The head of Siemens USA explains why it's making open-source training programs available across industries, as it looks to benefit from a new age of automation

Mandel Ngan/Getty ImagesSiemens USA CEO Barbara Humpton is overseeing both new technologies and new forms of workforce training that will define the future of work in America.Barbara Humpton is the CEO of the US subsidiary of Siemens, the large German engineering conglomerate that is developing both the technologies changing the workforce and the skills-training programs that are needed in response.Humpton is an advocate for open-source skills training programs that can be used across industries, rather than specifically for a company.She also shared her best career advice, and her view that business needs more positive leadership.C-Suite Insider is a collection of exclusive interviews with leaders of the world's largest companies.We're in the early stages of what the World Economic Forum calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As automation replaces jobs and advanced technologies create new ones, the developed world is being forced to rethink the way it educates students and trains workers.Barbara Humpton, as CEO of German engineering conglomerate Siemens' US subsidiary, is at the forefront of this transformation. Her company is creating both the technologies changing the workforce and the training programs needed in response to them. And in the US, her 50,000 employees are already benefitting from the re-skilling programs they're building for their clients.Humpton also serves alongside CEOs like Apple's Tim Cook and IBM's Ginni Rometty on the White House's Workforce Advisory Board, which is focused on sharing training best practices that can be used around the country.Humpton recently spoke with Business Insider about why she's hopeful that investing in workforce education and training can be the No. 1 bipartisan issue in America (a topic highlighted as crucial to the labor force in the White House's annual economic report for 2019). Then, ahead of her one-year anniversary as CEO, she discussed what she considers to be the most important leadership insight of her career.The following interview was edited for length and clarity.At the driver's seat of automationRichard Feloni: It seems to me that over the last year or two, the hysteria over automation and AI has shifting more to, We actually do have tools that we can address this transformation of the workforce with and it's not hopeless. Where do you stand on this?Barbara Humpton: Let me step back for a minute and give our perspective on what's actually happening with technology today. Siemens is over 170 years old, and has been a catalyst in each of the previous industrial revolutions. Now, we've got more than a front row seat: We're actually in the game helping to introduce new tools.What we've seen with every previous industrial revolution is that yes, there's been a massive shift and change, but what has resulted is dramatic creation of wealth, dramatic creation of opportunity for populations who had previously not been able to engage. We're every bit as confident that this industrial revolution brings the same thing. Yes, it changes the way we work, but in very simple terms what's going on is that we're elevating the role of the human in the overall process of making things.If everybody can accept the fact that yeah, these are powerful tools being brought to the table that make us more productive and allow us to create things that have never been possible before, then the question is, how do we really manage a workforce so that we don't leave anybody behind?And it hit me yesterday that, not only do we need to be talking about not leaving people behind, there's also a certain element of this that you don't want to leave behind businesses, either.We've traditionally been engaged in building the big equipment that moves people, that powers grids, etc. But about 10 years ago, the leaders of the corporation realized that this digital transformation was on the horizon and they began making acquisitions of software companies. Now we're one of the top 10 software companies in the world.What we have to offer businesses is that we can help companies in their digital transformation, and then we've been building up a framework for helping people to re-skill, not only for our own employees but for theirs.Lifelong learning needs to be an accepted reality of life today. You know, in today's world none of us can rely on an education system to teach us what we need to know in our twenties and then expect to be able to ride that until we finish our careers. When careers lasted 30 years and technology wasn't transforming so fast, maybe that was possible.Feloni: Will this training have to take place within companies?Humpton: Well, I'll put on the table that I think it should.At Siemens, we're spending about $50 million a year on our 50,000 employees here in the US. Globally, the corporation is spending $600 million a year on employees. Actually, [Siemens global CEO] Joe Kaeser talked about this. He was asked by an investor, How do you explain to your shareholders that you've wasted $600 million? And Joe's response was one of those moments of courage. He could either give platitudes and just try to get on to the next question, but he chose not to. He said, Look, stock ownership of Siemens is not a prison, and if someone does not believe that's a valid investment in the corporation, they should invest elsewhere, because this is our critical resource and we choose to make this investment.We need to do this because in many cases we're inventing the technologies that are becoming the backbone of industry. And so we need our folks to deeply understand what their customer's journey is likely to be. And what we're doing is, we've chosen to devote the work of [Siemens' philanthropic arm] the Siemens Foundation to the development of these new collar skills.What I really want to talk about is the new skills that'll be required in the industries we serve, where you need a combination of the hands-on knowledge with a knowledge of how to interact in the digital world.It's our sense that the contribution we need to make is to create the ecosystem that will support ongoing education for this kind of job development. And what we're choosing to do is not invest in proprietary offerings: We're choosing to create open-source educational programs.As an example, imagine you wanted to be a building manager. The building manager of the future needs to understand building automation. And so working with the Automated Controls Professionals Association, we've created a curriculum that is going to actually be the first that isn't proprietary. We've said, let's create a program so that folks can get a certificate in automation controls, and that will prepare them to be the building managers of the future. So the dollars from the Siemens Foundation leverage into a network of funding teams and a network of educational institutions that are focused on addressing these kinds of gaps.Read more: Accenture's HR chief shares what the company has learned from retraining nearly 300,000 employeesRethinking educationFeloni: Business Insider had a panel in January at Davos around this exact topic. There was a consensus that we need to rethink what is the worth of spending time learning.Humpton: You know, legend had it that a four-year college degree was the secret pathway to the American Dream.In fact, there are and will be even more pathways.I was really honored to be named by Secretary [of Commerce Wilbur] Ross and Ivanka Trump to this 25-member Workforce Advisory Board that will advise the administration. We have four objectives. Objective number one is open up and then publicize new pathways to success. Objective two says what you need to do is make opportunities more transparent, so that potential workers can find their right match for their talents and capabilities in this world of job opportunities. All too often, jobs will require a four-year degree, when in fact there's nothing about the job that truly requires a four-year degree - it merely helped hiring managers get a smaller qualified-candidate group. Objective three is that companies need to change their practices to really reflect the reality of what they're looking for in the workforce. And then objective four is that we really need to publicize the good practices that are going on and measure their impact.Tim Cook - Tim Apple- said something incredible [at the meeting], that half of their new hires don't have four-year degrees. That's awesome.Do you have to get the four-year degree? No. And can you get ongoing education through work? So, we at Siemens have used apprenticeship and truly believe in that model. And what you'll find is that there are a lot of companies, not necessarily registering and going through the process of formal apprenticeship, but developing what I'd call work-study programs. Because just the sheer value of learning by doing is so powerful that everyone's finding it's a really good way to attract and retain talented people.Feloni: And do you think that the US could benefit from an approach that Germany or Switzerland have in terms of how they view apprenticeships, and also how they even regulate them and have national regulation of their completion?Humpton: Yeah, we actually touched on this a bit at our first board meeting. The idea that, of course our government is very different, right?Feloni: Sure.Humpton: From federal governments, from state governments, there's this kind of secret power to our system here: this natural competition, and this natural focus on attending to local needs. But what various stakeholders brought up is this idea that we really need to be able to track the workforce nationally. We need to understand what skills and credentials people are building and how that can apply, even across state boundaries.I think the key things that people are going to be working on is what I would call a lightweight infrastructure at the federal level, mainly there to facilitate the flow of information across state boundaries. And then tremendous empowerment at the state and local level, so that the entities that have the real needs, the local businesses, can be working with the local educational institutions to have impact.Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP PhotoHumpton at the White House's Workforce Advisory Board meeting in March 2019.Feloni: What do you mean when you talk about the light infrastructure from the federal level?Humpton: Well, there are a couple things that I think we should advocate for.One is the idea that yeah, data is powerful, so we'll have to agree as a nation on certain parameters that we want to have businesses report. I have a feeling that'll be part of what comes out of this: establishing a repository at the federal level of information that will help us understand the effectiveness of our programs. Just like today, there are jobs reports and various sector reports. The Census Bureau does a tremendous job of giving us data about our society. Generally, this is a topic that deserves exploration using data. So I expect that will be part of the answer here.Second, I actually think that there's going to be advocacy for recognizing the investments in people as true business expenses that deserve the same kind of treatment as investments in research and development, or investments in property claim and equipment. That's a little bit trickier to tackle because it feels softer. But I think we're going to try to look at that and try to find ways to financially incentivize those kinds of investments in people, make it easier for businesses to do that without them having to feel they're gambling their bottom line. Once people get into this, they recognize the power of truly developing the workforce, but it's often difficult to get them off of the starting square.Feloni: It seems these ideas might be some of the increasingly few topics with actual bipartisan support. Do you think we're going to see actual change now?Humpton: Oh, I'm confident of that, and here's why. The reason there's bipartisan support is that truly this benefits every stakeholder in the system. Business stands to benefit, and that's great. Workers stand to benefit. By the way, labor unions are at the table as well, so organized labor is involved in the dialogue. There's no question that we're all motivated to help strengthen America's performance on the world stage, and this is a vital piece of it.Read more: US state governments are looking to Switzerland to build an apprenticeship model that could provide millions of Americans with good jobsWhen we started our apprenticeship program a decade ago, we shared our playbook with the Department of Labor. That's there for others to be able to reference and use, and the Department of Labor has been very active in encouraging apprenticeship program expansion. We used to say that infrastructure was going to be the number one bipartisan topic, but I think this is going to edge it out.Being CEOFeloni: I also wanted to discuss your own role at Siemens. You've been with the company awhile, but you're coming up on a year of being CEO. Did you have to adapt your approach to leadership as you've had to increase the scope of your vision?Humpton: Something fundamental that I've learned over these last few years is that you're going to be most effective when you're your authentic self.I'm a natural optimist; I'm full of energy and enthusiasm. I am not at all the traditional grizzled, serious CEO in the corner office. But the key thing I learned is that if you try to be something you're not, then it's just wrong. The best thing possible is getting yourself into a job that aligns well with your natural capabilities. This one does for me: It calls on my love of telling stories, communicating to people, connecting with people.Feloni: Was there ever a moment in your career where you felt like you were not being authentic, and then you had a realization that you had to be?Humpton: In the first 20 years of my career, the whole management theory at the time was they wanted to teach us how to correct our deficiencies. We want to teach you how to be the leader that you need to be, and so we're going to send you to school. And I wasn't one to fit the mold.I had leaders communicate to me all the time in my mid-career, saying, Hey, Barb, we really like you and think you have great contributions, but you're just not executive material. Well, it turns out I had this core feeling in my heart that business needs more of what I'm bringing to the table.I was very committed to each of the jobs that I had; every job was fantastic. I got to work on some amazing things while at IBM and at Lockheed Martin. And I was content. I felt if that's all there is, boy this is great. But then I discovered that no, truly, business needs more positive leadership. Business needs more people who manage not by fear and intimidation, but by engagement and inspiration. And those are the things that are just naturally part of who I am, and I'm bringing it to the table every day now.Feloni: From your perspective, it's recognizing leaders for who they are and not fitting some specific mold.Humpton: That's right. Looking at my leadership team today here in the US, what I love about this team is that we all have different styles, but we all get stuff done. We all have an eye on the long-term health of the business versus the short-term. We all care passionately about the career development of people who work for us. We step back and we look at what results people get using their own natural style. (And by the way, some people love working for the direct, crusty, skeptical engineer - that's great.) 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The head of Siemens USA explains why it's making open-source training programs available across industries, as it looks to benefit from a new age of automation

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