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During Hankowsky’s first year as CEO, he received a call
from a real estate broker. It was a call no company leader wants to receive.
“He said, ‘Bill, one of your guys who I’m working with misrep-resented something to us. I know that’s not who you guys are, so
I thought it was important that you know about it,’” Hankowsky
says.
In just about every business, if you don’t have integrity in
your operations, you don’t have much else. The knowledge
that a Liberty Property representative was less than truthful in
dealing with a broker revealed two things to Hankowsky.
“As much as I disliked that it happened, it was a great testament to our reputation, that it was so strong that it was actually perceived that someone stepped out of it,” he says.
The second revelation was that if you want to perpetuate a
culture based on solid ethics and integrity, you must
hire people who can move that culture forward.
Hankowsky says having the right skill set and level of ambition can get a candidate in the door for an interview. But for
that person to get the job, you really have to be able to dig
down and find out whether he or she is a match for your company’s core values.
“If you put people with good values together, you’re going to have
a good culture,” he says. “So in addition to wanting to hire people
with great skill sets and drive, we want to hire people who share
the values we have. You really can’t put values into people. They
have them or they don’t.”
There is no secret formula to finding the perfect match for a
position. To drill past a person’s interview facade takes multiple interviews and a lot of patience.
“Candidates generally have multiple interviews with different
people in the company,” Hankowsky says. “One reason is that
none of us are perfect in judging others, so having collective decision-making is good on that front. It’s also a way to, as a group and
a team, try to evaluate how somebody would fit in with us.
Sometimes, there are people who we literally just say, ‘We don’t
think it’s a good fit.’”
Hankowsky says he remembers a favorite saying of Rouse
every time he and his management team make a hiring decision: “If you had to let someone go, two people made a mistake.”
In the case of the Liberty Property employee who misrepresented the company, he wasn’t terminated. But he did have to
tell the broker he made an error.
“We didn’t let the person go because we also believe that people make mistakes,” Hankowsky says. “You shouldn’t make the
same mistake twice, but you can make a mistake occasionally.
This person is now a terrific performer in the company, has
learned a great lesson from (the mistake), and I’m very happy
with the outcome.”
Hankowsky turned the situation around and used it as a positive development, an opportunity to reinforce the culture to an
employee and to a broker with whom the company frequently
does business.
“I remember speaking once somewhere a couple of years ago
and someone asked me, ‘How does Enron happen?’”
Hankowsky says. “Enron happens because people tolerate
behavior and values when they probably shouldn’t have, and it
happens when a company doesn’t have an open culture.
“If there are lots of meetings, if the doors are open and you
run a company where people feel like they’re welcome to come
to meetings and have their opinions heard, where people do
things in a very transparent, open way, then someone who does
something inappropriate is going to stick out like a sore thumb.
The day-to-day behavior of the people in a company greatly
reduces the possibility of an (Enron-type situation) happening.”
