A Company of Leaders Creates a Strong, Supportive, FUN Culture

Last Thursday, I attended our first ever Johnson & Higgins Chicago 14 year reunion. We had a great turnout, including both our people from the Chicago area and a good number who are now in various other parts of the country. Our strong turnout refuted one person who didn’t come who said, "J&H no longer exists." Well, to the rest of us, the spirit of J&H still runs strong, and it’s a treasure!

I am writing about my reunion experience because I realize that many people do not have the same good fortune to work in an inspired, excited, and loyal culture, with lots of encouragement, support, collaboration, pride, and a philosophy of helping each person advance.

I know I'm naive in saying that if you don't work in such a culture now, then you should. I recognize that not everyone has the same opportunities; however, we can all do the following things to work toward shaping our company’s culture. I encourage you to:

• Be the change you'd like to have
• Enlist your colleagues
• Decide what success looks like
• Write action plans with colleagues
• Get the enthusiastic support and participation of senior management
• Have fun!!!

Yes, this is a tall order. It's a good tall order though. Know that everyone will benefit.

Our reunion was a joy. With endless hugs and smiles, everyone was happy and excited to see one another and were genuinely interested in what and how we are doing with our families and lives. There were plenty of stories and laughs; we were so lucky to have worked together.

That night, after the reunion, and then again the next morning on the plane back, I revisited what made our culture special. How did we create and sustain this esprit de corps of caring about one another, helping and supporting one another, rooting for one another to succeed and to do great work? How did we develop such company pride, appreciation of what we had, and a feeling of a true team, even though we were a large team?

Pretty amazing, yet so simple.

Becoming a true team from a large group is more challenging than with a small team, yet the principles are really the same. It certainly can be done, and should be done, in my opinion!

Some of the messages I took away from our J&Hers were:

• I felt, actually knew, I was appreciated
• My ideas mattered; I was asked questions about how can we improve, be even better
• We did the little things, appreciative notes home on J&H anniversary dates that we’d open with our families
• We received notes at home when we had a baby, making sure we would come back only we were ready
• As busy as we were, we had conversations! We were listening to learn, and with genuine care.

Our "soft" skills, how much we loved working together, made us special, and believe me, we worked hard, very hard! Because while we had our "soft" skills, we also had a strong desire to be "kick ass" when we had to. We wanted to "crush" the competition. We believed we were best in our field, and we were, and we wanted to continue to get better.

We had pride in our client service and an ongoing quest to seek continuous improvement. We understood that we must ask each client what he or she expected, needed and wanted from us, and we tried to deliver to that standard. Clients deserved that from us. As you can imagine, nearly all these former colleagues are continuing their great work and success at various companies in the industry, which is heartwarming to all of us.

How did we achieve this spirit, this culture? Each and every one of us at J&H was a leader! A leader helps another person(s) do the right things, to do her best. It starts with you; I encourage you this week to take the first steps and practice the principles I listed above: be the change you'd like to have; enlist your colleagues; decide what success looks like; write action plans with colleagues; get the enthusiastic support and participation of senior management; have fun!!!