DiversityInc - Fall 2011

Europe and France, and I also had several assignments in the United States. I actually adopted two Chinese daughters.

It is quite energizing to meet people of other cultures and have different points of view, different upbringing and different situations. From my perspective, for our associates, it’s a much more enriching experience to work in an environment where they meet different kinds of people.

Our engagement scores show that stores that have more diversity actually have higher engagement scores. We work on an integrated team basis here, so almost all of our work is done by teams that are incentivized to work together but also work with other teams. When I came seven years ago, there was certainly a willingness and openness to the idea of ramping up our openness to enriching the work experience as well as the customer experience by including more diverse people.

We believe that the way you
enrich the customer experience is
have people that like what they do.
The only way that people are going
to like what they do is if they like
the people they do it with. Frankly,
people work for people, not for
companies, so we spend a lot of
time on leadership development
and making sure our managers and
leaders know how to lead and know
that they need to be trusted. They
need to encourage candor. They
should have a vision for the future,
something that’s going to motivate
their people to go someplace other
than where we are today, and they
need to differentiate talent. They
need to recognize the people who
are doing the best job but also
coach and help people who aren’t
doing as well, realize they’re either
in the wrong assignment or they
need to change their behavior or
they’re not going to be successful.

FRANKEL You started the diversity council two years ago, and you’ve been personally involved in that as chair. A lot of times when companies start these councils, we’re told the CEOs are too busy and that they’ll delegate it down, but you didn’t do that. Can you talk about why you did that and how you hold people accountable for those kinds of goals?

Started Executive Diversity Council, Chaired by Ullman Use of Associate-Resource Groups for Customer Outreach Strong Increases in Women in Management Increase of Managers in

Cross-Cultural Mentoring ; ;

; ;

ULLMAN It’s a relatively simplistic answer because people watch what you do, not what you say. So to the extent that I think it’s important and I’m involved, they realize it’s something they may consider important as well. I’d rather have them excited about it for all the right reasons because it’s the right thing to do, that they enjoy it, they see the benefits of it. They get their own scores on the associate survey, so they know that we take a hard look at how they lead.

When you start out by saying
we’re going to teach leadership,
start with the top team. We got
down to the top 700 people, 30 at a
time, two days in a room with class-
es of 30. They always say, “How can
you spend this kind of time with us
to spend two days in a windowless
room on this topic?” I said, “I spend
two days in a windowless room
because I get to know the 30 of you
really, really well.” That really helps
them understand who they are in
terms of their role in the company,
but more importantly, we get to
know each other. I learn more than
they do. We’ve done it something
like 26 times so far, and that’s made
a big difference in terms of setting
priorities—why this is so important,
how we play it out, and what role
you can play.

VISCONTI That’s still a huge commitment of your time.

ULLMAN This is what I do. I don’t know what’s more important than having our people engaged and having them understand what we think is important.