Name: Otis Elevator’s New Boss Leads With A Personal Touch: “Hi, I’m Judy!”
Uploaded: 2020-01-15
Duration: 4 min 35 s
Description: CEO Judy Marks says the best leadership advice she ever received was from her father.

[ MUSIC ] Judy, you're the new CEO of Otis Elevator and your big task is separating the company from United Technologies. How do you reinvent a company that's 166 years old? Well, Susie, you take the best of what exists in the legacy. I mean, it's such a strong company, iconic brand. All centered around 68, 000 plus colleagues spread throughout the globe providing service everyday and keeping people safe. So you have to engage the employees and power the employees. We have over 1, 400 branch offices, and the majority of our employees don't show up at an Otis office. They live at their customer facilities. So we need to engage and empower them. But we need to do even more than that. We need to provide them with modern tools and the technologies to be able to provide both new equipment and service even better. And that's what's exciting. We're on a digital journey together and we're we are reinventing the company. It's a fun time. Well, I thought it was interesting that when you became CEO just a few months ago of Otis at your first town hall meeting you shook hands with every single employee in the room. Why did you do that? I believe that, you know, we are only as good as every member of the team and so as we've rolled out our culture statements. There's a few that really resonate with me. One is where many voices, which means everyone's voice gets heard. Everyone has something to add. And the second that I love to talk about is we are better together. So to me, I want to have a connection with the employees. It does not matter what country I am in, and we are truly globally local. As you can imagine delivering elevators and service and escalators. Throughout the world. I want the employees to feel like they can be heard and more importantly that they're valued because that's the strength of our company. And I understand that you made a point to travel to as many of the oldest Of factories and offices all around the world. You operate in 200 countries. So that's a big undertaking. You try to meet everybody. You walk on the factory floor, you introduce yourself, you shake hands, you talk them, you make it very personal. What impact has this had? It is personal. It's personal to them and I will tell you it's personal to me. I really do wanna get to know the heart and soul of the company and I walk around and I reach out my hand and I say hi I'm Judy and that translates into almost every language in the world. And it's just a connection and I think if you can connect and your team respects you, they'll follow you in terms of your vision and And we'll achieve together. Talk us through some of the other steps that you're taking, things that you're saying, and you're doing as you lead Otis into this new chapter. I don't think you can communicate enough. So I communicate at all levels of the organization with whatever media I can find. If it's social media, I'll use that. If it's direct communication, we'll use that. If it's a town hall that's simultaneously translated, I'll do that. But you just can never communicate enough. A lot of the CEOs I talked to they say that one of the most difficult things is motive. People to come up with ideas. To experiment more. To take risks. What do you find that works for you? So that people do that kind of stuff. I think what works is you encourage the ideas. And we're a culture of innovation is where we come from. But people have to understand we still want new ideas. And the best ideas I've seen in my career come from the employees inside the company, they're closest to the problems closest to the challenges. So you need to create an environment where they feel comfortable bringing those one. So I get phone calls, I get emails, they reach out, and I love it and I answer every one of them. Judy, who influenced the way you lead and what was the leadership lesson? That you learned and it guides you today? I think I learned to lead growing up. The best influence I had was my father. He and another gentleman were partners on one small suburban department store. And watching him How he was able to achieve incredible customer satisfaction. How he could keep an employee base, a local employee base, part time employees motivated and engaged. And myself and my siblings, we were all part of that. But I just learned very basic lessons that if you satisfy customers, And you really can work as a team collaboratively, you can accomplish incredible things. That to me is leadership. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Otis Elevator’s New Boss Leads With A Personal Touch: “Hi, I’m Judy!”

Leadership

CEO Judy Marks shares her best leadership advice.

Otis Elevator’s New Boss Leads With A Personal Touch

CEO Judy Marks says the best leadership advice she ever received was from her father. 