MEL #037 |From Downsized Teams to Global Impact through Relationship-Building Leadership with Dr. Gary Null

NULL (00:00)

Go and see, go and see, get boots on the ground, observe what’s going on. It doesn’t mean you have to actually take over and micromanage.

Just put your eyes on things because when you’re getting status reports, you at least have been able to see things and follow the story.

ADAMS (00:41)

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Gary Null Assistant Department Head for Undergraduate Affairs in the Industrial Systems and Engineering Department at the University of Tennessee. Gary’s 30-year career spanned three dreams, serving as a Navy officer and later Army civilian manager, working for his dream company, General Motors, and ultimately becoming a professor at the University of Tennessee. His path was sparked early by growing up near Detroit’s auto industry and inspired by Top Gun’s portrayal of Navy service

which led him to the Naval Academy. His journey was not strictly planned, but evolved through opportunities, flexibility, and a willingness to move forward without regret. In our leadership segment, Gary discusses how during base realignment and closure period in the Army, he led a downsized department responsible for global Army vessel maintenance. With limited staff, but ample funding, he built coalitions of contractors and engineers from multiple organizations,

fostering unity with simple but powerful tactics like shared polo shirts and dinners while negotiating with leaders to secure resources. Gary urges engineers to get comfortable being uncomfortable by embracing new challenges like public speaking, technical tools, and team collaboration. He stresses humility, warning against overconfidence, and advocating for leaders to remain receptive to advice until the moment a decision must be made. Explore the full episode summary, including guest bio,

key takeaways, transcript, and recommended resources in the show notes at drangeliqueadams.com / podcast. Without further delay, here is my conversation with Dr. Gary Null.

ADAMS (02:18)

Hi, Gary. Welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

NULL (02:21)

Hi Angelique, thank you for having me.

ADAMS (02:23)

I am thrilled to have you here. Can you start out by telling us how you got into engineering as a career field?

NULL (02:28)

Wow, that’s a 30 year remembrance, but I’ll do the best I can. So I’m originally from Toledo, Ohio, and I went to the Naval Academy. And as you may know, Naval Academy is big on engineering as well as other disciplines there in the departments and stuff, but I majored in system engineering. And once I got on my ship out to sea in the Pacific, I was in a collision at sea actually, and we can talk about that later too.

and spent a lot of time in the shipyard. So as I got to spend some time in the shipyard, getting our ship repaired, I got to work with some engineering duty officers there and it became a career that I wanted to transition to from the ship. So once I was on the ship for a couple of years, I decided to put my papers in and then transitioned over to becoming the Navy cause and engineering duty officer. So then I got to go to graduate school, get my master’s degree in mechanical engineering and just continued on from there.

ADAMS (03:17)

Okay. And did you know when you were going to go into the Naval Academy that you were going to study engineering or maybe everybody does? I don’t know. But was it already kind of predetermined so you sort of knew early on like in high school and things like that, you sort of knew that that was the path you were going to take?

NULL (03:34)

Great question. And in high school, ⁓ I was in the calculus classes and all the honors classes and stuff. So it was definitely something. And living in the Toledo, Detroit area with the big three there, I’d always drive by General Motors, which will be another thing to talk about in this podcast, where I always dreamed about working there and stuff. I actually went to the Naval Academy and first majored in mechanical engineering for a few weeks. And then I lateraled over and finished out with system engineering.

ADAMS (04:01)

Okay. And so yeah, talk a little bit about your career trajectory, both inside the Naval Academy and then what you did when you left and what you’re up to now.

NULL (04:09)

No, great question. I like to say in classes when students ask me this, I’ve had the fortune, I guess is the word I’m looking for, of having three dreams in my career. My first is the dream experience. And that dream experience was being in the Navy as an officer and sailing the world and being in different locations that people can’t get access to that I did. I was also in the Army as a civilian manager. So

I got to be a program manager and assistant engineer there. Same situation, traveled the world, got access to things. So that’s my dream experience. My second dream was my dream company. I got to work for General Motors for five years. Thought that that was going to be my long-term career after ⁓ I retired twice from the Army and the Navy. But then I finally got the chance to do my dream occupation as become a professor. got an offer from University of Tennessee and

I’ve been fortunate enough to have an opportunity to fulfill all three of my dreams and that’s a career that I’ve been on. So to answer the first question, my career, I was in the Navy for 20 years, 12 active, eight reserve. I was in the army for 12 years. I got to retire early for that and then worked for General Motors for some time and now I’ve been here at University of Tennessee for a few years now too.

ADAMS (05:26)

Yeah, that’s great. So a lot of people have dreams and want to try to pursue them. And I’m curious, did you, mean, did you actively say, okay, I really want, you know, to work for, for General Motors or it, and then you had a plan or, or was it more happenstance? Can you just talk a little bit about how, how it was that you got those dreams? Yeah.

NULL (05:46)

All great questions. I can look back at it now and say, wow, I’ve fulfilled all three of these dreams, but they weren’t necessarily a dream like when I was in high school and stuff. It all just kind of happened. And I’m a guy that ⁓ when I make a decision to move on, I move on and I don’t look back. I might have great, fine memories. Like, let’s just pick on General Motors while we’re on here. I love GM. And I still keep in touch with everybody there, but I’ve moved on. don’t dwell on anything like that.

Same with my retirements and stuff. So, you once I got on a ship, if I could look back and say, boy, I should have stayed on ships, but I didn’t. I got into the shipyards and I loved managing projects in the shipyards, till the time that I decided it was time to move on. And then I finally made my way, after a couple of jobs, I made my way to the Army, got to manage programs where again, I was on the Army vessels this time, managing them in shipyards around the world. Loved it.

got a chance to retire again. And then I’m wow, I really would love to work for General Motors. They were one of the five companies that me an offer. And I fortunately was able to accept their offer and work for them for some time too. nothing happened. There was no plan at first.

ADAMS (06:57)

Okay, yeah, I think that’s so important, you know, as we both work with students and many of them come in thinking that they have to have this plan and they sometimes get rattled when the plan doesn’t go exactly. And like so many of us, we’re sort of like, it’s good to be proactive, it’s good to be thinking ahead, but it’s also really good to be flexible because, and be open to new opportunities and things like that. And I think something that you said that I haven’t really heard,

talked about but I do think is important and I maybe want to stress it a little bit more with you is this idea of not looking back. It sounds like you do not have regrets about moving on and doing different things and I’m just curious how is it that Gary can you know doesn’t look back.

NULL (07:40)

Great question. There has been a couple of jobs, let’s say, that in between the companies that I didn’t mention and the jobs I didn’t mention, they were like stepping stones. So they were, hey, I’m going to do this. And then as I’m getting into it, like, either I still liked the job maybe, but it wasn’t a good fit. So then I looked again. And what I tell my students here too is that your first job is not going to be your last job. I got so many students that put so much

anxiety into that first job. And some of them may stay there for a while, but some of them might just be like me where my first job out of the Navy, I was there for 15 months. Then the second job was 18 months. And then finally I found that job where I stayed there for 12 years.

ADAMS (08:22)

Yeah, and I don’t know if this is the same for you, but I think I look back on my own career and I really thought I closed the door to academia right at the point of graduate school, right? So I got my PhD in 2004 and I decided, nope, I’m going into industry. And so the thought never even crossed my mind. And here it is 20 years later and now I’m in academia and love it and love what I’m doing.

Yeah, may decide that this is my dream job. I’m pretty close to making that claim, but that’s the other thing too. Like you can’t know in sort of the narrow view that you have early on until you start having these different experiences and see other opportunities that, you know, that’s something, there’s something might be waiting for you that’s like really the perfect fit.

Yeah, I agree. And I’m curious about just your military background. So do you come from a military family or how did the decision to spend so much time in the military, how did that come about?

NULL (09:18)

Great question. So I would say not necessarily do I come from a military family. My dad was enlisted for a few years on an aircraft carrier. My grandfathers were both in World War II, but they were enlisted. And they only did their short time and stuff. So nobody did an extensive time to retire like I did. It was just something that my dad mentioned. I’ll be frank. I I was a top gun kid.

So that came out when I was in high school. So it marketed well to a lot of people in my generation. And so I applied, I got accepted, and then it was something I was very comfortable with. I excelled at it, let’s say.

ADAMS (09:57)

Yeah, that’s great. So tough. You are a top gun kid. I had no idea that that that they marketed it and it actually impacted people’s career trajectories at that time. So maybe the military needs to kind of go back and revisit those best practices. And I don’t know, maybe you got to put it on TikTok now or whatever. I don’t know what the right thing is. But it sounds like they recruited somebody of your caliber. So it worked. It works.

NULL (10:18)

There was many of us at the Naval Cami that would talk about it.

ADAMS (10:21)

that’s funny. And then talk a little bit about your time as a professor and how you see that as your dream career now and what do you like about that role?

NULL (10:31)

I like a few different things. One is I add value and I add value in a couple of ways. One, I do a lot of mentoring with my students because I’m also in an administrative role for now as well. But in my classroom, I like sharing stories and it’s always relatable. In fact, I just got an email from a student in my summer class, a grad student that appreciated, I’m teaching project management over the summer. So I bring in a lot of project management experience I had, especially in the shipyards.

and say, hey, look, this is a tool you’ll learn and this is how I applied it, whether it was positive or negative, what I learned from that. And so wasn’t, I don’t always just talk a slide. I give a story and it’s been very helpful in a lot of the classes that I teach.

ADAMS (11:15)

Yeah, and I am finding, I’m surprised, a little bit surprised by this, but I am finding that the students, not only are the students really hungry for application and people who have actually done it, so they want to talk to people like us who’ve been out in the world and done the work, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised that the faculty are also open to it. I mean, think that when I, my view of academia, and I know things ebb and flow, but my view of academia, maybe when I first looked into it,

was that they really only wanted the researchers, right? You really only mattered if you were bringing in research dollars and you were publishing all these papers. And I really appreciate University of Tennessee in particular, because that’s where we both are. I really appreciate their view of, yes, of course that’s extremely important and we have faculty for that. And we know that both the students and the employers…

of our undergraduates really want our students to have this lens of this is what it’s really going to be like. This is how you actually get it done. And so I have just been pleasantly surprised at that, you know, at that point of view. I don’t know if you were expecting that yourself, but I’ve just been like, wow, okay. So, so I do fit in here in a real way with, with my background. Yeah.

NULL (12:28)

Yeah, and I love the yes and that you said too. So I use that all the time as well. And I do experience that as well too, particularly in a lot of the classes that we have some of our teaching professors and professors of practice that have industry experience.

ADAMS (12:53)

All right, Gary, can you give us an example of when you’ve had to use leadership in your work?

NULL (12:57)

Absolutely. So thinking back, I think that a good example for that question would be, and I could tell you the exact year, it’s right around 2007-ish, 2005 to 2007. I know it’s like a couple year gap there. But it was at the Army. so there’s a thing called BRAC. We haven’t had a BRAC in a while. I’m surprised that we don’t have a BRAC right now. But it’s a Base Realignment Enclosure.

So what that means is that at times we might have too many bases. Like at that time we had too many shipyards. So we would close Charleston Naval Shipyard or we’ll close Fort Ord Army Station out in California. The point is that ⁓ we went through a BRAC where I worked in Warren, Michigan, right in the Detroit area, and our office was BRAC. The facility was not just our particular office. And so what that meant was is that

we had to downsize our department. And so we, let’s say we had 20 something people. I don’t remember the exact number, but we went down to like four and I was one of the four. And the other four included a leader, a secretary and another person. So there wasn’t a whole lot of workers to do the job, but we still had to take care of the army boats. And so what I had to do was we had money, but we didn’t have people. So.

We still had to maintain, sustain, maintain and modernize our army vessels and they’re deployed all over the world. They’re deployed in Japan, they’re deployed in Hawaii, continental United States, Kuwait and what have you. So I went out and I got boots on the ground in those locations. And that’s a thing I’d like to always say is Go and see, go and see, get boots on the ground, observe what’s going on. It doesn’t mean you have to actually take over and micromanage.

just put your eyes on things because when you’re getting status reports, you at least have been able to see things and follow the story. But also I had to go out and find resources because we weren’t allowed to hire them, but we were allowed to pay for them, whether they were government or whether they were contractor. So I went to Philadelphia for Naval Sea Systems Command. I went to Norfolk for Naval Sea Systems Command, two different offices.

I went to Charleston for what at that time was Spay War, they’re now called NAV War, for Navy engineers. And then I went to the Baltimore area as well for Army engineers. And the point of this is that I had to go out and meet people to support me, but they couldn’t be working directly for me. So they were indirectly funded that way. And so even though they weren’t directly working for me, they still worked under me.

for the Army projects. And it was a challenging time, but you had to go out, you make these relationships, you tell them what you needed to do, you trust that they’re gonna get the job, but you verify that they’ve done the job. So trust but verify is another buzzword I like to use. And then you make things happen. we would go and we would go to, let’s say Yokohama, Japan, and we would go out there and see how things are going with our 10 vessels out there.

We were installing new radars, new navigation, new engineering systems on board. And so it wasn’t Gary doing the work. It was Gary in charge of the program, Gary in charge of reviewing the drawings with them, making sure that our requirements were met. Gary in charge of getting the funding in place, the millions of dollars in place to do all this work. But we would go out there on a plane. ⁓ I would fly with my engineers from Philly or Charleston or Norfolk.

out to Japan and we had a contractor that we sent over from the United States to do the work as well. And so we all came together and we all worked together. And it was that relationship building that was so successful, let’s say.

ADAMS (16:33)

Yeah, this is a great example. And the first question that follow up question that comes to mind is, so if you’ve got different engineers who, guess they’re coming from their own unit, right? They’re coming from their own entity and are they staying together? For example, did you only have the Virginia engineers work together or would they potentially be working with engineers from some of the other locations? And I’m curious about sort of developing a shared.

a shared vision, shared mission, shared working conditions, and all of those sorts of things when you’re pulling resources from different groups and having to put them together quickly to execute on a project.

NULL (17:12)

No, it’s a great question. And there’s a there’s a couple different ways to answer that question. One is yes, we brought all these entities together and we formed one team. And we’re one team going forward to where I would get I would buy polo shirts from our Army office and everybody would wear the same polo shirt, even though their their functional boss was the Navy, they would wear our office as a polo shirt, let’s say. But we also I also had it wasn’t always easy.

I always had to fight for them because their functional leader wanted to reassign them for their functional areas for, let’s say, the Navy or let’s say whatever it was. I might be trying to get my engineer on a Army vessel where the Navy was trying to get that particular engineer on a seal boat because the seals needed him right away. So it was always, I mean, as a leader, you always have to expect turnover.

and always have to plan for it.

ADAMS (18:09)

So first of all, I love this polo shirts. I mean, I just love this idea of we’re one team. And so we’re gonna talk, we’re gonna talk like we’re one team. We’re gonna operate like we’re one team and we’re gonna look like we’re one team. And I think people really underestimate the power of just that sort of visual and I don’t know, attire or whatever. think people just really underestimate that. And I know, I mean, sometimes it’s…

It’s more than merch, right? It’s not just like wearing some startup hat from some company that you’re spending time with. It’s a very different thing when you internally decide we’re all going to look the same, particularly when you’re coming from different entities. So I just wanted to stress that, because I think that was a brilliant move on your part to do that. Talk a little bit about, you talked about having to fight for your folks to stay with you when…

their home base was constantly wanting to pull them in different directions. Can you just talk a little bit about your approach to those kinds of conversations and how you would, I’m sure you didn’t always win, but how you would really try to go to bat to keep them with you.

NULL (19:10)

And I’m glad you said I didn’t always win. No, I didn’t always win. What that looked like was going and seeing their leaders in their location. So I would go to Philadelphia and talk to the engineer’s department head and tell them, hey, what a great job they’re doing. Maybe hand them a coin. We’re big in the military about coins and stuff like that, or some sort of certificate, but recognize them and tell them how important they are to me, how important the work is to me. And also to

to make them feel confident that I have funding in place because that’s the big thing too is if I don’t have funding in my budget in place for let’s say the next three years or next five years, then there’s no, they can’t necessarily hire people. If they’re hiring them for me, what are they gonna do with them when suddenly I might not be paying the dollars anymore? So now they have extra people. So there’s a huge give and take with that sometimes as well.

ADAMS (20:03)

Yeah, I think that’s great. maybe just, yeah, again, stressing kind of some of the points you talked about. there’s a, first of all, there’s the relations, the relational point, which is to say, I went to them physically. You physically went to them. And of course, you know, we have global virtual teams now, so it may not necessarily be getting on a plane. Although I will tell you in my career, there’s been times when I would go get on a plane, I’m going to Norway to have a tough conversation with someone and then I’m flying back after that conversation. But, but really.

leaning into the relational side of it and trying to be face to face when possible, but at least having those dedicated conversations. And then I like what you said about you’re recognizing, you’re making sure they understand how important this person is to your team. And then also addressing their concerns. If it’s a funding concern, if it’s whatever their concerns are, you were prepared to address those concerns in this conversation. Because it’s a negotiation, right? So you are attempting to negotiate for additional time.

of this person and there’s somebody else who has a different point of view and a different set of needs and you’re trying your best to cover those and also advocate for your position. So I think that that’s really ⁓ a just a great way to describe that. think oftentimes people think about negotiations in a much more…

I don’t know, classical sense, you know, where you’re trying to negotiate for money or you’re trying to negotiate for like terms and conditions on a contract. this is also very much a negotiation. You’re trying to negotiate for resources, human capital, and it requires the same level of preparation and the same use of tactics that work successfully in these other instances.

NULL (21:41)

If I can pull one more thing out of that use of terms and conditions. You sometimes the contract was necessary to get temporary people. And again, I wasn’t the one writing the contract with everything going on. I had engineers and other contract managers writing that contract for those temporary employees. And those terms and conditions were important to that too. So all that came to play when we were doing these projects.

ADAMS (22:03)

And I’m curious, so how long did you operate in this mode of needing to assemble these temporary teams? And then maybe just as a follow on question, was it one time you did this and you worked together or did you have to sort of assemble and disassemble multiple times throughout this?

NULL (22:20)

So was about four years that this happened. There were two, we call them classes of material of vessels. One class had six vessels in it. They’re the larger vessels of the army operates. And then the other class had 32, I want to say, I remember, certainly right, vessels. again, they’re stationed all over the world and we would do one at a time. So it wasn’t like you would do all of them. We might do a series.

of three or four at the waterfront, but if they’re in a shipyard, we do one at a time stuff. So it happened over about four year period that we all worked together like that.

ADAMS (22:55)

Okay, so the same team worked together over the four year period or did

NULL (22:57)

Yeah,

I mean, there was some part coming and going, but for the most part, we stayed together.

ADAMS (23:02)

Okay. And then, so that I’m curious, maybe, you know, as you add somebody new, so it’s another set of sort of team building when you have, it’s one to form a team the first time, but then as you have new people coming in and people leaving, then there’s another set of, you know, getting them on board and getting them integrated and making sure that they have the polo shirt. Just kidding. But can you talk a little bit about, yeah, just a little bit about maybe how you approach that?

NULL (23:26)

and again, it’s dinners and stuff like that too. It might be like, I remember bringing on ⁓ an Army team that did the communications for us that were different than the other Army team we were having. So it was going to them and meeting them and taking them out to dinner and getting that team building going and then inviting them to our location and then meeting them ⁓ on the waterfront somewhere, whether it was Virginia or was out in Hawaii or something like that and working together and stuff.

And again, it was building that trust so that you could trust each other and you knew everybody was doing the right thing, but also understanding their capabilities as well.

ADAMS (24:13)

All right, Gary, as we wrap up, what advice do you have for engineers who are interested in pursuing leadership roles?

NULL (24:19)

Great question, great question. I think a buzzword, a buzz phrase, I guess, that I’ve been using quite often with my students and with others that I mentor is get comfortable being uncomfortable and try and do that as often as possible. I have a lot of people pushing back telling me, ⁓ I don’t know if I want to do that or I can’t do that. Try it. Just continue to get comfortable being uncomfortable, whether it’s public speaking, whether it is doing a CAD.

learning CAD, learning programming, just being part of a team itself. I think the more you put yourself out there, it’ll be frightening possibly at first maybe, maybe that’s a good word, but you’ll get used to it and you’ll be surprised at how quickly it’ll be familiar to you. Once it is familiar to you though, I would also say be confident but not cocky. I’ve seen a lot of leaders out there whether

those that I’ve worked for, I guess is what I can generally say, that were just overly confident. They were to the point where they were cocky. They weren’t taking advice from their subordinates. And my first big example of that, which is, it’s Google-able, I guess, if that’s a word, is my collision at sea. So when I was back in 92, when I was on a ship,

We got into a major collision at sea off of Singapore. And it was primarily because the senior officer in charge at the time was cocky. He wasn’t receiving reports of contacts in the area the way he should have been. He wasn’t using his team properly. And he got overly, overly confident to the point that he was cocky. And I’ve seen that in different locations too, where I’ve seen a push

people away to where they’re no longer contributing. And if you can be that very humble leader where you’re constantly taking advice, yes, there’s going to come a point where you have to make a decision. And when you make that decision, that’s the decision. Everybody leaves the room and executes that decision. But until that point, be receptive to what people are telling you because you don’t know where those great ideas are coming from. You don’t know where the risk might be that the blinders, we like to say the blind spots.

that you might not be aware of. Always be open for somebody to offer their experience, their advice to you until it comes time that you have to make a decision. And even after that point, continue to monitor progress and put your eyes on things because everybody has a plan. And so we like to say in the military, first contact with an enemy. I’ve heard other sayings out there as well, but you have a plan, but plans can be changed.

ADAMS (26:52)

Gary, thank you so much for your insights.

NULL (26:54)

Thank you, ma’am.