Lead by example. Setting the tone at the top is very important. Consistency and staying true to your values and principles, even during tough economic times or a challenging business climate is extremely important so people know that they can rely on me and that they can rely on Deloitte to do the right thing.
We’re there to service clients, and if we don’t do that well, we obviously don’t stay in business. There are just certain things that are nonnegotiable, and that’s how I think I try to communicate to our people. That’s all about sticking to your values, quality, ethics, treating people fairly, treating people with distinction, and those can’t change — even if times get tough or decisions are hard to make.
Get involved in the community. As a successful business in San Diego, we owe it to the community to give back. First of all, it’s the right thing to do, but second, it’s good for your business, as well. It’s clearly something that resonates with our people, and our younger people, more and more, want to be involved in the community. It’s not just about writing a check, but it’s about helping and feeling a part of the community as well as feeling a part of the Deloitte community when you’re working hand in hand with your colleagues. It also impacts in a positive way our recruitment and development of our people. It helps with connecting with each other and building stronger teams and building relationships and our reputation in the marketplace. It’s not only the right thing to do but it’s good for business.
Develop your leaders. It starts with recruiting the right talent and then developing them and nurturing them in their careers. Some of our partners have developed this view of career progression not being a corporate ladder — the up and out philosophy — but rather a corporate lattice, which is more around tailoring your career or your career path to ebb and flow with your personal life. [This approach is] allowing our people to fit their life into the work and their work into their life over the long term. It might mean that someone dials down or slows down their career progression for a certain period of time — maybe because of child care or elder care or other personal choices — or at another point in time, accelerates their career progression and really puts it into full steam to move at a more fast pace in their career.
We wanted to retain the best and brightest, and we knew we needed to offer different career paths for our people. At the end of the day, when you take care of people, they end up taking even better care of your clients, so from a business perspective, it makes perfect business sense.
How to reach: Deloitte LLP, (619) 232-6500 or www.deloitte.com