In January 2017 I joined Uber as Chief People Officer. I don’t often reflect on my work publicly but now that I’ve hit the one-year mark I have a few thoughts to share.
As you know, Uber had a rollercoaster 2017. There was no way I could have predicted how the year would unfold, but now that I’m on the other side of it I can look back and honestly say it has been the best learning experience of my career, so much so that I thought I would jot down my lessons learned. Here is what I know to be true… none of it earth-shattering, but all of it very real:
1. Listen Deeply
The most brilliant strategy will hit a wall unless it’s grounded in listening and deep research. This is especially true when any sort of change is necessary. If we don’t invest the time to deeply listen and understand it’s likely we will solve the wrong problem — which puts us back at square one. Of course this sounds obvious, but how often do we really put our own ideas and agendas aside and keep our minds open?
One of the first things I did when I arrived at Uber was host a ton of listening sessions to understand what was on employees’ minds. No agenda, no structure, just questioning and listening. These early sessions told me many things — one being that employees did not trust our performance management process and wanted something that was more balanced, qualitative and development focused. So we — and by “we” I mean employees — rebuilt our Perf system and methodology from the ground up. Hundreds of employees attended build sessions and 100% of our employees had the opportunity to comment through surveys and global focus groups to help design the new system that we started rolling out in mid-2017. We didn’t just sit in HQ as a People team and design the process; instead, it was ideated and implemented by the people who would be using it.
2. Be Visible
Setbacks happen in every organization. Although it’s tempting to lock down until things blow over, in times of shared pain, being visible, authentic and available to employees is essential. Even if you don’t have an answer or a solution to a crisis, showing up and being honest and transparent is the most important action we can take as leaders.
I had to do this in one of my hardest moments at Uber a scant few weeks after I joined. In mid-February I read a blog post written by Susan Fowler, a female engineer who described inappropriate behavior and other troubling incidents that contributed to her having a very negative work experience at Uber. The blog post went viral, and two days later I had to face 15,000 devastated employees at an all-hands meeting. What made it worse was that I’d had an accident the day before and one side of my face was bleeding, swollen and badly bruised. Believe me, the last thing I wanted was to be front and center. But I knew that was where I was needed.
I got through the meeting, and the challenging weeks that followed. It was a painful time but also the start of a much-needed healing process for the company. Hundreds of employees asked me what we should do… my answer was always the same: we need to use Susan’s input to bring about change, and be genuinely kind and caring toward each other; always. At the time it was hard for me to understand exactly what was happening, but in retrospect, it’s clear: one very brave piece of prose, authentically written, created a lightning rod for change at Uber. For that, I truly thank Susan.
3. Involve Everyone
Through hosting dozens of sessions across the company in a few weeks it was obvious we needed to evolve our culture and business practices. We had to listen with an open mind and solicit feedback from all our employees. In fact, we had to go further, we had to rebuild trust, slowly and meaningfully… so we moved from listening to involving to working together, side by side.
As I mentioned earlier we engaged our employees in designing our new performance management system, and it did not stop there — every change we made (based on the feedback from the listening sessions) involved our employees. Upwards of 60% of our managers were managing for the first time and in truth we had not supported them as well as we should have. So we undertook dozens of interviews and another big survey to gather insights on what makes a great manager at Uber. Since mid-2017 we have been embedding those competencies into all of our trainings and will gauge our success by integrating them in our Culture Survey.
We asked for feedback again, when our new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi joined us in September, to help define Uber’s new cultural norms — a truly collaborative undertaking to ensure everyone had a voice in crafting a shared vision for how we’re going to work with our riders, drivers, communities and each other. It takes a lot of time and patience to do things this way, but what I’ve learned is that enabling change is most successful when you actively involve people every step of the way. Oh and by the way… we arrived at better and more creative outcomes because our employees are simply awesome.
4. Emphasize Inclusion
The past year has taught me that creating change around diversity and inclusion needs to be more than a token effort. Many ERG leaders told me that they felt it was really hard to add value because all of their ERG work had to be over and above their day-to-day responsibilities. That gave me the idea to introduce a “citizenship goal” so that every Uber employee has the opportunity to contribute in some way to the community (very broadly defined) as part of their day job. We must never push inclusion to the sidelines — it should be central to who we are, and woven throughout everything that we do.
In the spirit of bringing diversity front and center, in March 2017 we published Uber’s first-ever diversity and inclusion report and shared it both internally and externally. Our investment in our employee resource groups (ERGs) is proving instrumental in helping to drive dialogue and culture change. More than 5,000 employees regularly interact with our ERGs — that’s around a third of our global employee population. What’s even more incredible is our that our ERGs have a real voice, they make things happen, and they really are empowered. I’m constantly inspired by the positive energy and passion of our ERGs.
My personal goal is for Uber to be the MOST inclusive company where everyone feels respected, valued and able to contribute. We made great progress in 2017 and we will work tirelessly to achieve this goal in 2018.
5. Disagree & Commit
I’ll admit I borrowed this from Amazon, but my goodness it’s worth it. No team agrees 100% of the time nor should they… diversity of opinion is essential to creation. Having the confidence to admit I don’t have the best answers and to invite a broad spectrum of input is crucial to getting the best outcome. I do believe though that once we have made a decision there is no room for negative side conversations or half-hearted execution — I expect my leaders to sell the solution with passion. Having very different personalities on a leadership team should not be an impediment — as stated above, diversity of opinion leads to better decisions, but only if we truly align and commit.
6. Be Resilient
Last but not least it’s more important than I ever could have imagined to be resilient in times of stress and change. That requires taking care of our spirit, getting enough rest, supporting each other, and devoting time to aspects of the job that energize and inspire us. At times when I’ve been at my worst — tired, over-caffeinated and blindly putting tasks over people — my inner mantra has kicked in to remind me to “breathe deep and focus on caring.”
It also helps to remind myself and others of all the incredible things we’ve accomplished over the past year: Our 180 Days of Change rollout is transforming our relationship with drivers, improving everything from driver earnings to support. For our employees we implemented a comprehensive equal pay analysis and raised tech salaries to ensure aggregate pay equity between women and men, and between all racial groups. We also organized our first Global Week of Service where more than 2,200 Uber employees spent 7,300 hours volunteering at 125 events globally. We showed each other we care by donating money, supplies, and logistical support in response to last year’s hurricanes, the Mexico City earthquake and the Wine Country fires. We even had a grassroots effort to reignite employee pride and remind ourselves that we are Good People Doing Good Things.
So my take on the last year may not sound revolutionary or new, nor does it involve technological breakthroughs. What I really learned is everyone is trying to do their best, everyone deserves respect, and everyone has good ideas. (On the flip side: negativity hurts organizations and teams, but most of all it hurts us as individuals.) Creating a company that allows people to be themselves, nurtures genuine kindness, support and consideration for others and includes everyone will lead to success.
We’re already seeing it as our Culture Survey results are starting to climb, our new CEO has a 97% approval rating on Glassdoor, and Uber has a 4.3 overall rating. And here’s what our employees have to say about working here: “Great place to learn and grow”… “Amazing business challenges”… “Lots of autonomy and upward opportunity”… “Solving problems in the real world, at scale” and “Anyone can make an impact.” With our amazing new leadership team, our unbelievably even more amazing employees, our tremendous business growth, and our new cultural norms, we will make Uber the best place to work for everyone. Come and join us… we really are changing the world.
This article was originally publish on LinkedIn Pulse. Reprinted with permission.
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