Name: 3Pillar CEO Tells Us How He Preserved Culture and Values During the Pandemic
Uploaded: 2021-08-17
Duration: 7 min 58 s
Description: CEO David DeWolf: “It’s all about empowering people to do a great job.”

CEO David DeWolf: “It’s all about empowering people to do a great job.”

3Pillar CEO Tells Us How He Preserved Culture and Values During the Pandemic 

Leadership

3Pillar Preserved Culture and Values During the Pandemic 

David. So good to see you again and to talk about all the changes at your company. Three pillar. You know, it's interesting that during the covid pandemic three pillar went through a massive growth spurt your revenues, double the number of employees doubles. You did a bunch of acquisitions. But you said during this whole growth faith that you were so vigilant on preserving the culture and values and vision of the company, what would you say was the most important thing you did to pull that off? You're so right. Susie were one of the fortunate ones that undoubtedly have experienced a lot of growth. But it started off in uncertain times and we saw some contraction and I'd say there's two things in particular that we did to really focus and double down on who we are, which is a cultural first organization. The first one is, we were very deliberate about our communication from the very get go. We shared openly with our employees about the real risks we were facing the real situation that we were dealing with and we openly and proactively communicated. And the second thing we did was we made our stakeholder philosophy front and center, which is that we're in this for all of our constituents for all of our stakeholders. And we said that our mission is to save every single job throughout the pandemic. And we were able to do that and take care of our investors and our clients at the same time. And so it was just a great wind that put that culture front and center and helped us to accelerate as we came out of the pandemic? Well, as you were going through this growth phase you were taking on so many new employees, How did you communicate all of this with them? Given that you were working from home? They were working from home, a difficult kind of a tricky situation, undoubtedly tricky. We doubled down on our video production and leveraging media to connect with people in new ways. And for a while I was doing weekly updates, we got some studio equipment and set up my house to be able to talk and to connect with people and over time I think we learned how to optimize that. We have a value of continuous improvement of how do we get better and better? The the production quality went up, the messages got tighter and I think we really just focus on prioritizing first and foremost, taking care of people and communicating with them so that they didn't miss as much that interaction we're used to having in the office, you mentioned a moment ago about reaching out to all your stakeholders. And I'm wondering how important were the conversations you had with your stakeholders as you were going through all these changes, whether they were customers, suppliers and even investors. Absolutely, so critical. And I think that's the ceo job right, is to really take and be watching out for every single stakeholder and valuing the personhood and the humanity, of every single individual science wanted to know what's going on in the services that you're providing, how does this impact me investors wanted to know, how do I make sure that I really protect my investment, communicating about that? And the exact same thing is true when you're not only in a crisis but going through great growth at times as well, explaining those same things and being just as deliberate with the good news to make sure that the narrative doesn't get out of control, that people don't make assumptions, but you're getting in front of it and that you're deliberately showing people that I've got your best interest in mind and then you've got to back it up. It can't just be words, it's got to be in reality, they've got to see that benefit come through. So we've been talking a lot about the importance of culture and right now there is this big debate on what's the best way for companies to sustain a culture of innovation, post pandemic and also as they're making decisions about the best return to work plan. Now you said your company headquarters in Fairfax Virginia will be a hybrid workplace. Tell us why hybrid makes sense for your company, You know, a hybrid workforce to me is all about empowering people to do a great job and respecting the fact that they have lives and their people in and of themselves and at the end of the day is a business, what we care about is our people and our results and if we can take care of both at the same time, I think that's a phenomenal thing. And so what we've done is we've taken our headquarters as an example and we have actually got new space, we've actually downsized and we have made it a collaborative workspace with lots of conference center type setup and then an open forum where people come in and can have a co working space, There's no more offices, nobody has a corner office. What we have is something that respects this new world that we now live in and we've encouraged people to say if it's best for you to work at home, work at home, we trust you and we're empowering you if you need a place to come and get away. Absolutely. We have a home for you. If you need a place to get on a whiteboard and collaborate, That's great too. We want to encourage our employees to take it amongst themselves to optimize their situation so they can do the best job for their themselves, for their families and for us all at the same time? Well, this whole idea of a hybrid work model versus an in person in office model is a big experiment. What do you have to do to succeed at this? I love the word experiment, the way you just described, that is perfect because it means we have to listen, we have to keep our ears open and we have to continue to adjust as our hypotheses either play out or they don't. And so the big thing that we're trying to do is to make sure that we are paying attention. I'll give you a great example. As I've been starting to come into the office more, I have noticed that our finance department is actually here almost every single day that I'm here. We had a hypothesis that everybody would using the using a hybrid model, but the reality is even though we haven't created dedicated spots for anybody, I don't even have my own office, we've realized that our finance department is here every day and maybe we need to rethink that and adjust because the experiment may have shown us something that we didn't think of, I think that's the key for everybody is realizing it's not work from home or work in a traditional office, it's figuring out the new way and experimenting to find it. You know, David, this pandemic has been a huge learning experience for just about everyone. What's the one big insight that you learned from the pandemic and how is it influencing the way that you're leading three pillar today versus pre pandemic. You know, if I had to pick just one thing I would say that pre pandemic, we always ran a culturally sound and values based organization because we thought it was the right thing to do. We fundamentally believe in the power of people and that the humanity that participates in business. What we've learned through the pandemic is that this type of culture that prioritizes people over profit and sees profit as a result, is actually incredibly powerful for driving results as well. And so what we've done is we've doubled down and I've taken it personally to not just talk about the right thing to do, but explain to the teams to teach the teams to invest in leaders to yes, do the right thing and to be grounded that. But also to see culture, to see values, to see our stakeholder philosophy as something that drives very real results. And we now have a proof point that shows in the worst of crises, a strong culture that values people, enable those individuals to come together and to not only survive, but then thrive on the other side as the economy starts to come back. And so for that, I'm really grateful and I think it really has impacted just the maturity of how we've operationalized these values in this culture