Cover Story
The Jordan File
Smart Business Pittsburgh | July 2009
Born: Wheeling, W.Va.
Education: Bachelor’s degree, Bethany College; University of Pittsburgh School of Law
What was your first job?
Assistant carpet installer
What has been your greatest business challenge?
Managing a global law firm through a global slowdown
What is the greatest business lesson you’ve learned?
A good team almost always beats a great individual.
What profession would you want to be in, if you didn’t have your current job?
Hollywood producer
Jordan on face-to-face communication: It’s a painful reality that fantastic new technologies really do improve things and it allows you to be better connected than we ever imagined. But, there’s still magic and power in the face-to-face communication.
I try to make sure I treat every person with respect and to slow down and focus on them. Whether that’s an individual encounter in the hall or a lobby or whether it’s in a town-hall meeting when you get a question from one person out of 100 in a room — think about making sure you are reinforcing that.
Jordan on community activity: Rather than going to somebody and saying, ‘We need to get you to be on the opera board,’ we let the opera lovers pick the opera. When you have an alignment of firm support and individual passion, that’s when the best results occur. Because we are a big organization, we have a lot of people who like a lot of different things and we are able to reach a lot of organizations that way. But, it’s kind of hard to mandate or legislate. We really let the passion of the individual help take them where they want to go.
