To many workers, the idea of “corporate culture” has become a platitude without any real value or meaning. Look to the legions of “quiet quitters” who feel that working harder to serve a “broader company purpose” is really just working harder to enrich shareholders without earning more themselves.
But, at an executive level, a corporate culture can be a vital unifying framework that allows senior management to trust in each other and rest assured that members of an executive team are all pursuing the same goals.
“The function of Schneider’s Executive Committee is to come together as a team with a common purpose where we all have responsibilities but…there’s only one scoreboard, and we all have a common definition of winning,” says Aamir Paul, the president of Schneider Electric, North America, and a member of the multinational energy management firm’s executive committee.
Schneider Electric is a prime example of a company that has deployed a singular corporate culture to offset the diversity of its global team. Although Schneider is ostensibly a French company, headquartered in Reuil-Malmaison, outside Paris, the firm likes to say it operates a “multi hub” model where decision-making is split across four centers—Paris, Boston, Hong Kong, and Noida, India.
The company’s management team, the executive committee, is similarly scattered around the globe, with a CEO in France, a CHRO in China, a CIO in the U.S., and other executives dotted in between.
So what’s the common purpose that Schneider’s executive committee has all subscribed to?
“We believe that to be sustainable is responsible. We believe that we need to dramatically reduce the carbon intensity in the world, and we need to do that in a way that doesn’t rob several billion people from improving their quality of life,” Paul says. “We believe that is our mission, but we believe achieving that mission will look different in India than it does in China, than it does in France, than it does in Canada, or in the U.S.”
Maintaining a shared goal while recognizing the different needs of the company’s disparate regions helps committee members duke out disagreements on resource management or which area should be prioritized over another. As Paul says, committee members try to debate the criteria for making a decision on a problem, rather than debating over the decision itself.
Schneider’s insistence on a shared goal has paid dividends. Corporate Knights, a media company focused on sustainability, has ranked Schneider among the top 100 most sustainable companies for the past 12 years—proving that the C-suite really is focused on that unifying mission.
But sharing a common goal isn’t enough. All business ultimately boils down to the strength of personal relationships, and those relationships are often built on shared experiences.
According to Paul, the 17 members of Schenider’s executive committee get together at least twice a year for team-building trips that help nurture the personal relationships gluing the C-suite together. Of course, those retreats were put on hold during the pandemic, and the committee was unable to assemble in its entirety until last fall. (They went to Rome. Some members gorged on art; others, gelato.)
Spending quality time together also helps committee members learn each other’s communication styles, which, again, helps settle disputes when they arise.
“At our retreats, we debrief on key decisions we made during the year and discuss what we could do better in reaching those decisions—where did we slip into being passive-aggressive, or acquiescing, or not truly having constructive conflict,” Paul says. “We are able to collectively study ourselves, and that goes a long way toward helping you understand why people were taking the positions that they were taking at the time.”
Eamon Barrett
eamon.barrett@fortune.com
NEWS YOU CAN USE
The most in-demand skills right now are basically about being a good boss
The shifting fabric of the workforce—and the evolving nature of work life—has left companies scrambling for leaders who can effectively manage the increased expectations of new employees. According to LinkedIn, leadership and management are the top two skills employers are looking for in 2023, as companies look for more effective leaders to supervise the modern workforce.
Bosses say coming into the office improves culture and productivity. A new study proves them wrong
Future Forum’s latest Pulse survey—a quarterly poll of 10,000 office workers—finds that corporate culture actually benefits from flexible work policies, rather than come-to-office mandates. According to the survey, flexible workers are 57% more likely to say their corporate culture has improved (since the policy was implemented) than workers who are required to be on-site. Even better news, the survey finds once again that remote work actually boosts productivity.
A tech CEO spent almost $600,000 on a Super Bowl ad to warn America about Tesla’s self-driving technology
Dan O’Dowd, a software billionaire, has become the most vocal opponent to Tesla’s full self-driving (FSD) features, which he says are a danger to pedestrians—particularly children. O’Dowd even spent $600,000 to secure a 30-second ad slot during the Super Bowl, which O’Dowd’s Dawn Project used to air a video calling for the ban of Tesla’s FSD. Some Tesla fans say they’ve debunked O’Dowd’s other videos, which claim to show Tesla cars crashing into child mannequins when utilizing FSD. But, as Fortune’s Christiaan Hetzner notes, FSD is certainly falling short of promises Musk made about the tech’s prowess.
A former Dow Chemical executive and an activist want corporations to better govern their political spending in the next election. Here’s how
“Transparency has proven central to good corporate governance,” Bruce F. Freed and Peter Molinaro write in an op-ed for Fortune, arguing that companies need to steel themselves against increased polarization. “Friends and adversaries alike can know what your company is doing and see your level of commitment. Customers, employees, and the public can see if your company’s political engagement is aligned with its values.”
TRUST EXERCISE
If you're a CEO leading a C-suite that's spread out across the globe (or even across the country), take a page out of Schneider Electric's book and plan a way you can all get together for some shared experiences and build those relationships that keep teams united.
Learn how to navigate and strengthen trust in your business with The Trust Factor, a weekly newsletter examining what leaders need to succeed. Sign up here.