library cards, trying to check some books out. we were told by the libraries that the library was for whites only and not for colors. but on july 5th, 1998, i went back to the pike county public library in alabama for a book signing of my book and hundreds of blacks and whites as it showed up and they give me a library card. [applause] walking with the wind is a book of faith, hope and courage. it's not just my story. it is the story of hundreds and thousands and countless men and women, blacks and whites, who put their body on the line during a very difficult. in the history of our country to an segregation and to end racial discrimination.

>> up next, "after words" with author deborah dingell. this week, bob lutz with his book "icons and idiots: straight talk on leadership." the former vice chairman of general motors discusses the latest amid the best and worst impressions on him during his career in the auto industry. the program runs about an hour. >> bob, great to be with you this afternoon. hope you are doing well. >> guest: thank you, debbie. i am and hope you are too. >> host: i am. i enjoyed reading the book this past week. i've known you a long time and know a number of people in the book you read about. why did she write this book now?

>> guest: well, it is clearly something i couldn't have written while i was still actively employed by general motors because some people are there within general motors or within other companies might taken offense. but he was a book i always wanted to write because i worked for a number of very interesting personalities and i felt sometimes skewed personalities, people with a great deal of ability on one side, but since serious flaws on the other and i figure the broad public rarely if ever gets an inside look at the overall behavior of some of these famous executives they read about. >> host: so what is your definition of leadership, especially in business. what do you look for in a good leader? >> guest: well, the most

important prerequisite is an absolute sense of integrity because if that isn't there, than everything else is built on a house of cards. you also look for a healthy degree of self-confidence. there has to be some ego. you can't have a retiring, shy person who likes to defer to other people. it has to be somebody with some command present. a leader also has to have decent interpersonal skills, but must have the ability to communicate because the leader can't say do this and don't ask why. just her because i say so. that is not in perfect form of leadership. and much better form of leadership is to use the power of verbal or written communications to paint a vision that everybody wants to follow. once you've got all the troops

mobilized and wanted to go the same direction as you do, then it becomes pretty easy. >> host: i read this book a couple times prepared to talk about this today with you and i honestly was trying to figure out, who did you think was the most effective leader? you did give both the pluses and minuses. ultimately the scoring you did at the end of the book. but who do you think the leader was that she worked with in the ottawa industry? >> guest: well, the most effective later i worked for the ottawa industry i have to say for all it's worth, for all its flaws, for all his profanity, for all the downsides to him was without question lee iacocca. >> host: and why? did you learn things from him? >> guest: well, i learned a lot of good things. i hopefully didn't learn too

many bad things that the lee iacocca was passionate about the company, passionate about saving this inner passion, this inner drive is another hallmark of good leaders. they have to be varied as the ethic about the task they are embarked on an has to be able to convey that enthusiasm. lee iacocca was a brilliant communicator and he also wanted is the sometimes gain a little bit. i'm good days he could listen to a very, very complex multifaceted business problem and listen to everybody's talkin after 30 minutes he was say everybody shut up. i've got this figured out. he would lay out a step-by-step plan. there were other days when seemingly obvious problems seem to escape him and he was also at

times, and this is set times he was out with a overly daring by a sense of ego and people needed to defer to him. he needed red carpet is rolled out for him, figuratively speaking of course. and he was softened somewhat a shy man, especially in the company of others that he didn't know. but overall, take the weaknesses on the positives. he was a highly affect give, highly visible leader who could rally the troops not only in-house, but he could also get the dealers behind him. he saw the brilliant job that he did with the congress during the days of the chrysler loan guarantees. believe me, that was a tough sell. >> host: i agree with you. he was loved and respected. i was trying to figure out who you least respected.

who in her career or life to do these respect and why? >> guest: well, certainly art hawkins, who i never worked for direct lee, but he was the ceo, chairman and ceo of exide corp. at the time world's largest producer of lead acid batteries and i succeeded him as ceo of the cub any. i mean, i just uncovered the biggest possible can of worms. he was in violation of many state and federal laws, found guilty of racketeering. i mean, there is not only a lack of integrity, but also because the eco, cells dealing. i mean, this man never should have had any position of responsibility in any large organization. but again, he possessed some of the traits good leaders have,

which was the enormous degree of self-confidence, the command presence. he looked like a leader, sounded like a leader. he used vocabulary of leadership and people were persuaded by him. they did follow him. they were fooled by him. so again, somebody who possessed the skill set, but did not possess the moral and ethical requirements to be a leader. he eventually tracked the company down because when i took over, it was almost -- it was impossible me to do business with certain companies. for instance, i couldn't entertain wal-mart as a customer, even though they potentially by seven or 8 million batteries a year. they would say i'm sorry, we are not going to do with a company where the former ceo is headed for the federal penitentiary. so i found a lot of doors -- i couldn't raise equity because the company was still under

indictment on federal state. this was a guy whose personal greed and willingness to cheat and lie to achieve his goals actually destroy the company and drove it into chapter 11. >> host: i think you did right by the way. let me ask you this question. why don't you talk about it and the book you had the scoring metric system for what you call the bean counters they need to have things symmetrix. talk about that of the dough people understand what the metrics are. i don't think people who know you very well with interview with the bean counter or metrics. i think you've got passion. >> guest: i'm not. and of course debbie, first of all this set of leadership attributes are my own and i don't claim that they are complete. other people might have others,

but i think i have a fairly comprehensive list. secondly, the importance of the waves of those leadership skills i mean, to be honest i'm as some people might not attaches high a waiting to integrity. others might attach a greater weight team to creativity. it depends. i give the disclaimer and said that, these are subject to it. they are the way i see it. other people might have different weights. but i wanted to at the end of the book, i wanted people to have an opportunity to kind of see an effort, even if its objective quantification, but i wanted them to see some sort of quantified way of assessing his best, the second-best, who was third last and i also wanted to encourage people to do a self-assessment or to assess their present leaders.

you'll probably recall at some point in the book i said those individuals who have worked for me in any of the four companies that i worked for, i certainly would welcome them filling up the same form on me and sending it back to me because you're really basically never too old to learn. >> host: why don't we use this as a chance for you to do some self-assessment talk about yourself as a leader. what do you think some of the leaders thought about having you as a member of their team? some clearly chose you looks like a few may not have. what do you think about yourself as a leader using that assessment? >> guest: first of all, i don't classify myself as an articulate and competent. i do classify myself as articulate as i can describe what i want. i can describe the vision. i can get enthusiastic. i was clearly always very passionate about the business i was then.

i think thanks to my training in the marine corps and also my early training at general motors and later training and ford, i.e. large american on the mobile companies. i had a think a pretty impeccable sense of business ethics, what you do and what you don't do. i think on the integrity front bypass. i certainly think i am a creative person. so i was easily -- i found it easy to come up with new ideas and new solutions to old problems so i give myself a high score on not. i think there's probably a better theater than i was subordinate because i found i had a lifelong problem of not being able to tolerate fools gladly and at times when i was working for a leader who was behaving in a particularly strange fashion, i didn't always

keep it to myself. of course, one of the rules you should observe as they support that is to maintain loyalty to your leader and you should not openly criticize that heater in the presence of others. that is one that i occasionally viably. so i mark myself down on that one. >> host: one thing that struck me in reading your book is that an organization can become a bureaucratic institution that can dampen inspiration. i don't think you ever let that happen to yourself. but how do you and how do leaders ensure this doesn't happen? >> well, basically this is why i say the good leaders, really good leaders are often impatient. they are often somewhat contemporary. they are sometimes arbitrary because the leader who always

listens to everyone, always listens to all the viewpoint, wants to make sure that everybody is convinced before he or she finally makes a decision, you just lose valuable time. i think a good leader does have a sense of impatience, is impatient and overly long meeting, where a lot of people made contributions to demonstrate their knowledge as opposed to advancing to leaders that violate good management behavior and makes a stop talking about that. we've heard it before. if you don't have anything new to say, just keep quiet, please. we need to get this over with. that is unpleasant to hear. it triggers some fear and anxiety in the meeting. but good leaders are focused on getting the job done. they are focused on getting it done fast. you can have a very pleasant

environment absent that leadership traits, but not as much gets done. i think you and i both know the examples of his leadership style that was overly patient, overly tolerant of other opinions and finally was too slow moving. but good leaders just run roughshod over that. >> host: i actually agree with that. you and i did know people that were too patient. you are allowed to show your patience more than i was. i may ask a different question. how do leaders encourage creative thinking? how do those great ideas come forward and be heard an organization? >> guest: yeah, i don't think anybody has ever completely solved that. cert a-1 way you do that is by espousing new and different solutions yourself.

secondly, people say this guy certainly thinks out of the box. maybe that's okay. you definitely encourage other people to think out-of-the-box. you reward people who think out-of-the-box, even though the idea may not pan out the first time. above all, when people try something out of the box work, you don't punish them. i'll just tell you a little 32nd story. two young engineers at chrysler when i was there took a company car home with them because the company engineering car because they thought they could make some modifications to where you could shift the fourth speed up another transmission with a little switch, which is now known as a tax shift. every cars got it. they successfully did that and they were able to demonstrate the chrysler could now for the cost of $10 a car introducing

manually shifted automatic transmission. well, when the organization heard about it, it was immediately how hair you do unauthorized work on a company car? to authorize you to take the car home with you? who authorized this work? do you realize you did not authorize damage to a company car? the whole weight of the bureaucracy was about to defend on them and they were going to be squashed like maggots. i found out about it and i said wait a minute, these two kids exercised their own initiative, did some and every automobile company in the world is trying to do. general motors hasn't done it, ford hasn't done it, nobody is to make it appear they figured out a low cost way to the owner the convenience of being able to shift the automatic transmission that his desire. i think these guys are heroes. we finally wound up giving him the chairman's price. if you do that sort of thing once or twice come to you reward

innovation is supposed to squashing it. the word gets out and then what you find is all the innovative people in the organization who had prior to that hunkered down, they come out of the woodwork and start making contributions. >> host: i'll ask you a question the united states government could use some help on, too. i knew if she were going to talk about when you talked about those reactions. like so many corporations that have been successful for decades are hundreds of years have gone into these large bureaucratic organizations that do squash and become much more authorized to take a car home than the creativity. what is your solution for government and bureaucracy? and how do you get rid of levels of bureaucracy that come into existing organizations that have been successful lasting, but are successful in innovation, creativity, et cetera?

>> guest: well, it is a problem so facing a lot of american businesses. it certainly is facing a lot of american communities and we saw what have been to detroit where over time we have built to not practice, and it unassertive apparatus that is simply no longer supportable by its revenues. i was just talking to a consultant today about a major american corporation that is facing headwinds, seen declines in revenue, declines in margins. as they are also reluctant to reach in and take the bitter medicine that is going to take to write says the company, basically what it takes is somebody who doesn't try to solve -- what i've always sent to the music and the american government is when there is a new problem, instead of asking your existing organization to

deal with this new problem, you know, expand their scope, a new department is formed. so we've got departments all over the place, many of them operating. i don't know how many intelligent services we have come in a lot of corporations behave the same way. your member general motors under the so-called go fast initiative. go fast is supposed to be a spontaneous flow of little ideas that can be quickly adopted to streamline the organization are make tasks easier. as it happened, the ceo wanted to know how to work very the company, who was creating go fast, which departments foster the most go fast, how fast virchow five-speed process, how many were adopted? where the savings from the go

fast? so a huge parallel bureaucracy was built up around the go fast initiative, which was designed to eliminate bureaucracy. i mean, that is the ultimate irony and ico lurcher cassation doing that. they create a new bureaucracy to solve the problems of the old bureaucracy and of course the old bureaucracy doesn't want its problems solved. the only way to cut through it as it's got to be either external fact dursley chapter 11, which unfortunately would be a great way to fix come to me is that there were for the fact that the shareholders get wiped out, but i mean, detroit is undoubtedly in a couple years under kevin or his leadership going to emerge as a new, stronger, well-balanced city with the realistic tax base. a lot of heretofore public services privatized, et cetera, et cetera. certainly it is true for general motors in true for christ or in

true for a lot of american companies. government is going to require, i hate to say this, but it's going to require a chief executive who is not consensus driven, but it is very much focused on streamlining government and reducing the size of the government, reducing budget and unfortunately for us and a lot of nice to have people out of government service and encouraging them to find jobs somewhere else. but again, this gets back to my comments on leadership. a highly effective leader who is facing a difficult or seemingly in part to both situation cannot wait around for everybody to agree with what he or she is doing. at some point you know, that's why he or she is the leader. it is supposed to force change

and it's going to take somebody in government to really, really force change and say i don't care about all this. we don't need this. we don't need that. we can consolidate this, or hand out tasks to everybody and tell everybody is going to get rid of 25% to 35% of the people. you guys figure it out. i'm not going to tell you how to do it. but it's going to take something arbitrary like that. of course, it's an unpleasant task? yes. with a person get heavily criticized? yes. would there be negative press? yes. would he or she likely be voted out of office the next time around? again, yes. that's why it's so difficult to do. instead of actually tackling the problem, most leaders in government and industry just kick the can down the road and say well, this is something we are really going to have to address sunday.

then i wanted these people find comfort in doing long-range plans. the long-range plans are usually five years out and they are usually designed to show we will address this problem in a few years and here is how you plan to do it. meanwhile the revenue will pick up in will be okay. i've seen in my career hundreds of those plans, which make everybody feel good. they'll go home at night and they are tired and it worked on this long-range plan. they actually mistake that for doing something about the problem. once the long-range plan is finished, and put to bed, everybody says while we fix that want and of course they haven't fixed the darn thing. >> host: i agree with everything you just said, which is probably scaring some people out there. i call a kind of appropriate issuer. the ottawa industry beast of the program to assure, always some new phrase that could be used

and things would come in. i'm not sure that any of them really made a difference. did any of them make a difference -- >> guest: now. >> host: you and i agree on that, too. just go all the silly initiatives that this had not, and it was really the program du jour. they are usually sold to the company by consultants. i think one of the cancers in the sight of american industry and the american society of human resource devotionals is going to be sending me a bunch of angry e-mails on this one. human resources in the united states has almost become a cancerous growth in the sight of american industry in that human resources used to be keep track of people, keep their personnel records and make sure they get paid and serve the right ones up for a raise is periodically. but human resources has fixed

the undead into all kinds of programs and naming, just married programs that grow and grow and grow. they are the instigators of many of these enormously time-consuming bureaucracy creating new initiatives that everybody has to pretend to believe in and usually books are handed out that everybody has to read. it is just a colossal waste of time. i saw a lot of that at chrysler. i obviously saw a lot of it at ford. you and i both saw more than we wanted to see at general motors. i think of human resources for either out doors are cut down back to their basic function of keeping the personnel records and making sure people get paid

and the promotional increases take place, i think we would all be a lot better off because they create way more work than they actually alleviate. you and i both remember, what was that, the performance management system at general motors, the pnp, performance management program, yeah, we would spend literally hours or days developing next year's goals and quantifying them all and then checking them against other people's goals and having big meetings to make sure that everybody's goals were consistent with everybody else's goal. and when it was all done, you put them in a desk story and he never looked at them again. >> host: your communications people would be having a heart attack right now if you are at the. you speak the truth and that's what you do in this book about leadership.

but it takes a question i have to ask you some time, so after now, which is you don't have any women leaders in the book. i am curious what you think about women as leaders in what you think of them as being part of your team and why to see out of one mystery still have a glass ceiling or women at the top? >> guest: okay, that's a real question. several female reviewers of the book had said, well, this guy is obviously sexist because he doesn't deal with a single female leader. the reason i didn't do with a single female leader is that i never had a female superior. so there was just an opportunity that i've missed. my career was mostly in the days before women achieved any sort of significant promotions. so i mean, it is just not my fault. it is other people's fault for not having promoted women early

enough so that i could report to them. having said that, i think all in all, which we think of women as leaders? i think women are highly affect it as leaders. not all of them, but good female leaders are highly effective and we just have to look at national leaders like margaret thatcher was a brilliant leader or golda meier of israel of so forth. so we have numerous examples of highly effective female leaders in politics. to a certain extent in industry. look at general motors, i don't think we can really complain of a glass ceiling at gm anymore. a number of officers are female now that gracefully abide and of course mary bari was executive vice president for product development and certainly in the case of maryborough, often spoken of as a candidate to

succeed dan acker said the ceo of general motors. and ford motor co. has a number of very highly placed females whose names escape me now. i will make this prediction. i would say within five to six years at the latest, one of the large automobile companies will have a female ceo. >> host: do think at some object a click again ackerson coming in from outside the industry to start to appreciate the value of women? and do you think this recent trend in the last five commit 10 years of bringing people in from outside the industry has been sent in the industry needed to get shaken up a little? >> guest: guess i do. of all, i think in the case of general motors, i think rick wagner was very, very open to female leaders and wanted to see them promoted as fast as possible and wanted to put them

in positions of greater responsibility and willing to take -- play to push female leaders pretty fast. you know, maybe you can take a little risk and pushed them faster than what we would normally say they were ready for. so there was no problem there. it was really cannot present have made what i consider the boldest move of putting maryborough in for product development. now the broader question, do i think it was good to bring outsiders then? i think because we've got outsiders in all three american come and is now. if the searcher marconi at chrysler jeep, alan mullally afford again ackerson at gm. i was always have the feeling that an automotive ceo should have an automotive background because he needed to understand the industry and make the right judgment. i revise my opinion on not. what i think is the most

important is for the non-automotive experienced ceo to be possessed obviously have good leadership skills, but to have the judgment to be able to listen to the right people. as alan mullally breezily sad, he said somebody asked him come you weren't not a motive person. how does you know what to do to fix for? he said i can't afford. i didn't have a clue about what to do to fix forward. but all of the ideas on fixing forward were right there with my people. these are people who had been held down, had been listened to, but i listen to them and their ideas made sense to me. but global product development, deadbeat, which general motors took me from the time i got to gm in 2001 to 2005 to get global product development implemented as a post of each continent

doing their own cars, which is wasteful. alan mullally got to ford. yeah some of the people, what's wrong with the way we do business? they say gm just converted the global product development. that's obviously what we should do. we are doing duplicate cars all over the world. it makes no sense whatsoever. alan mullally says why don't we do it? well, there's resistance from europeans and resistance from latin americans. alan mullally says let's have a big meeting to talk about jamaica decision. he hadn't been afford the three weeks when he made the decision to go to global product development. so i could give you similar -- similar examples for dan ackerson that i observed, were they just used judgment and common sense. why are they exercising judgment and common sense better than the seasoned automotive professional? because most of the season and automotive professionals have 30 years of training of running the

business the wrong way. winning a by the numbers, doing all the product plans laid out with the cost targets and investment targets at a rate return target and only during the ones with the higher rates of return was basically a bean counters excellence in product excellence suffered. dan ackerson comes in and he says look, i don't understand this business, but all i know it's general motors houston make not very appealing cars that we were losing money, right? ray. now would make highly desirable cars that cost a little more to make, but we are making money, is that right? very. but why would we change? lushes keep doing great cars the best we know how that a lot of content, but of technology and a lot of quality of because this was a lesson that you know, the

highly trained 30 are veterans of the automobile industry for god. this is not a business, restaurant business, food business, doesn't matter, always the same. if you run your plan targeting to make as much money as possible and you express everything in money, we spend this much on the product and take 10% out and then add a little margin and then we will sell it for this match, why in five years we can have the stock a $100. i have been too easily in meetings like that. we never talk about what you have to do for the customer to get to those numbers. the philosophy i have always followed and the most successful businessmen followed this is satisfy the customer, get the product right, get it better than competition if you can and the money will follow because

profitability as a reward for doing the job right. it is not a god-given thing that you can put down on a spreadsheet and then manage the rest of the business to get that profit. so i think both dan ackerson and alan mullally, are they businessmen? sure. do they care about the bottom line? of course they do. but they want to get to the bottom line by producing excellent products that the customer is willing to pay for. post goes to building on that, why did the ottoman history go to near collapse? was it just that they weren't noting that product? was there anything that could have been done differently? and do you have any responsibility for what happened? >> guest: all-star with the last one first. i probably wasted the money here

and there. probably cause the creation of some cars are versions of cars that turned out not to sols post i thought they were going to do. but as wayne gretzky says come you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. all in all, i think my batting average of successes to failures is probably, i will make a bold statement, probably not many people who can equal my batting average for success versus failures in the products that they helped create. i think the problem was what we just talked about earlier, this almost institutionalized, do everything through the bureaucracy, don't take any risks, don't take any chances, don't accept the obvious. study everything, then study it again. if you don't like the way it comes out, study at one of our time and have all of these

departments and subgroups and initiatives that absolutely had no customer value. but where a large organization and we are going to behave like a larger conversation. we are going to have the staff like a large organization. people kind of see -- executives often see their role as overseeing this huge apparatus successfully as opposed to creating real customer value as their primary goal. as i said in my book, car guys versus bean counters, i really do put a lot of the blame on the u.s. business schools on the way business graduates are taught in this country. >> host: let me ask you a different question. in outcome as you read the book

come you didn't necessarily like everybody worked with. do u.s. a leader has to like the people you are working with? and if you don't, how do you keep it from poisoning an organization? >> guest: well, a good leader may or may not like the people that he's got, but he or she should try to hide that, namely, mainly try your level best not to play favorites. playing favorites is a really destroys the morale of the situation. i was in that a few times in my career. every time i opened my mouth, the leader with bag, there you go again, let's. we are not interested in your opinion. and then send yes-man, some well tailored, articulates, incompetent on the other side of the table would atco the boss' views, but express slightly differently and then all kinds

of smiles and praise would be heaped on him. i found that absolutely sickening. that does tend to disturb rowan and organization. try not to play favorites. if you're going to be nasty, be nasty to everyone. if you're going to be nice and funny, i always try to inject humor into meetings because i felt it was -- a loose and everybody up and you got a better exchange of ideas. but you have to be consistent. again, the most important thing is don't play favorites. treat everyone the same. a lot of good coaches of sports teams are extremely tough. but yet, they somehow manage to convey to the players that they are being tough for a reason. they are being tough on them because they want the team to win. a good leader does the same thing and organization.

he's tough, but people know he's not been tough because he's a. he is being tough because he wants the company to rent. >> host: good advice. most leaders that sometime in their career have to do is complete in priorities. how do you choose what is the priority that's got to drive the business decision ultimately? >> guest: that's a good question and part of the general motors pmp process, where we all have to write down our goals is there a lot of conflicting goals on there. and of course, leaders of organizations are faced with cool conflict all the time. long-term success, which means that we shouldn't do this right now for short-term success hemispheric quarterly earnings make the stock look good, make the stock go up, all of our options become more valuable, et cetera, et cetera, but will hurt

us in the long term. long-term short-term goal conflict is there all the time. a lot of times there's other goal conflict. one of the famous ones in the automobile industry is cost versus quality. do you spend $15 more per car putting an added rustproofing were added sound deadening or using a better quality berry and very often in the past and most of the over emphasis on cost, cost, cost, cost in the america not a mobile industry in the old days when there is a goal conflict between quality and cost. quality was always de-prioritize and says well, if the berries can last 30,000 miles and then we'll be out of warranty anyway and it's not going to cost us anything. whereas if we put in the better bearing, we know that will cost us $2 a car.

so most of the decisions tended to be driven towards costs. i think of leaders can look beyond that. the visionary leaders, like the people we have running the business now will say hey, quality is free. you may be investing a little bit in the car right now, but the downstream effects on customer loyalty, resale value, absence of warranty costs come absence of recalls, et cetera, et cetera will more than pay for the added quality we put in a car. you have to adopt that as an act of faith because you can't prove it with numbers. good leaders are readable to make those t leaders are readabo make those trade-offs and this might leaders will make those trade-offs in the direction of long-term result, in other words, this is why many private companies to better than public companies because privately held companies were in the sun and

the kids all of the business, they can make the decision of let's not behave foolishly in the short-term because we want to build the company. public companies are under unbelievable pressure for short-term results all the time and was one of the things that tends to hold them back. but the good leader will, when faced, will let his moral compass be his guide. what is really better here? a short-term cost reduction for customer satisfaction? what is really better here? a short-term quarterly earnings report that looks good the next quarter we have to explain why we are down, but meanwhile we will look like heroes. he will say, let's not do any funny business this quarter. let's just run business soundly and we will have a good progression next quarter. so i think of leaders make those judgments intuitively.

but they tend to be ethically guided as opposed to putting up the short-term smokescreen. >> host: i think that's good advice. buy me a you're another question. what is the one mistake you see leaders make most to you one number caution someone is even into leadership to be aware of? >> guest: well, i think the largest mistake but they've certainly witnessed was most of the readers that i work for is to create a faith in numerical analysis. because they'll take a five-year sales projection for a five-year revenue projection for a five-year projection of health care cost, or a five-year projection of price per barrel of oil and so forth and they will accept that as gospel the

case they got it from one of their great departments that supposed to create these numbers. you know, when i joined general motors in 1963, i worked in one of those departments. as a so-called senior analyst and i know it the end of the day when you filter all the way down through the layers of management and you get to the recent mba, who is actually doing those numbers, a lot of it is i just look at the sheet of paper and say what let's see, tends to match, five is too little. i think i will go with seven and a half. and then your boss accepts that, blesses it goes up to the chain and the attendant gets to the ceo, and it is gospel as gospel and everybody believes in it. i always made me so popular in the meeting, where rick or somebody would say there's been analysis, what do you think?

the only thing i can tell you and every single number on that, every single number on that spreadsheet is wrong. the only thing we don't know is how long it is and what direction is the run. i think a lot of leaders take two great sense of comfort from numbers that have been prepared by somebody else as opposed to letting their onex parents, their own in tuition and their own judgment he had died. some of the best leaders -- this is one of the things iacocca was so good at. they would start off with a presentation and iacocca said what are you doing? he said we are here to show you -- i don't want to see a bunch of alternatives. we know what we are going to do, don't we? the run since arises yet coming out, we know of are going to do. packrat stuff in. we are going to do so-and-so. good leaders cut through that

stuff. bad leaders or meeker leaders are more consensus driven leaders will tend to place far to create of an importance on numerical analysis, which at the end of the day is exactly like my quantification at the end of the book, were you so nicely pointed out, you're absolutely right, you could argue with the list. you can argue with the rankings and so forth because at the end of the day, numbers unless it is historical numbers, but any future numbers is always the product of somebody's judgment. the product of judgment and numbers of large corporations, usually the input is from low-level people who are fresh out of business school who are very smart and have no experience in the business. so why would she believe those numbers? >> host: i'm sitting here laughing. i'm not even sure how to frame this question.

in political correctness, you would probably say it's killing the government and bureaucracies and corporations. how would you deal with very legitimate issues like when i started working general motors, this is a true story. the persons and why would a woman want to work at general motors? how do you help organizations be aware of things they really need to be at the same time.how political correctness for lack of a better word, kill the ability to be competitive and productive? >> guest: well, i think we have to separate diversity programs from political correctness. i think diversity programs and what was up until a few years ago and arguably still is a white male dominated culture is probably a good thing to sort of for so. some opportunity.

but to me, that's got nothing to do with political correctness. where political correctness becomes absurd is when you are, for instance, i was once usually chastised in a meeting as we were talking about a female designer and how skilled she is and it also happened that she is without question one of the most attract women i've ever seen in my life. i made the offhand comment, i said you know, she's also extremely beautiful. i had used blasphemy in a church. the full weight to the h.r. senior management came down upon me, saying we don't comment on women's appearance anymore. well, excuse me, but what is so negative about making a comment, as long as you don't say -- as

long as you don't imply that she got to her position because of her beauty or she owes her position to her beauty, but you fully recognized her talent and her contribution and fair by the way, she's a very attractive woman. but any comment relating to someone's appearance is now banished from the lexicon in all large organizations. at some point, debbie, political correctness starts to infringe on the first amendment because what we are seeing is a network of dues in dallas. you can say this, you can't say that. and when you work your way through this political correct this pic at, whatever happened to the old first amendment rights? you're not even allowed to refer

to and extremely obese person as bad anymore. you know, a five-foot 11 woman who weighs 380 pounds, excuse me, she is fat. we can find euphemisms for that of a she is queen-size tortious large or something like that. but this total of our language to avoid phrases are referenced as that could conceivably be offensive to someone i think is wrecking a lot of things in this country. and if i were dictator, i would really step in and fix it. >> host: you would know you are going to have a lot of reaction to what you just said. i would love to have a longer conversation with you that we do this because i think there's been a lot of discrimination over the years and it's not as simple as you make it.

but there's invalid viewpoints expressed and how do you have a valid discussion is probably worth having a discussion. though i will tell you quite frankly, i did experience discrimination probably almost my entire career at general motors coming at you didn't talk about it because that would hurt u.s. well. it's not as simple or complicated as people would like to make it either. that's another conversation. >> guest: i am sure that is true. and as you know, i knew her true and friend, barbara mahone brill well that she's both african-american and female and she has some great discriminations. but it has -- i don't think that has anything to do with the political correctness movement, which is an entirely separate thing. >> host: we need to have this then we will. we've only got a few minutes left in you guys so much wisdom in so many good straightforward gangster share with people. what would you do differently if you were starting your career

over again? or is there anything you would do differently? >> guest: well, i often thought if i had been less outspoken and less critical of the way the company is run, i might not have alienated as many boxes as i did during my career and i might have risen to greater heights. but on the other hand i tell myself i would have denied my own being. i would have denied my sense of critical analysis and my frustration with things not yet run as well as they could be run. i probably -- first of all, i would wind up being frustrated as opposed to be now happily retired. i think if i had denied my own personality and try to be something that i wasn't, i probably wouldn't have got as far as i did. as i look back on my time at

chrysler, with iacocca, i wish i'd sometimes been a little bit less intemperate in my criticisms of the way he was doing things that might have resulted in my elevation to chairman or ceo of chrysler corp. but you never know. all in all, it is what it is. i've done it. i'm happy with it. i may look back on it -- when i look back of my career was mostly great satisfaction. >> host: most people would say it had a very successful career to be perfectly frank. you have. many would kill to be. are you really retired? what is next for bob lutz? >> guest: well, i am certainly not going to be an executive in a major corporation at almost the age of 82, but i do some writing. i'm a contributor to "forbes." i'm a cnbc contributor. i write a column for road and

track magazine. i am a board member of a variety of companies. i do a little bit of consulting and i am now involved with a partner in producing premium men's watches, one of which is right here. that way are also starting a small automotive venture. so i've got plenty to keep me busy. >> host: i wouldn't call that retired. we've got just a couple of minutes left. you are someone with many thoughts, a lot of wisdom. somebody just starting out today they want to follow in your footsteps. you've got a lot to teach them. what was your parting words of wisdom be to some young person, male or female starting out on leadership? >> guest: well, first of all i would say be passionate about whatever you do. if you're passionate about fashion or the furniture

business, go into that. if you're passionate about the hospitality business, go into that. last night i heard the lecture by sportscaster -- i forget his name. he's probably the most famous most widely known sportscaster in the united states. he resigned his life story is fed from the time he could walk, he would walk around holding a spoon and pretend to be sportscaster. it's what he wanted to be his whole life. i think and make interest and passion for is an essential ingredient. otherwise you wind up as a nine to five slave, slogging along, watching the clock, ticking off months until retirement and you won't be successful. so you follow the area of your greatest passion, one of your greatest passions, then i say hard work, always straight to exceed requirements. never be satisfied with the status quo. always give it a little extra and of course always maintain

absolute professional integrity. don't try to pull funny stuff, starting rumors or try to ingratiate yourself by shading the truth and so forth. just behave with absolute integrity, which is i think a lesson that america's youth today really needs to hear. >> host: bob, you are great. you've taught me a lot over the years. john dingell and you are to be thought that i love because you both say it as it is. i don't always agree with you, but i think we need more people who are willing to say what they think. so i hope people look forward. >> guest: you know, john is one of my heroes. >> host: i love you both. >> guest: john is one of my heroes for sure. >> host: well, you both. i look forward to seeing you soon and i hope people learn from reading your insights and wisdom. bob lutz, "icons and idiots."

take care. [laughter] >> guest: thanks, debbie. goodnight.

the president pro tempore: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, retired admiral dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the guest chaplain: let us pray. godguest chaplain: let us pray. >> let us pray.reat lord possibilities, help our lawmakers turn this impasse into a bypass so that the heart of our nation may beat vibrantly and strong. lord, on our coins and currency we have placed the words "in god we trust."