The Automotive Leaders Podcast · Jan Griffiths

Liderazgo, Cultura y la Incertidumbre que Enfrentan los CEO de la Industria Automotriz

·48 min·2 clips

Tony Trecapelli recalls Beth's advice, 'there are conversations and there are meetings,' and argues business is always personal.

1. The Automotive Leaders Podcast episode, recorded at The Gemini Group, focuses on Tier 2 suppliers and on how CEO leadership and culture hold up under tariffs and EV uncertainty. 2. Host Jan Griffiths, who describes herself as a Welsh farmer's daughter with over 35 years in the auto industry, interviews Tony Trecapelli, CEO of Gemini Group, who is about 13 years into the role and was previously at Saturn (9 years) and GM's Warren, Michigan technical center (21 years). 3. The central thesis is that culture follows the leader's behavior, and that a CEO who puts people first can still run a supplier through volatile programs and customer pricing pressure. 4. Tony credits Saturn, where 99 people were sent worldwide to find best practices and where anyone could pull the Andon cord, as formative, and says he "survived" 25 years of command-and-control while keeping his own values. 5. He cites advice from Beth ("there are conversations and there are meetings"), from Jay Wetzel on how decisions affect lives, and a line from Jan's mentor Paul Tashinsky, "you can't ship effort." 6. On tariffs, Gemini buys foreign steel because no domestic source will make the specific recipe, but has absorbed work moving back to the U.S. over six to eight months, and Tony worries the policy is "so politically driven" it may not survive a change of administration. 7. Gemini's tooling business builds dies for aluminum extrusion, an industry once focused on windows and doors that now supplies EV body structures and crash-related chassis components, with no prototypes and a need to "get it right the first time." 8. Tony answers "pessimistic" to the Automotive News survey (62% pessimistic, 24% neutral, 14% optimistic), saying volumes "look like an electrocardiogram" and business cases "go out the window." 9. He tells OEMs "don't be afraid to be a team," warns that Chinese competitors operate as teams by national culture, and says the hardest decision, letting people go, should be avoided by sizing staff to actual demand, using the question "why not us?" on tough customer requests. 10. Suited to supplier executives, automotive managers, and leaders weighing culture against margin pressure.

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