Real Estate and Construction
The writing’s on the wall
How Andy Cohen gets buy-in from his staff at Gensler
By Patrick Mayock
Smart Business Los Angeles | December 2007
Andy Cohen has a crystal ball. Actually,
he has quite a few. And although he
may refer to them as “clients” in the vernacular, their prophetic abilities are no
less astounding.
As one of three executive directors at
Gensler, Cohen looks to the customer to predict the changing needs of a demanding marketplace.
“We have client speakers that are telling us
what’s happening within their industry,” he
says. “We have client symposiums. We’re
constantly listening to how the market’s
changing and shifting.”
Such soothsaying has paid off for the
design firm as the Los Angeles office of
the San Francisco-based company
grew to 350 employees with 2006 revenue of $72 million.
Smart Business spoke with Cohen
about how to get your staff to buy in by
writing on the walls.
Q: How do you motivate your staff?
You really have to set a long-term
strategy that people really buy in to.
And it’s not just top-down; it’s bottom-up.
Meet with all your key people
immediately, understand their goals
and aspirations, and really listen
carefully to the business strategy.
Then set a key framework or vision
with your key leaders of where you
want to be 10, 20 years from now.
Q: How do you get buy-in from your
staff?
Communication is the key. Do a
lot of brainstorming sessions. By
having these sessions and eliciting
everyone’s response, everyone buys in to
that vision.
Literally document it on a huge piece of
paper. We write on the walls basically, and
people put their ideas up on a big piece of
paper. That document becomes the script
for setting in motion the next steps of the
vision and the strategy. Everyone gets a copy
of that banner.
We have what we call all-staff meetings,
where we’re grouping all staffs together and
sharing the strategies with them. We have a
lot of different videoconference calls around the globe where we’re constantly sharing
ideas and strategies.
The key is to have open transparence and
communication with the entire staff. When
you have a firm of 3,000 people in 30 cities
around the globe, it’s hard to walk the floor.
We have many meetings a year where we
bring different groups of people together
from around the firm to strategize.
Again, it comes back to this communication thing — of constantly getting out with
the troops, listening to them, understanding
their goals, and then repeating over and over
again what we aspire to be and where we
aspire to go.
Q: How do you analyze the marketplace?
In the different markets you’re involved in,
meet with the industry leaders. I like Jack
Welch’s statement, ‘You want to be No. 1 and
2 in every field you’re involved with.’
Listen to the industry leaders. Go to specialty group symposiums that are talking
about industry trends so you’re really
understanding what the leaders in the
industry are doing.
Q: How do you recognize business
opportunities?
The world is in constant change right now,
and there are a lot of different kinds of opportunities that are coming as it becomes more of
a global marketplace. We only enter markets
where we truly can have a competitive advantage and make a difference in that market.
I would urge a CEO to not go into a highly
competitive field where it’s a marginal-at-best level of success.
Q: How do you make sure you hire the right
people?
Usually someone who joins the firm,
they might go through two, three, four
interviews with different groups of people in the office that are handling different areas just to make sure that we all
feel comfortable that they meet our criteria for hiring.
It gets cumbersome at times because it
slows it down, but you really need buy-in
from the people that you’re hiring to
make sure that they fit within the culture.
Q: How do you create a unified culture
across several offices?
You truly have to have what I call a ‘one-firm firm’ culture, where a client’s able to
pick up the phone, and if they’re calling
Shanghai, they’re getting a very similar
response as they are in Los Angeles.
Even though it crosses cultural lines in
different countries, our culture and our
brand needs to permeate everything we do
and everything we touch.
Q: What advice would you give a new
CEO?
It’s about wanting to make a difference in
whatever field you’re in, with passion and
energy, really wanting to make a difference,
to set the bar really high.
It comes back to our mission statement —
to redefine what is possible. Redefine what
is possible in your field. Look at it differently
and create your own niche and create your
own differentiation, and mentor and coach
those people to aspire to be what they want
to be.
HOW TO REACH: Gensler, www.gensler.com or (310) 449-5600
