Cover Story
Present and future
Smart Business Pittsburgh | July 2009
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Identifying what is critical in your culture can’t be a mandate from the top, which is why the company had a consultant running focus groups with lawyers and staff.
Since the consultant played a major role in collecting information for the company, Jordan had to make sure he had one with the right characteristics.
“They have to be good listeners,” he says. “They have to be open-minded. They have to be good facilitators to have a good open robust discussion. They can’t give the sense that ‘Here’s what management wants to say, so will somebody please say it.’ They have to make sure that people feel like it’s a good meeting and they really are getting a chance to say what they think.”
One you hire a consultant, you have to inform the consultant about what you want out of the process. In Reed Smith’s case, the consultant had worked with the company before, so there was already an understanding of the global strategy. But if you are starting fresh with a consultant, bring him or her into your offices and explain the company’s history and how the company has evolved to its current state.
“All those things are important because they help explain in context why a comment might be made,” he says. “That allows people to actually understand what’s driving it and it allows the consulting group to perhaps not be taken down the wrong path accidentally by misunderstanding comments.
“You certainly want to make sure they’ve had a chance to get a pretty good and thorough briefing on the business, and your style and the kinds of issues that are probably out there. Because the last thing you want is for them to be going down a blind alley without knowing it.”
Once that is all set, you can begin working with the consultant on what questions you want answered and what information you want. Reed Smith stayed away from simply asking employees to list the core values, and instead, questions were designed to illicit information.
Employees were asked questions like, “What are the kinds of things people need to do to be successful in the firm? What are the kinds of things you need to do to be perceived as a quality Reed Smith colleague? What are the kinds of things that you know you shouldn’t do if you want to succeed at Reed Smith?
“The questions were more focused on behavioral elements and then the core values sort of were derived from that,” Jordan says.
In larger markets, there was a cross section of employees from different departments and seniority levels participating in the focus groups. In smaller markets, everyone was encouraged to participate in meetings.
“We really wanted the participants to not just be made up of partners or leaders or high-impact people,” he says. “It was really people in different job areas, different levels of seniority, different pay levels.”
Once the consultant collected the information, Jordan had a team within the senior management team break down the information into a message that they could communicate.
While Jordan was heavily involved in that team, he didn’t lead it. You want to make sure you have a quality team going through this information with you.
“For me, it was making sure we had somebody on that team who understood the breadth of the firm,” he says. “We have a senior partner who is in charge of our strategic planning and merger and acquisition activity. He’s been involved in a lot of the expansion around the world. He understands the culture of the firm and the internationalization of the firm. He was somebody I could be sure would understand that core values that played well in one market would also be core values that fit and played well in another market.”
Fortunately for Jordan, the information the team received from the focus groups mirrored what the top executives were thinking. But team members still had to discuss how to communicate the values in a way that would be digestible. To get the best core values to communicate, you need to keep a few things in mind.
“You have to be open-minded, you have to be good listeners, you have to be prepared to challenge preconceived notions you might have about what the values and culture of the firm really are,” he says. “Because if you end up with something that actually doesn’t match the firm, you’re not going to really advance the cause. You really have to be open-minded and listening and then creative about how you reinforce the end result.”
The whole process from start to finish took about four months.
“You can’t overcommunicate on something like this,” he says. “It’s critical that you think about how you weave these values and thoughts into all your communications — town-hall meetings, whatever written communications, blogs or intranet. All the new communication devices that we now have — how can you utilize each of them to reinforce what you think are these important core values. If they are done well, they are not new to the company.
“They are actually the things that have been keeping the firm successful for many years, but there is a sharper articulation of them and you want to make sure you are getting that out every way you can.”
