Set the table
Once you have the idea of the culture you want, you have to get
the word out and create the tone.
“If it’s just 10 people sitting around a table, it’s not going to be
very effective in aligning the rest of the organization,” Roberts says. “The key is around communication, so we are very explicit
about how we communicate with the organization, and we are
very aggressive about doing that, because one of those fundamental values was driving a connection between every employee and
the firm.”
From the moment the leadership team returned from that strategy session, they spent 2004 saturating every communication with
those values. They also made them the focus of quarterly town-hall
meetings where most of the time was allotted to taking open questions from people about the company’s direction.
Beyond putting out the communication, Roberts says you have
to do something that really shows how the company is living its
culture. Because Jones Lang LaSalle wanted to open up, Roberts
and other senior leaders were dropped in the middle of workstations.
“I sit in a cube,” he says. “Most everybody else does, too, and
what that does is it fosters what I like to call atom smashing in the
hallway; it fosters communication on a real-time, ad hoc basis.
“It doesn’t matter if you run a business unit, it doesn’t matter if
you work in the mail room, you’ve got the chance to interact with
leadership or your peers or colleagues and that helps foster communication and gets the message out, as well. It goes back to
authenticity; if we’re preaching openness, if we’re preaching
communication, if we’re preaching connectedness, if the leader
is sitting in the office and is shut off from the rest of the organization, that’s not a very authentic message.”
