Dennis Hopple, President of CBSD/Thunderbird Russia, explains how the ability to create sence of urgency and to build a culture of mutual respect helps a leader to navigate the whitewater of change.
1. Why the ability to communicate is so important?
We have had unsuccessful very bright people here, PHD educators that just couldn't adapt to our culture. We've had successful business people that were able to learn how to train but they also had this innate understanding of what a manager is going through because they were a manager. When I talk about competencies and I'm looking for new employees, we're now looking at different competencies. It's not about how much education you have, it's about what are your values; it's about what have you done before, and how willing are you to share that. That would be one of the few competencies that we have to have in a trainer would be the ability to communicate to others effectively. We've had a lot of people that are smart; we've had people that weren't able to help others to learn that. We don't do lecturing; we do interactive, very example-based learning. Now we are looking more at what are the values of people that we hire; will they fit this culture, and then we invest heavily into helping them be successful.
2. How in particular you communicate your vision?
You know, all businesses go through change and change is never easy. That's when, usually, I have a job to do. Whenever we are going through a change then I have to step up and work with large groups to provide a leadership and to give them a straight story. When I was a young manager it was always a temptation to give a bright picture - things will be OK in the end. I found that you get more respect when you give them an honest picture, and if people know there are problems and you tell them you know there are problems, here is what we are going to do about them, it seems to help. A guy named John Cater that I admire a lot, few years ago we brought him to Moscow, and in our conversations about dealing with change he has this concept that you have to create a sense of urgency before you can even start. That seems to be one of the things that I can do pretty well. Paint a picture of if we don't do something, things can get worst, and here is what we can do to make things get better. And then get people on board; get a core team of people that absolutely believe. Then my job becomes more about communicating constantly: "This is how we're doing... This is how it's getting better... Here is what's going on". And encouraging people, making sure that we keep that change going on.
3. Please tell me about time when you had to communicate your vision about change?
I'll go back to the Georgian restaurant where we've met last year and what I felt was a crisis in our organization. We had grown significantly. We were starting to experience turn-over, especially on the administrative levels. People were coming, in less than one or two years they were moving on; they were coming as very young, I mean they got some experience they would go somewhere else. And it was creating this feeling of "maybe I got to be looking too". If they are leaving and they are doing better, and I could see that it was a danger to our organization; we were obviously not capable of paying at the same level as some companies in Russia, we're not an oil company. My approach was, we are going to have to face it head on and change the way we do things to make working here not so much about money but about the total package. When we were preparing for that offsite I sat down with the facilitator and said: "Here are the issues that I see and here is what I've told our people, this is why we have to change. I need their advice at least for our perception level. What do they see as how are they valued, how are they not valued; what is good about working here and what isn't so good, so that we could look at this stuff and go back and do something about it". For the last year that's what we've been doing.
4. How in particular you implemented that change?
We've taken all the results from that one day offsite. We initiated a process with a company that I worked with in the United States many years ago that sets up a parallel structure inside the organization. This structure is made up of employees from all departments. They look at all of the issues of the business; they go away with me for a couple of days and just throw out what can we improve. Last year we went away and came up with 300 things we could improve. Some of these 300 things can be done over night. It's one person's responsibility - go and fix it. The coffee machine doesn't work - go and fix it. Others were much more complex and we established teams to work on series of these issues. We need to work on our process for working with clients between sales and finance. There was some disconnect going on because we were doing so much business, our finance department was running behind and the process was years old and wasn't able to keep up with that kind of volume. We established a team. They sat down with our IT department and they come up with a specific solution on process improvement that was then, presented to the management and approved, and implemented. This has happened four times in the last year with different teams doing different projects. One that we've got going on right now is changing the way that we deliver student guides and materials to our clients. And it goes back to what we were discussing earlier about moving to the modern age. And instead of spending a lot of time with the copy machine and printers we're doing things with flash drives and CDs and giving people materials that they can take back and don't have to put on the shelve but they can load them to their computer. We are trying to come up with some innovative ways that meet our clients' needs better.
5. Can you recall another situation when you managed change?
It actually wasn't that common. When I first got here the USA ID grant had been given to a US company. And I worked for a while in their office and the separation between expats and Russians was remarkable. If you were listening carefully the Russians were saying how stupid the expats were and vice versa. There was very little respect going on between the two sides. And we were a small organization. When we founded our organization we thought it's not going to work. We got to find a way where we work well together. So, I don't want any Russians working in here that I can't respect, and I don't want any Americans in here that can't respect Russians. No one is better than the other. We are all part of a struggling group of people trying to survive, and we are all in the same small boat together.
6. How in particular did you resolve this situation with expats and Russians?
There was a lot of mistrust early, on both sides. I went through a lot of little incidents that were about cross-cultural communication, and how people understood different things. This is deep in context and so on. And people were saying: "You are really mean". And I said: "No, I'm just a stupid American; what I say is what I mean". But it took us time to develop that relationship, and I honestly believe that my demand inside of our organization for respect for each other was what got us through our first very difficult years where it really was about survival. Each year something interesting happened to threaten the survival of the organization. I respect the housekeepers and the drivers just as much as I respect our best trainers. They all contribute to this organization. And interestingly enough, there are administrative people and logistics people that get awarded employee of the year as often as our stars. It's a cultural thing now that people try to understand what everyone brings. Partly it's by example, partly it's because of the management team that we have where they are definitely advocates of people who work with them and they are pushing from time to time.
7. Why, do you think you are successful as an organization?
I think it's because I feel so blessed to be able to work in this environment and make something happen that everybody who works in here for any moment of time has the respect of other people but they certainly have mine. Nothing is possible without them. I can't do anything on my own without all these people caring about where we're going and what we're doing. That would be the only way we are going to have success and that's about respect for each other.
8. And what inspires you as a leader?
We are all lucky. I believe I've been amazingly lucky. I'm an average guy trying to lead a group of, now, 85 people and make sure that I take care of them, and I've been incredibly lucky. I've been amazingly lucky to have lived these last thirteen years in Moscow and seen the incredible transformation, to have worked with such amazing people that had grown and developed. We still have nine employees out of twenty one that started this company and now they are friends. I wouldn't trade this experience for anything, just the opportunity to work with great people, to do something entrepreneurial in this unbelievable environment. It's very exciting. I can't imagine having this much fun back in the United States. It's more predictable there. This has been everyday: you never know what might happen, and it's been delightful; it's given us an opportunity to grow together, to learn together. There is a lot of luck involved. I was lucky to have the right people around me at the right time. I was lucky to go through this kind of surge in the economy after the depression of 1998. We were all a little nervous for a while but I never ever believed it wasn't coming back. I knew that the business would come back and were going to be ready. So, we just got ready.
Prepared by Liza Barzova, Good2Work Intern, on October 24, 2008
