Sell it to employees
A simple starting point also helped Case more effectively go
out and get buy in for his vision by talking to his employees.
And talk he did. To date, he estimates he’s been able, in some
form or another, to speak to about 35,000 Aon employees
worldwide.
“Fundamentally, leadership is about helping other people
succeed,” he says. “And doing that from Chicago is not very
helpful.”
To Case, a leader or leadership team needs to put the time in
to get a direct dialogue going with all levels of employees. At
Aon, that’s helped build growth and attracted new talent to the
company.
“It’s really in that context that you go out and have a conversation, and it turns out people are excited about that,” he says.
“That’s really what’s been the basis of our momentum. It’s just
hard work, caring, listening and engaging with our colleagues
on real topics.”
That communication comes in every form for which Case can
make time. He speaks to big groups, but he also meets with
area leaders during each visit and makes time to talk with
employees that approach him. He won’t ever have time to go to
dinner with all 43,000 employees, but he creates as many informal discussions as possible.
“It really is a personal set of discussions, many of them one
on one, many of them small groups,” he says. “You have to cut
across multiple layers of the organization, having the same
conversation with the same 20 people is interesting but not
very impactful. I would also say be very informal — I would
characterize myself as a very informal guy.”
To spark those informal conversations, you have to reiterate
the simple goals of the vision, then remove the hierarchy that
comes with most organizations. It doesn’t mean that you throw
titles out of the window, but you encourage people to speak up
and then you take responsibility for sorting out the chain of command later.
“The issues around hierarchy are always important, but that’s
really a function of respect and trust,” Case says. “It really draws
back to if we have a common vision. If we’ve got alignment around
it, we trust each other.
“When you have very real conversations that are tough, that
are straightforward, you battle out the issues and you walk away
as colleagues to try to achieve something, (and) there’s much
less concern around, ‘Gosh, you shouldn’t have heard that,’ or,
‘That should have come through channels.’ I go through great
pains to play that down to get input and guidance, and then
there’s trust that I’ll circle back in the right way to create movement and change.”
With all that candid feedback, Case was able to work toward
being the type of leader he admires so much. He learned the
areas where his employees needed the most help and got a leg
up on the war for talent by creating a culture that welcomes
employee input. And, with the growth, Aon was able to invest
time and a considerable amount of money into employee-recommended goals to move the company forward.
“We spent a lot of time thinking about what we want to accomplish as a firm, what are the specific areas that we want to invest
in together to make that happen,” he says. “And we have put
together — not me, by the way, but colleagues around the world
— how we’re going to accomplish that, and that’s really built a lot
of momentum in our firm.
“It’s because our firm has said, ‘Listen, we want to work
together to be operationally more efficient.’ That’s why in a
period of time when there’s been some turmoil in our industry,
it’s been a growth period for Aon. And it’s because we’ve been
able to take this global initiative to our colleagues and say,
‘This is the way we fuel growth.’”
HOW TO REACH: Aon Corp., (312) 381-1000 or www.aon.com
