with this new type of system. But I think it's worth it. It's worth or the challenge of going through that change, to bring people together into a different system.

Jan Griffiths: 43:00

I would absolutely agree. Now tell me, Katherine, you have looked at all of the 21 traits of authentic leadership. There's a lot in there. And I know from what I know of you that you embody a lot of those traits. But what what's the one trait in that list that really resonates with you right now.

Katherine: 43:19

So I again, I will reserve the right to change my answer on a different day, because they all are incredibly important. And some of them I think I'm already successful at and I'll admit that I some of them are aspirational to me. But the one that I have been thinking about a lot. And I say this because I've just gone through the recruiting process for an attorney on my own team. And when I every time I recruit somebody, I think, why would I want to work here? What would be the things that would sell me on Mitsubishi if I was looking for an Assistant General Counsel position. And so the value that I'm thinking about right now, and that's most important to me is vision and purpose, vision and purpose. If I was coming into the company, I would not want to just know what am I doing? What's going to be my day? What does my day look like? But why am I doing it? What's the vision? What can I get behind? How can I feel connected to my work ,connected to the team, connected to you, connected to the department? What does all this mean? And so I feel like and especially because I have a lot of disparate teams now. I have the legal team, human resources, compliance, internal audit, facilities, corporate administration, risk management, all of these different teams that previously were operating under different philosophies, or maybe really no philosophy just to get it done philosophy, trying to unify all of those teams requires me to have a very strong vision and requires me to be able to articulate that vision and articulate that purpose to everybody in the department. Because I want to integrate everybody together. I want them to understand, here's how we are a collective department. Here's how we are moving in the same direction. This is where we're going, this is where we need to be. And I'm not a really big believer in saying, here's the endpoint. I'm all about constant and never ending improvement. But just because you don't have a specific endpoint does not mean that you don't have a vision and a purpose. And my vision for my department is being service providers. But what that means is very, very strong and very strongly in the realm of business partnership. But we do have a four word mantra, and that is mitigate risk, add value. And that four word mantra describes the vision and the purpose of every single team that's in my department and what we're working towards. And I think just about everybody in the department will repeat that if you ask them. In fact, on the legal team, we've had T shirts made just for just for fun. Even though I'm I'm the face of human resources to the entire company. I'm not trying to be the face of human resources to my department, I'm trying to lead the department in a particular type of vision and a particular type of way of working. And that that encompasses a lot of other things. It encompasses authenticity, it encompasses transparency, I don't expect people to go along with the vision, if I'm not being completely transparent with them about what the challenges we're going to have are and how that's how we're gonna have to change how we do things. And I also don't expect them to go along with the vision, if they get something different from me today than they do tomorrow, or they did yesterday. They need consistency from me. And I think too, they they need authenticity from me, and I think they get it in spades. I don't know how to be anything else other than myself. But they need to see that I'm working just as hard towards this vision and towards this goal, as I'm asking them to. And sometimes I tell them, I'm tired. I admit it, you know, sometimes I tell them, this is hard, or, you know, I had a challenging meeting, I don't I don't push all of that stress down, I think that's very critical to give the rest of the team air cover and to not let them see all of that. That's that's my job to absorb a lot of it. But I will tell them things that help them understand, you know, this isn't going to be easy, but it's going to be worth it. So that's where I really am right now in thinking about recruiting a new person and the dynamic of the team once that person starts, and how to get that person excited and engaged. I hope he's already excited and engaged even though he hasn't started yet. But again, it's another opportunity to unify all of us, not just in Oh, well. We're just doing, you know, great legal work on paper or great HR work on on paper, but where are we going? Where it? How are we moving forward? And I think that is and we talked earlier about how do you motivate people from home and the challenge of motivating people who are all over the state or all over the city? They're not all here? You know, I probably should have mentioned this earlier. But I think that's really critically important is for everybody to understand, what's your vision, what are they working towards, again, doesn't matter where they're doing it or when they're doing it, but what they're doing and why is really critically important, and I think is a piece of leadership that, you know, to go back to the performance review issue, if you're just looking at your own little numerical KPIs, and it's just, you know, achieve this achieve this number. Is that really meaningful? Are we all really tied together behind the mission? Do we all really understand the values right now? And again, I may change my answer, but right now it's vision and purpose.

Jan Griffiths: 48:24

Thank you. Let's talk about the personal stuff. Here we go.

Jan Griffiths: 48:29

Well, you and I said the last time we talked that if we were not doing what we're doing we might actually be in Nashville together and in a record store.

Katherine: 48:29

All right.

Katherine: 48:37

That is 100% accurate. 1,000% accurate.

Jan Griffiths: 48:41

And you know what? They you know, they say never say never right? It could happen. So that brings me to the music question. So what's your favorite band? What was the band that influenced you growing up?

Katherine: 48:52

Oh, gosh, I have hundreds and I am a I'm a record store geek I was lucky enough to to work at record store on the tail end of the original record store culture. So I really do have hundreds. But I this is a question I asked a lot of other people what are your top five bands? So I'm gonna go with the top five because I can't just do one. It's impossible.

Jan Griffiths: 49:13

Shoot, go!

Katherine: 49:14

So my top five of all time in no particular order are Elvis Costello. Actually, he's probably number one. Dead Can Dance, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Tom Waits. And what I go with for number five, this is changes this changes all the time. I'm gonna go with Nick Cave, anyway.

Jan Griffiths: 49:38

What's Siouxsie and the Banshees thing you and Dr. Andy Palmer what is up with that?

Katherine: 49:43

I know when I listened to his podcast, and I heard him talk about Siouxsie and the Banshees, and I just thought is this a thing running through OEMs that none of us know about are you going to have more guests on that are going to going to say that Siouxsie and the Banshees are their favorite but yes, absolutely. I am very much in to what I would call sort of 80s post punk slash alternative. So there's this whole other line of bands that come behind that this Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins. Who else?

Jan Griffiths: 50:16

I'm surprised though, why do I didn't think Siouxsie and the Banshees was such a big deal in America.

Katherine: 50:22

So this It's interesting how I how I came into my musical tastes, because I'm probably about 15 years younger than I was really supposed to be. So my musical tastes was very shaped by people that I worked with, I started working at record stores when I was 16. And actually, my dad is what I call a completus. So if he likes an artist, he buys every single record that they've ever made. And that's been kind of my MO as well. So even though my dad and I don't share a lot of the same music, the fact that I was listening to thing like I was listening to do wop and all kinds of interesting things when I was a toddler, really shaped my desire to buy records. And I remember him taking me to Tower Records to pick out my own stuff when I was about 11 or 12. I wasn't cool enough to work at Tower, but but I had been shopping there for a long time. And some of the guys that I worked with that the record stores were really influential. So, you know, like the guy from Warner records would come in with a promo, and it would be a promo record of a band, like Dead Can Dance. And I remember he came in actually with the spirit chaser album, and nobody else in the store wanted it. So I just took it home and started listening to it. And I had never heard Dead Can Dance before this would have been like 1995. And so then I just had to buy everything that they'd had ever had ever done because it was unlike anything I'd ever heard. Same thing with Siouxsie and the Banshees, but during the pandemic, I've become a huge fan of Tears for Fears, and Echo and the Bunnymen, which [Wow] Are you would think that I would have really heard these bands before because I listened to so many other bands of similar genres, but I just never really been into them. So I've been using the pandemic too. And again, very similar to Andy Palmer, I've been collecting records again, so.

Jan Griffiths: 52:08

Yeah, there's definitely a thread the thread there. What's the biggest distraction that you fight with every day?

Katherine: 52:15

The biggest distraction, I am extremely distracted by all of the ideas that live in my head.

Jan Griffiths: 52:23

Yes, I can see that.

Katherine: 52:27

And I sort of alluded to this earlier that I have all these plans, and it's everything that I can do to, to very conscientiously roll them out. But I have so many different ideas. And not just in the area of HR being the chief HR officer being the chief fun officer, being the employee relations person. It's also in other areas that maybe are fun for me, but not others, like compliance like risk management, things that I want to do with the legal department ways of contract management, I have so many ideas in my head. And I can't execute them all at the same time. But it is very, very easy when I'm working on something that takes several hours to just think about, oh, you know, I should do this, I should do this. It really is things that live in my own head, I just have more ideas than I have capacity. That I wish I wish somehow I could be cloned so my clone could do the regular stuff. And I could work on the things I really want to do.

Jan Griffiths: 53:19

So how do you focus then when that's happening? How do you then say, Oh, oops, brain? Stop it. I need to focus on this task today. How do you how do you rein that in?

Katherine: 53:28

I have a notebook that I keep with me at all times. It's very old school. But I have a notebook that I keep with me at all times to write things down so that I make sure that I don't forget it. Even when I'm out running, I run with my phone. So when I'm thinking of an idea, and that's actually a great time for me to think about random things, but I take dictation, I'll stop and actually take a little note to myself so I can remember it. But I I work with my notebook and my to do list. So that because because that I because I worry about that, oh, I just came up with this great idea. But I'm working on this other thing. If I put it down on paper, and I've given it a little bit of attention, I can usually get back to what I'm supposed to be doing. But that will happen several times a day.

Jan Griffiths: 54:08

That makes sense. Now, closing comments. Think about the biggest challenge that leaders and when I say leaders, I mean of all levels in the automotive industry today. In your closing comments, what is the biggest challenge you see automotive leaders having today and some advice that you would like to offer?

Katherine: 54:30

I think that Andy also alluded to this when he was talking about the the structure that exists at a lot of OEMs and how challenging it can be to do things differently or to say that you disagree with something or to have a differing opinion. I think that the biggest thing that we as leaders are challenged by is is taking risks. And when I say taking risks, I'm not talking about risks with product marketing, the things that we do well, the automotive industry is very Innovative from that perspective, we don't take a lot of risk with people. We don't take a lot of risks with our organizational structure. We don't take a lot of risks with our internal operational and people policies. And it's interesting because I think a lot of companies are getting better at things like enterprise risk management, where they're looking at risk holistically, and not just from what's insurable what's not insurable. So I think a lot of companies understand conceptually, enterprise risk management. But again, when it comes to people, operational processes, and maybe corporate governance and management, we don't take a lot of risks. And I think collectively, whether at a company like Mitsubishi, which is small, or even large companies, if we are going to keep the pace with the technology, we need to take risks in all areas, we need to think about things in new and different ways. Operationally, again, we're great at it when it comes to product. We're great at it when it comes to marketing. We're great at it when it comes to technology, supply chain, all kinds of different things, but not when it comes to operations, internal operations, governance and people. So I think that's really the missing piece in our industry. And one reason why I love this podcast, because this is the first forum that I've ever seen, for people to really come together and talk about this. But this is the missing piece taking risks operationally, and with people, you know, not anything crazy, but just trying to figure out, okay, everything else we have is geared towards the future. Now let's think about how we're operating and try to match that. So that's, that's the conversation that I would like to be having with other OEM leaders. It's a conversation that we have internally a lot. And I think it's a very important one.

Jan Griffiths: 56:47

Well, Katherine Knight, you're doing it. You're innovating. In your space, you're innovating at Mitsubishi. You're innovating the culture, you're innovating all of the procedures and policies. So please keep going. Because you will be that example that guiding light for others, you will have an impact on the industry. Thank you so much for your time today. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

Katherine: 57:09

Oh, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to be with you.

Jan Griffiths: 57:16

Thank you for listening to the automotive leaders podcast. Click the Listen link in the show notes to subscribe for free on your platform of choice. And don't forget to download the 21 traits of authentic leadership PDF by clicking on the link below. And remember, stay true to yourself, be you and lead with gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership