Spotlights: C-Suite
I don’t trust you with my career.” I was talking to my executive coach one day. I’m a new CEO and I’m talking to him like, “Man, I’ve got this big job. I’ve got to fix this turnover issue, and I don’t know how to do it.” He said, “Well, Bert, let me first ask you: What are your company’s values?” It was such a simple ques- tion, but it kind of took my breath away because we didn’t really have those. So, he said, “Well, you probably want to start there.” So I did what any CEO would do in my shoes, I started Googling values. But I learned pretty quickly that’s not it. Instead, I said I need to push myself away, and really figure out who we are, and what mat- ters most to this company, and what should our values be? I like the American West, so I found this house in the middle of nowhere in Utah, and I went there with the top 28 people that helped me run the company. We sat around and we figured some serious stuff out. I wanted to try this thing I’d done once outside of the company. I want- ed to try to bring elements of it into the company and see if it would work. In essence, it’s a big vulnerability exercise. It’s where everybody goes around in a big circle and shares, let’s say, their proudest moment in their career and their lowest moment in their career. As these things happen in any vulnerability exercises like this on whatever the topic is, people generally have a PG13-rated version of that answer, and then a rated-R version of that answer. People tend to go with whatever version the leader goes with first. So, in that case, I had to go first. I went and I let it rip. I went with the rated-R version. Then everybody else went and they shared theirs, and this crazy thing happened. Everybody cried multiple, multiple times. This was old people, young people, men, women, it was a really powerful moment.
That was so important because for the first time ever we really under- stood who we were as a leadership team. We really understood what we cared about. We could once and for all take off the mask and see each other for who we were, and who we wanted to become. So the next day we said let’s create our shared values. What should our values be? How do we at least get to who we are, and then try to start putting into place things and projects and solutions like Insight Global Uni- versity and others to help turn this turnover thing around? So we crafted what we called our shared values. We created them in about 30 minutes. It took no time at all because we knew who we were. To your question about “Leadership is here to serve”: As a company that mainly promotes from within, we very much believe that we are going to be a player-coach type organization. We’re going to be a company where we want to get down in the trenches and do the job with our people, because we’ve had that job before, we know exactly what it takes, so leadership is here to serve. “Always know where you stand” was the fifth shared value that we includ- ed, and we were very intentional with that one. As we were all reflecting on some of our lowest moments in our careers, it was when we didn’t know where we stood. It was when maybe we weren’t performing that well, and maybe our numbers weren’t so great, but nobody was leveling with us. Or maybe we were performing well. Maybe we were thinking we were in line for a promotion, but it wasn’t coming, so that was very frustrating. That concept around making sure people always know where they stand, while that is a big check to write as an organization, it’s one we’re comfort- able writing because that’s the type of company we really want to be.
HM: You’ve been quoted as saying that Insight Global is “dedicated to empowering people through the value of opportunity.” Could you talk a little bit more about that approach, and how that makes this company different than your competitors? BB: We don’t believe in putting limitations on people. We believe in what we call a “growth mindset” over a “fixed mindset.” We are always going to give people an opportunity to grow personally, professionally and financially. More than that, we’re really going to lean in and try to take out blockers, those things that get in peo- ple’s way and we are going to push them to grow. That inherently comes with giving them opportunity. I think when you give people opportunity to succeed, it’s a really empowering thing. I know that when I was coming out of Auburn, all I wanted was an opportunity. I just wanted somebody to take a chance on me and to give me an opportunity. I would supply all the effort and the grit and the work ethic. I just needed that opportunity. That’s what we try to do here for people. HM: People often work for many different employers over the course of their careers, but In- sight Global hires people, again quoting, “based on the assump- tion that it’s for life.” Given that, can you outline for us how em- ployees are evaluated and how they advance in the company? BB: Our employee review process is very extensive and it is robust. How we evaluate our people is much the same. We believe in letting people’s effort and their production and their results speak for themselves, so those are very clear ways to evaluate them. For the most part, we like to also keep
Harbert Business, Fall 2022 21
Powered by FlippingBook