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Upon his college graduation from MIT, Colin Webb received a job offer from General Motors. The company offered Webb a design, release, and development engineer role with its cruise autonomous vehicle program. At 22, Webb was helping to design smart cars for one of the Big Three in Detroit. Not a bad gig.
He quickly realized, however, that he was part of an old industry with a traditional style of doing things. Obviously, he and his peers brought some new ideas. However, when he bounced them off his direct supervisor, he was told to keep his head down, his mouth shut, and his nose to the grindstone. In short, don’t make any waves.
Instead, Webb did something audacious. He wrote Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors. In his email, he suggested some ideas for improving the company and developing its employees. Barra replied, saying she felt his ideas were good and that she would put him in touch with her executive team, who in turn, passed the ideas down the org chart to the managers.
At the midlevel of leadership, the ideas got stuck again. Managers expect you to be in the industry for eight years before you earn the right to lead. It was hard for them to listen to an idea from a “kid.” Further, his ideas were different from the way they did things. Within a matter of weeks, those ideas died on the vine.
Before the year was out, Webb chose to leave the company and launch his own. Webb is now an entrepreneur. He co-founded Sauce Pricing, where his team created data-driven pricing strategies for restaurants. Like other young founders, he’s focused on a purpose-driven culture. He’s leveraging artificial intelligence in more relevant ways than many other companies led by older generations. After a couple of years, he sold the company, and it’s now called Linked Eats. He’ll be on to new ventures soon. He holds no resentment toward his former employer, but he’s on to new things.
Different versions of Webb’s story are being told every day. But what if we could keep those young team members?
What to know about what’s happening today
Margaret Mead was arguably the most famous anthropologist of the 20th century. Over 50 years ago, Mead saw something coming that is now happening today. She predicted that for the first time in history, young people would know more than their elders about the world that’s coming. Mead clarifies three stages of human history.
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Tim Elmore
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