Driving Diversity in Automotive Leadership with Julia Muir | Ep. 4

:: 00:00

Thank thank you very much for your time and welcome to the Spanner podcast. So if you'd like to just do a little introduction to yourself first, that would be great.

00:00.08 Julia Muir

Okay, I'm Julia Muir. I'm the founder of the Automotive 30% Club. um I'm also the chief executive of the small company that powers the club called Gaia Innovation Limited. And I'm the author of the book, Change the Game.

Andy Brooke

So I actually came across you at to the IAAF and I'm trying to think whether it was 22 or 23.

:: 00:46

I did both of these. So it would have been both, but probably the earlier one, the 22 one, was it?

00:00.51 Andy Brooke

I was absolutely astonished to be up to be frank. And I just thought that this was something we absolutely needed in the industry. And my colleague, Laura Hall, joined on the spot pretty much there and has gone on to do ah bigger and better things that you'd say. so um So just wanted to to really start the very beginning for you. So can you take me back to when you were sort of eight years old and talk a little bit about your dad? Yeah.

:: 01:20

wow. Okay. um Yeah, so this was the the start of my encounter with the motor industry. So, yes, my dad at the time was a firefighter. and things were no different in those days in that firefighters didn't really earn enough to to keep themselves and their families and despite the you know kind of heroic requirements of the role.

.: 01:43

So he would top up his earnings through doing um mobile servicing.

Andy Brooke

Oh, wow.

Julia Muir

That's what they call it now.

Andy Brooke

okay

Julia Muir

It used to be called home tune. um And I would go along with him during the school holidays at about that age. and do and fill in the service checklist um and to you know to to help out.

And also, it probably wouldn't have allowed with health and safety nowadays, but it was different back then. um And I also um took bookings on the um the phone. and Some people would ring in and I would i would manage the paper diary, obviously, and all those years ago. and yeah And actually, it's quite strange how few people...

queried that there's a child that's doing the bookings. They obviously thought that that my mum was doing and she must have had a very youthful sounding voice.

:: 02:35

That's fantastic. Yeah. I have similar experiences. My family were man and boy automotive, you know, and it was very similar feeling about the workshop back in those days.

It was literally everything was written on paper and we had tea cards and, you know, it was, I was the boy you had to brush up and put the oil filters in the bin and things like that. Yeah.

Julia Muir

Yeah.

Andy Brooke

but very Very, very different to this day and age, to be fair. and You mentioned health and safety and I don't think health and safety was invented till probably the 90s really.

Julia Muir

That's why our generation is so tough.

Andy Brooke

Yeah, so exactly.

Julia Muir

If you survived, then...

Andy Brooke

Yeah. yeah It was like, go outside lad and just get that can of petrol and just go and do that and just put that. But I'm only eight.

Julia Muir

Yeah, exactly. yeah

00:03.33 Andy Brooke

so So your dad was a massive influence on you. when you were in university, did you think you wanted to work in the automotive industry?

:: 03:31

I never thought, oh, that's definitely the career for me. But what i what happened, i suppose, was that I never thought it wouldn't be for me.

r, Perry's Doncaster, back in: 1990

00.04.37

You know There were several female department managers, a you female Newcastle sales manager, female and and rental manager, female fleet manager, and lots of diversity in terms of ethnicity in the dealership as well.

So i then I suppose the only place where there were no women was in the workshop. And you know that was quite the thing then. you know know There were very few female technicians.

But anyway, so it didn't really occur to me whilst in my kind of formative years in the motor industry that there was a gender imbalance issue. That only came later.

:: 05:13

Andy Brooke

Yeah, it's really, really interesting you should say that because, my I mean, my my early experiences as well was I worked in workshops that were quite well balanced actually. But again, it was all the techs were male, you know, is ah but everybody else was was pretty much even the sales staff were female at the time. and So do you think the imbalance is more towards the top of the industry then?

5.36

Julia Muir

it's just but it's very different in different parts of the industry and things have changed you know i could probably go back to that same dealership now and it it may well have reduced its uh diversity since that

Andy Brooke

Right.

Julia Muir

It was a point in time with a specific dealer principal in charge that was a very inclusive leader.

Andy Brooke

Right.

00:05.57

Julia Muir

I think what's happening is that the industry itself is changing beyond recognition, really. And if people aren't quite realising that, then they will suddenly wake up to big shock within a few months' time.

Andy Brooke

Yeah. Yeah.

.: 06:12

Julia Muir

um So the reason I established the club was not from the starting point of thinking we need more women in the industry.

06:22.00

Julia Muir

to thrive and succeed beyond: 2030

.: 07:09

Julia Muir

this you know the the reactions to electrification the regulations employment regulations um the green um and strategies you know where does a leader decide to focus energies and resources that that's a huge skill that's a really important skill that our leaders have to have and then working through that you know how do you actually get the best people to join your business how do you have an inclusive culture that actually enables everyone to fulfil their potential um and you know have the premise utterly irrational to simply exclude people because they aren't the kind that you would normally hire,

07:53.00

Julia Muir

um is is the way that we need to be looking at our businesses. And by looking at that and saying, OK, if the challenge is have to have the very best people And to be frank, we've fallen behind on that in the last 20 to 30 years because when you know when I was first starting out as a graduate, it was, um you know, to to work for so at least for the OEMs, that was a big, ah respectable career.

to be, you know, a blue chip engineering company that had huge market share or had, you know, thousands of employees,

Julia Muir

lots of career opportunities, global um opportunities. that was and That was on the career radar of a lot of graduates and high performing people. and And subsequently, and we've ah faced significant competition from other sectors for those talented people. So financial services in the city soaks up so many ah capable and high performing people in the UK.

00:09.00

Julia Muir

um We lose out to the high and technology companies like Facebook and Google. Those are the people that we could have attracted in the past and now think that those those roles are more exciting and a lot higher paid and have got much more career progression opportunity.

Andy Brooke

Yeah. Hmm.

00:09.26

Julia Muir

So the key challenge becomes how do we fight back with that? How do we get the best opportunity to get the best people? And when you actually then look at, well,

Julia Muir

en I started the club back in: 2016

And that those were the white men that then went on to lead the organisations and to lead the sector and be the visible face of the sector, thus perpetuating, um you know, who would then consider a career in in those companies.

And so the decision was made by myself and a number of senior leaders in the in the sector at the time to work together to change that.

00.10.10

And the obvious place to start was to address why do we not have enough people from the actually the biggest sector part of this population, which is the female.

We're 52% female in the uk. But when it comes to working population, it's 48% female. But even so, roughly fifty fifty And yet, even now, in leadership roles across the sector, we only have 7% of them filled by women, and only 17% the entire workforce population.

While our club members last year have reached twenty eight percent 28% female leadership representation and 30% in the entire workforce.

Julia Muir

00.11.00

So we as a group, just by accepting that it's not acceptable, if you know what I mean, but we have such a strange imbalance versus your recruitment population and to start to do stuff that would ask why and to say, oh, actually we could change that, all those

rather bizarre legacy practices that we have in place that have stopped women being able to join or thrive. And that's what's led to that movement. But also when you do that, you actually open the doors to a much wider variety of men as well.

00.11.35

And you start to be able to aim to kind of cream off the very best of all oh the working populations instead of having to go deeper down one type.

So instead of just being high performing, white men, you end up with mediocre and and poor performers because you're having to go deeper into one group.

.: 11:58

Andy Brooke

I totally agree with this. So I recently did ah a visit to a technical college to try and recruit apprentices because i I was looking at setting up a specific electric vehicle maintenance and battery refurbishment center. And I went to the college and looked at the demographic which they were recruiting. And it was basically, and um I have to say it was horrific, really. I said, you know, what what have we got here? And they said, well, we've got the guys who didn't want to do bricklaying.

And I said, well, I have a team of people here all IT graduates here, who all usually have a master's at least because we need them to work on software on vehicles. So I then then said to them, you know, can I speak to some of the the other students maybe in the um the IT side?

And again, as you rightly said, these guys wanted to go off and work for Amazon or Google, whoever that was their ambition. There was no steering towards automotive. So just do you do you actually do some promotion through the universities?

Julia:

:: 13:02

In terms of the Auto 30 Club, we started out by doing a lot of our own outreach. In fact, that's what my company was before I started the campaign. that That's my kind of area of expertise. It's It's how to build an interdependent ecosystem between employers, schools and and further education, higher education.

00:13.22

Julia Muir

you really do have to start with primary schools because that's you know the the gender stereotypes or people's career um limitations, shall we say, are put in place whilst they're still in primary school.

so we used to do work in primary schools and also have big events where we'd invite lots of secondary school students to them, to female students to meet women in the sector to kind of learn much more about the reality of the sector.

.: 13:51

Julia Muir

What we do now, because we're such a big organisation in terms of membership, is we We have an early careers group and we teach our members how to do it themselves. So we show them how to actually engage with schools and colleges. The fact that you actually really do have to make good friends with the careers leaders.

0014:10.

Julia Muir

You have to know them well. You have to understand what their pressures are. You have to educate the careers leaders and the physics teachers and the maths teachers to understand what it is that the employment world needs.

Julia Muir

and as well as the youngsters, because otherwise the youngsters just faint that face the barriers from teachers and and careers advisors. And to look into specific talent pools as well. i mean, one of the things that struck me, we do know that they um that our industry is a great place for people who are neurodivergent to work.

.: 14:41

Julia Muir

We have um high levels of people on the autism spectrum and with ADHD. And although I don't think their data their data has been disaggregated, just from my anecdotal kind of interactions with school leaders is that they see the auto industry as the perfect place for boys who are neurodivergent because they can they don't necessarily do well in school because school is not a very good place to serve anyone but the neurotypical.

.: 15:20

Julia Muir

um and so they And they know of success stories of boys that have gone on to do well in the motor trade and so they will be the first um ah populations that the school will push towards in our industry and yet just having met at girls on our on our open days i'll just tell you an example of one that really sums up what happens to girls who are similar. and And so we had a big event at Boltswem Group. We invited 100 girls to go around their academy and to meet female technicians and female leaders, et etc.

Julia Muir

And at the end of the session, one of the girls came over to me with her careers teacher and said, I know what i want to do now. I want to be a vehicle technician like those two women that we've just met.

00:16.13

Julia Muir

And she says, because I had no idea i could be that because when I've said to people at school and to my parents, um i want to do something that's to do with building or engines or fixing stuff or repairing stuff, they said, well, why don't you, if you're good at kind of building stuff and

Julia Muir

why don't you go into like being nanny? Because they built out of cardboard for children, and you'd be really good at that kind of crafting stuff. Instead of seeing the skill there and applying it in... you know If a boy had said that, they would have immediately gone down the route of of probably the motor industry or engineering or something. Like

16.58 But because it was a girl, they didn't. They looked for a female...

stereotyped way of using that skill in primary school teacher or nanny or something. um And so it just shows just how by exposing children to ah the reality of the world of work and just what jobs there are um and if possible, holding open days at workplaces and inviting parents along because they are also a big negative pressure on youngsters in terms of what their career choices are. To show them yes girls do this and yes boys do do service advisor or sales admin roles and marketing roles and HR roles and girls do the the technical and the workshop controller and the after sales manager and general manager roles let's dispel some of those myths.

00.17.55

Julia Muir

But it's ah it's something that the employer themselves really has to do. this is you know we've We've had a great success at having these kind of big industry events.

And therefore, we know that some of the girls that came on those have now chosen a career in the automotive sector. But we could only ever do it on a very small scale when we were doing it for people.

Julia Muir

yeah What's required is that the sector, the employers themselves do it. And then if everybody does it, it becomes a huge a resource that's running through education um you have but with bringing youngsters into workplaces, going into schools and talking about the roles.

Julia Muir

And you need, you know, education in our country is on a mass scale. So therefore, you need to engage with it on a mass scale.

00:18.44

Andy Brooke

Yeah. i was I was just interested in your neurodivergent comment. Have you read my CV then?

I wrote so I wrote a couple of articles about the fact have dyslexia and ADHD as well. And they went down very well. But anyway, but it it strikes a chord with a lot of people.

I had a lot of letters about, not emails rather, about the the dyslexia, particularly the way people focus in and how actually it's really useful. in the diagnostics industry because you kind of focus into a problem and you won't let that problem go and you go down the rabbit hole properly. And a lot of people don't do that. So it is, I've got to say, it's quite a good job to be in.

Andy Brooke

19.18

So, funnily enough, i spoke to an F1 recruiter recently and actually received a call to see if one of my friends would like to go and work for an F1 team.

And the reason given was because they wanted to correct their gender balance, believe it or not.

Andy Brooke

And was like, okay, no.

Julia Muir

yeah Yeah, well, it's it's been somewhat, I mean, that could have been clumsily worded.

Andy Brooke

Yes, it was.

Julia Muir

But one of the, yeah, asking me I think we want to talk to them. We don't want the best, we just want to talk to them.

Andy Brooke

Yeah.

.: 19:49

Julia Muir

one of the things that um leaders have to look at in terms of when they're building their teams is they're very different way to the way that we used to think. So you have to look at a team.

You have to look at complementary characteristics. What is it that each person's role is going to be and how do they ah make you know the sum of the parts equal more, if you know what I mean, as a whole?

Andy Brooke

Yeah.

00.20.30

Julia Muir

In the past, we would always, or very traditional thinking would have been, you know well, we've got a functional responsibility, say, or if that person that's left needs a place, we'll get somebody the same as that person without looking how the team has evolved and whether there is there are team members that already provide the skill set that that role was doing.

And in fact, therefore, you need a different role.

00.20.40

Julia Muir

it's almost like looking at building a dream team, you know a dream high-performing team. You have to think about, what are the skills that i need and how are they therefore kind of sliced and diced and manifested across team?

Julia Muir

all of the people, you know, if you were to have like a three dimensional matrix, how would it how would I be covering all the bases with the people that I've got? And that sometimes drives an understanding that they have a skills deficit in a certain area that maybe a different profile of person would bring.

.: 21:12

Julia Muir

So it's not necessarily a question like that or an action like that led by, oh, we need a woman or we need a colour or we need somebody from Doncaster. It's because that but they've assumed actually that there may be more likelihood for somebody to have got that different um approach, a different approach to risk, a different way of doing things that they would like to see. And they would like to put that into the team to see if it brings a better output, so that's that's um that's that would be the right reason as to why it's to

:: 21:46

Andy Brooke

Absolutely. So what we're saying here really is they don't know what they don't know. So in a sense with with you guys, obviously you can educate them around the piece that they don't know. They don't know and slotting everything together to form that level within the business.

00:22.00

Julia Muir

Yeah, I mean, that's what Auto Authority Club is all about, building high performing teams.

Julia Muir

And the organisation is a combination of multiple teams. So, but you have to start off with the premise that you want to be the best and you want to have high performance.

Andy Brooke

Right

00.22.20

Julia Muir

But you want high performance in a way that will make people better. give more, you know, their optimum, which doesn't come from a oppressive toxic culture, you know, you could say we can get high performance in the short term by basically, ah you know, kicking everybody and and pushing and pushing and pushing until they they deliver, but then they're all burnt and broken afterwards. And that that has been a bit of a motor industry tendency in hitting the numbers, hit the numbers.

00.22.50

Julia Muir.

A real kind of transformational leader and inclusive culture and built high performing teams by getting the high performance in a positive way, as in, you know, how can we get people to really thrive, really enjoy their job, really give their all and, you know, and want to keep coming back for more, you know, they're, they're energized. They're not, so exhausted by by working in that place.

00:23.17

Andy Brooke

I think that's a substantial cultural change needed. And I see that and I've worked in those environments myself and and worked there for a very short time normally, I must say, with that burnout challenge.

00:23.32

Andy Brooke

So what advice would you give to ah female in the industry currently who doesn't feel like they're being listened to?

00:23.39

Julia Muir

Well, it all depends on obviously way which part the industry that you're in, in terms of whether there would be any kind of infrastructure for you to turn to in in that scenario.

Julia Muir

um you know Are you in a very obvious minority or you know is do we do you have people that you can turn to to support? um But really, you know if you if you were to look at

00:24.05

Julia Muir

what it is that the person wants to say is the important thing know is it does the woman want to be listened to because she's got some great contribution to the job and that she's been interrupted or or ignored or overlooked for other people things like that are the very essence of what the club teaches our leaders is to spot things like that and eradicate it. You know that people and any minorities should not be excluded or or not have their contributions listened to because that's the whole purpose. That's their extra benefit that they bring by being different and having a different perspective.

00:24.47

Julia Muir

If the woman thinks that she's not being listened to based on ah on a complaint so or on a toxic culture, then that you know that that needs to be taken up with leadership.

Julia Muir

And I would always say, you know, There will always be a number of allies in the organisation if your complaint is valid, shall we say, and ah that you can turn to. It's not always the HR person. Sometimes that's not the best place to start. Sometimes it's the manager or it's your or it's the overall leader of the organisation that you can approach. depends on what where you are, if you like, in terms of their visibility.

.: 25:30

Julia Muir

um and But my final advice, I know it's probably not very not nice to hear, is if so if a woman has ever felt that she's in danger, then she should withdraw from the situation.

Julia Muir

you know There is no point trying to tell people first and then see it's still happening.

Andy Brooke

Yeah.

Julia Muir

and you You have to make the point that you are going to withdraw from the scenario until it's sorted. And you really do have to make a, ah you have to make it clear to the employer that this is happening.

26:07 Andy

we've sort of at the beginning gone over a couple of of bits about challenges. So what do you personally see as the biggest challenge in the automotive sector today?

00:26.17

Julia Muir

It's responding to the change in environment is the biggest challenge. I think that anybody that thinks this is the changes aren't going to affect them, as I said earlier, are in and for a bit of a wake-up call.

Andy Brooke

Yeah.

Julia Muir

And proper transformational leadership is is a step ahead. youre kind of You're scanning the horizon. You're on the meerkats of the industry.

00:26.41

Julia Muir

en I started the club back in: 2016

00:27.08

Julia Muir

And they were identifying the fact that, um, there was going to be a significant problem for the traditional manufacturers because of the two key issues was the, um um you know, by then it hadn't actually been put in place, but they, but they very soon to becoming regulations favoring electric vehicles coming at the same time as China, having pretty much created a domination, global domination strategy around electric vehicles and having bought the resources, having,

00:27.37

Julia Muir

you know invested in technology. And the most important point being that they um are able to deliver very short product cycles. So they can have an idea of a product and they can get it out into marketplace 18 months, two years.

Julia Muir

Whereas the traditional manufacturers, it's six to seven years. The Japanese can sometimes do it three years, but everyone else, it's a lot later.

00:28.01

Julia Muir

So what happens is once the OEMs start to face you know significant disturbance in their landscape, having to make massive changes, huge cost-cutting exercises,

Julia Muir

We see the wave come through of how they're going to change the distribution networks, how they have to save money in different areas in order to invest in future technologies, how they have to try and speed up their product cycles.

00.28.30

Julia Muir

And that then just has a ripple effect across the entire system. So whatever componentries they choose, whatever strategic alliances they build to try and survive and affects the aftermarket, affects every every other part of the ecosystem.

Andy Brooke

Absolutely.

Julia Muir

lysmic change would happen by: 2030

00:29.08

Julia Muir

And like we're in it now. We're already early because of course,

Andy Brooke

We're early. We are, yeah.

Julia Muir

whereass technology and innovation now it happens faster. and So that is the biggest issue happening. And of course, there are then little minor external environmental issues, um economic issues or political issues like national insurance changes, you know, everyone knew that something was going to have to change when the new government came in because they have to balance the books.

00:29.40

Julia Muir

So We need to, you know, everyone needs to respond to that. how And the cost of course the response to it is well, actually have we had too many low paid people?

Andy Brooke

Yeah.

Julia Muir

And is this the trigger that leads us to the to finally adopting technology and the on the scale that it all the futurists said that we would?

Andy Brooke

Yes.

Julia Muir

said it 10 years ago and we just kept on paying minimum wage and having lots of people.

Andy Brooke

Yeah.

Julia Muir

And maybe now this is the thing that changes. um because can't afford to. you know in in In many ah parts of the sector, the margins are so low that you simply can't afford to carry on as you are.

00:30.18

Julia Muir

You've got to make massive changes to your strategy. And we see things like big ah consolidation going on in the retail sector, significant consolidation in the body shop sector as the bigger players start to take over, the independent operators.

Andy Brooke

Yeah.

Julia Muir

And it's these economies of scale that will um will lead to business success and also a kind of an increased and level of professionalism or a level of at least the level of resources that could enable professionalism to ah you know be a bit better, professional standards to be a bit better and on ah on a consistent scale across hundreds if you know of sites um in the future.

00:31.02

Julia Muir

um And of course, you know it's just things like the with the electric vehicles, ah the whole tyre industry requirements, you know the growth in the need of tyres, are the retailers going to move into that and area? Because if you were ah you're a big retailer with a big brand, let's say Arnold Clark or Virtu, you're going to start looking down the chain, that they they vertically integrate into as many different parts of the sector that you can gain revenues from by using your brand.

00:31.36

Julia Muir

you so So people, and you it's like ah becomes a one-stop shop for customers. And that will affect other parts of the industry as as they as retailers used to be in that space decades ago, and then they pulled out of it and now they're probably are going to move back into it.

.: 31:52

Andy Brooke

Yeah, i was recently talking to Andy Hamilton from LKQ about this and what a big effect just the slightest manufacturing change has on the body shop industry um and on the aftermarket in general. For example, they're now going to bring out a series of vans from China, which have got batteries dotted all over the vehicle. And his argument about that was, you know, if one gets damaged, the body shop industry completely has to change its tack and change its level of technology.

Andy Brooke

and its level of understanding of vehicles altogether, you know, so there's that huge trickle-down effect.

00.32.27 Anyway, Julia, thank you so much. um What I always do at the end of these sessions as well is, would you like to and tell us all about the website people can go to, your book, etc.

Julia Muir

Yeah, so the website is automotive30club.co.uk

Andy Brooke

Fantastic. And also, if you want to do a bit of a book plug as well, that'd be good.

00:32.47

Julia Muir

oh Well, yeah, so here we are. Change the game. ah The leaders route back to a winning gender-balanced business. It's available on Amazon or other other publishers. When you join the club, and the person that joins the club has to be the CEO or the MD, but they get a batch of books as well to share with their senior team

33.07

The book talks all about the things that going on are going on in society that cause gender imbalances, you things like gender, the tendency to default to a male version of things when we're thinking about um customers or clients or designing anything for any any user, we tend to unconsciously default to a male user.

00:33.31

Julia Muir

And that's classic example is how we design cars that protect men better than they do women.

Andy Brooke

Yeah.

Julia Muir

Women are much more likely to get seriously injured in a car accident than men are. because we don't design the cards to protect women. and We design it around a default male. um And also other other issues in society that we tackle about, you know, when you're changing your organisation to be inclusive and you may have got a dominant majority profile of person in that organisation, when you change to start to enable other people to thrive, that profile of person, that original one, might feel disadvantaged

00:34.09

Julia Muir

Whereas in fact, they haven't been disadvantaged at all. It's simply that their unfair advantage has been removed so that everybody's got the same chances and same opportunities.

Andy Brooke

Okay.

Julia Muir

and But that to the individual feels like a disadvantage because suddenly where they were flying high and being you know top performer, they may not be because the competition has grown.

00:34.34

Julia Muir

um And so one of the biggest challenges of building high performing teams is to get everyone to understand that it will be competitive and that the people you're competing with for senior roles are going to be different to you.

Julia Muir

and But that doesn't mean to say that they are not as good as you and just because they don't look like you or they're not the same sex as you doesn't mean they're a token hire. They absolutely are good enough it is to be better than you are. It's just that's the way that it rolls nowadays, that that talent comes in all shapes and sizes.

00:35.11

Julia Muir

And that that's the biggest change that we have to install in in the companies.

00:35.14

Andy Brooke

That's absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much, Julia. Thanks for your time.