Cover Story
Savvy leadership
How Philip Koen rallied the troops at SAVVIS Inc. by rebuilding their trust in the company
By Mark Scott
Smart Business St. Louis | January 2009
Page 1 of 4
Philip Koen knew employees at SAVVIS
Inc. were going through a tough time after
losing their leader in a controversial departure just a few months earlier. Now Koen
was being asked to step in and turn things
around.
But it wasn’t doubt he saw in the eyes of
his employees as he prepared to speak to
them for the first time.
“What just shot at me was this was a
group of individuals who wanted this company to succeed,” Koen says. “They wanted
to be part of a winning organization. They
had all the tools and capability. But fundamentally, the trust element had been ruptured.”
Koen was appointed CEO of the IT service provider in March 2006 following an
investigation into a claim brought by
American Express against SAVVIS. It concerned disputed charges made more than
two years earlier on an American Express
card issued to former CEO Robert A.
McCormick.
“We had gone through a pretty tough
time as everyone knows, and it was very
visible,” Koen says. “What I’ve always
tried to do is be realistic. You never want
to insult the intelligence of your team.
They know the facts. To stand up in front
of a group and say everything is rosy, I
can’t think of a better way to foster distrust and fracture an organization.”
Koen scrapped the rah-rah speech. He
stood at the doorway to the meeting hall
and greeted each employee with a welcoming handshake as he or she entered the
room.
“I told them I was new, and I was interested in hearing from them,” Koen says. “I
think that took a lot of people aback. That
was a small symbolic thing I tried to do to
set the tone.”
Koen talked about aspects of his personal life in that initial meeting with employees, and he addressed the challenges that
employees had concerns about in an open
and honest manner. He acknowledged the
past and laid out his plan for the future of
the 2,200-employee company. It centered
around three elements: rebuilding trust,
encouraging constructive debate on how to help the company succeed, and engaging the passion and commitment of everyone in the organization to make it all happen.
“All a company really is is a group of individuals that have come together for a collective purpose,” Koen says. “If you’re in
that position of leadership or trying to help
that group pave the way, the first thing you
really need to make certain that people
understand is, ‘What’s the thing you’re trying to accomplish?’
“There is nothing more powerful than
getting a group of individuals that opt into
a particular thought or movement or goal.
It’s that process of getting people to opt in
to that common view that’s the glue factor
upon which everything else is built.”
Here’s how Koen applied the glue and
got his employees to believe in the company again.
