Drive the implementation
It’s nice to want a culture meant to motivate people in their
careers, but the tripping point often comes when you try to instill
that with thousands of people spread across the world. As Roberts
tried to truly infuse the new culture in 2004-05, he learned that you
have to refuse to make it second fiddle.
“You can’t accept the status quo, you can’t accept the naysayers,
you can’t accept patience,” he says. “You have to constantly work
at getting people to see the vision, you have to constantly work at
getting people to buy in to where you’re going, to buy in to what
you are doing, and sometimes, it’s almost a person-by-person,
block-by-block effort.
“It’s really two sides of the same coin for patience. One is you
can’t be patient, you have to constantly work at it; the other side is
you have to understand that it won’t work overnight.”
That also means you have to keep driving the elements you
believe in when you run into people who are resistant to the new
ideas.
“You have to work with them to agree to say maybe this isn’t the
right bus for you to be on, and you can’t shy away from those,”
Roberts says. “You have to confront them, but you have to confront them with the commitment and the passion, recognizing
the direction you’re on is the right direction.”
For those open to the new direction, managers have to take the
time to ask them very simply what they want from the culture of
the company.
“(Employees) have to be the steward of their own careers, but
we want to be sure the organization is providing them coaching,
mentoring and every tool available to maximize those career
plans,” Roberts says. “Those conversations create an environment
where people of diverse ethnic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender backgrounds feel like, ‘Hey, I
can succeed here just like everybody else.’”
You have to create a system that ties achievable objectives to
your cultural goals so employees see that you’re authentic.
For example, Roberts points to how Jones Lang LaSalle has
pushed for more diversity through enrichment opportunities that
are the responsibility of each level of manager. The company had
to reshape its outlets for hiring, recruiting, partnerships and promotion — and it ties a portion of each manager’s bonus to working those into his or her plans.
“I’ve got a diversity action plan,” Roberts says. “My direct reports
have a diversity action plan, their direct reports have a diversity
action plan. So it’s making people accountable for them that goes in
their annual goals and objectives, and their bonus is impacted by
how well they do that.
“We tie accountability and metrics to having those conversations. We’re able to track, through technology and our HR team,
those career development plans, so our key managers need to
have career development plans established for their top talent
diverse employee base. And that’s not just for diversity, by the
way, that’s all the action plans. They know what needs to happen,
they know who’s on the radar screen, they know who wants to
move to this geography or this business unit, so that’s how we’re
able to reinforce it.”
