Adrian Marley, General Manager, DHL Russia, tells us about the importance of values in life and business. He explains in more detail his belief that it is very important to maintain those values and display them to people around you.
1. Sergey Petrov said that it is impossible to build a large stable business without values.
Absolutely! I think it's been proved time and time again that a business which adopts a set of values as its principal driving force is sustainable. It will be there for the long term and will ultimately deliver far more in terms of value than a business which tries to capitalize on what is happening today and doesn't have values. It's not just that it's right to have a value set; it's also the most beneficial, profitable thing to do.
2. What values do you share in life and within your organization?
For me, there is absolutely no problem in saying that my values are what drive me. They are what makes me successful, and when I look back, this approach has been endorsed, because I've got to the position I have by maintaining those values over the whole period of time that I've been in business.
Unfortunately, one of your previous interviewees took my favorite statement, although he changed it slightly, that was Stuart Lawson from HSBC, who I think said that he'd been a success each day if he could look his ten year old son in the eye and know he'd done things with integrity. I go to bed every night, and before I go to sleep I ask myself: "Did I do anything today that I'm not proud of? Did I do anything today that I should not have done?" And that approach is the true essence of business for me. It's what allows you to navigate through business. By taking that value judgment each day, you can tell whether you are still going in the right direction, because the minute you go to bed and you say to yourself "I should have not done that," then you see that you are beginning to lose direction and need to get back on the track very quickly. If you don't, you are going to find yourself in unexplored territory, where you have no idea what's going to happen next. That's not right.
3. Is there anything else?
It's important that you maintain and display values to those around you, so they know where you are coming from, and hopefully they will begin to adopt the same kind of approach. When you can link those values to success, and you can do this very easily, then I think it's an easy thing to sell to people.
For me there is no more to it than that. It's not a ten page document of things that need to be taken note of each day. It's simply a question of "Do I feel comfortable with what I achieved today?" One of the things I hate most of all are those people who, if you give them authority, abuse it.
Being a manager is an incredibly privileged position, and if you turn around and use that power to do irresponsible things to other people or to get something for yourself out of it, I have no time for that. I'll be quiet honest with you: any people I've ever found doing that have lasted about five minutes. They won't stay in the business.
4. There has been so much talk about values recently. Don't you think there is a danger because of such a big difference between talking about values and living by them?
Unfortunately, in the world in which we live today, both politically and economically, you see that contradiction everyday. We hear leaders of the free world standing up and making statements which clearly don't have any bearing to what they are actually doing. When you see those kind of things everyday, it demonstrates a big threat to this approach, but ultimately you have to come back to what we just talked about. That is, on an individual basis: do you live by your values or not?
There are many companies that will have a nice chart which goes on the wall everywhere, showing the set of values of the organization, what it believes in, However, often there is not enough time spent on discovering whether in fact the senior management actually does believe in those values or not. So, it's often left to the people on the ground, in my case, the business I'm responsible for here in Russia. I'm telling you here today, and I'll say it to anybody who asks - the values that I display are very important, and I would expect that my business displayed similar values. Fortunately, I'm in a position to influence that process, and I think that's how it should be, but you are absolutely right in your suggestion that there many people who approach the issue of values as a PR exercise, basically saying "this is what we do" externally, when in fact they don't. I think this actually probably good for us, because it leaves more space to our business to be able to capitalize on doing things right, because as we said previously: if you do it right, you win in the end anyway. I really believe that. It's not just an empty statement. I really think that if you are consistent in your approach to your values, then the products that you deliver will be in demand and your customers will always be there. It works.
5. Can we go back and talk a little bit more about commitment to excel?
You just reminded me of something relating to commitment to excel. If you hold that competency dear to yourself then you also potentially lead yourself into a risky situation. For example, I will always push this approach AS THE status quo. I will not settle for compromises. And sometimes it means that you find yourself saying awkward things to those above you, which may or may not be accepted.
Once again, it goes back to your values. I have a strong belief in what I believe in. So where I see something that's wrong, it doesn't matter whether I'm talking to my boss, or his boss, or anybody's boss. I will say that it's wrong. That's not everybody's idea of how to go on in life, but it is for me. I think that's what drives you. If your values are strong enough, then you should stand up for them and that is difficult for some people sometimes to do. It's not in many people's natures to contradict what they've been told to do by their boss or by anybody else, but if you have a valid reason for contradicting it, then my view is go ahead and do it. And if people turn around you and say "You are wrong, and we are not doing that," then perhaps you need to think about where your future lies. I've lived my life in business by this concept: if you think something is wrong, say so. Sometimes, you may have to say it quite loudly, and sometimes people will be offended by the way you chose to say it. But providing you can go to bed at night and know you did something for the right reasons, it's OK. I believe you have a duty to do that. It's also the same with the people who work for you. They need to feel protected and they also need to feel that they have a future in your business. Otherwise, they'll leave. O course, there's the salary too. But it also helps to demonstrate the opportunity for people. To show that if they work hard, they will have a future in the company. So I have to be sure that when I see people working hard, we acknowledge it and we do something about it. It's a whole value mechanism, and goes back to the same stuff I talked about earlier. You could put it on one piece of paper and say "that's all you need to know about business and life". It's not complicated.
6. It isn't. But for many people to understand it, it should be repeated many times...
I always have concerns with that approach. I believe that the best learning you will do is through what you do yourself. This way, the value of something, over a period of time, becomes naturally clear to you, and you will ultimately accept or reject it. My concern with the other approach is that you end up adopting somebody else's will or opinion of how things should be. I'm not saying that teachers are of no use to anybody. I think you know what I mean. In particular, when you are talking from a religious perspective, for instance, interpretation of anything religious is something which is extremely personal.
7. Can you explain the business model of your company in a simple way?
Well, our business is very simple: we move things from point A to point B for our customers. We do that as quickly as the customer wants something to be moved and we tell the customers as soon as it's done. That's basically what we do. We do that all over the world, in over two hundred and twenty countries. It is a simple business.
8. Can you tell us anything else about your business?
Here's a very brief but interesting story: our business was started forty years ago by two guys who were sitting on a beach somewhere in California. One of them had earlier been asked to take an envelope to Guam. So, he had jumped on the airplane, taken the envelope to Guam, and as he was sitting on the beach with his friend upon his return, he said: "They told me when I got there that I'd saved them four days of a ship sitting in dock waiting to be customs cleared, just by delivering the document earlier. Why don't we use this principle to start our own business?" And that's what they did.
Prepared by Liza Barzova, Good2Work Intern, on July 24, 2009
