Education
Jean-Lou Chameau
President, California Institute of Technology
By Patrick Mayock
Smart Business Los Angeles | December 2007
You have just assumed the presidency of a multibillion-dollar institution, and what is your first order of business? To listen. Just listen.
That is precisely what Jean-Lou Chameau did. Before starting his job as president of the California Institute of Technology, he sat down
with hundreds of the 8,580 employees and elicited their feedback on nearly every aspect of the institution. That is the best way to
understand an organization’s culture, problems and opportunities. When that organization has an annual operating budget of roughly
$2.1 billion — Caltech also oversees NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory — developing that understanding is crucial. Smart Business
took Chameau’s advice and listened to his thoughts on communication, defending tough decisions, and how to attract the best and
brightest to your organization.
Practice transparency. You have to be fairly
open and genuine in what you say or do.
You have to be very, very transparent.
The benefit is that people will feel
good about sharing information with
you. They will help you define your
ideas, your goals, and they will work
with you on the issue if you are very
open with them.
Being open means that you will tell
them the good, the bad and the ugly, and
share the issues with them. In any organization, from time to time, you have
tough times. If you have been open with
people and didn’t hide anything from
them, you build up lots of good will.
When the tough issues arise, they’re willing to work with you or give you time to
solve them.
There’re always situations in an organization where you cannot share all of the
information that you have. And again,
that’s an advantage of being very open
with people. When you tell them, ‘In this
particular issue, I cannot provide you
with more details at this stage,’ they will
say, ‘Well, OK. He must have a good reason.’ If you have built up trust and good
will, people trust you.
Interact with your team. I try to interact oneon-one with as many people as I can.
It doesn’t have to be for long. When I
walk across campus and I run into an
employee, be it a staff member or faculty
or a student, you chat with them for five
minutes on whatever topic of interest.
If you keep doing it, every time you do
it, you are not only sharing information
with one person, you are sharing with
many people because they talk: ‘I just met
the president, and we talked about this.’
The word goes out. It does filter
through the organization.
Try to communicate with people as
often as you can on a formal and, more
importantly, an informal basis.
Every time you do it, even if it’s only
with one person, you are, in fact, influencing more than one person.
Defend tough decisions. You have to be a bit
of a cheerleader for the organization,
(but that) doesn’t mean that you don’t
make tough decisions when they have to
be made.
People would not respect for very long
a person who is only a cheerleader and
cannot address the tough issues. I do not
view the two sides as being incompatible.
When you make a decision, an easy one
or a tough one, make sure you always
have a good rationale behind it.
There are always pros and cons in
every situation. You may reach a conclusion, and somebody else may reach a different conclusion, but they will respect
you if you have a good rationale behind
whatever you did.
Foster research. Try to promote programs
and make sure you have resources and
an environment that allows people to
work on those great ideas that they have.
If you look at it from a corporate standpoint, you have to keep in mind that if
you want to assure the long-term success and competitiveness of your organization, the R&D has to be part of it.
You have to convey that to your employees, even in tough times. It’s easy to say,
‘We’re going to invest so much in research,’
when things are going well. Typically, when there is a little bit of a problem or
business is not as good, it’s the first thing to
be cut, and usually, it’s a mistake.
You have to try to convey the importance of research to the organization. I
found that the best way, usually, is to be
very specific.
You take a product that you are selling
today, and you say, ‘By the way, this was
based on that work that we did two
years ago, or three or five years ago.’
Working through an example is the best
way to show people.
Attract employees with the product. To attract
and retain the best employees, you need
to have a good product.
The place has to be exciting. They have
to feel that they came to a place where
there is innovation, to a place which is
going somewhere, and that there is long-term potential for them.
As a leader, you can try to be convincing and be a good cheerleader and provide good opportunities to people, but
you can never replace the product. If you
have a great organization, people will
want to work for it.
(If you don’t have a good product), you
have to be very upfront with them with
the situation: ‘We are at situation A, and
I want to go to Z.’ Give them the sense of
how you feel you can go from A to Z.
If they realize that you understand the
situation and have a decent shot of success, success will make it a very attractive place in the long term, and you can
convince people to join you.
People want to be in a situation where
they can come and really have an impact
on an organization. When everything is
going very well, it’s nice to join an organization. But for some people, it may be
more exciting to say, ‘Well, there is an
opportunity here. I can really transform
it. I can really play a role in achieving a
vision there.’
HOW TO REACH: California Institute of Technology, (626) 395-6811 or www.caltech.edu
