A workplace where differences are second nature: an interview with George David, President and CEO of United Technologies Inc.

Very early in his career with United Technologies, Inc., George David received a crash course in the appreciation of diverse cultures and peoples. Just two years after joining UTC's Otis Elevator unit in 1975, David became general manager of Otis' Latin American Operations. He later ran one of the corporation's Asian operations. In his 20 years with United Technologies. he has traveled to every major country of the world. With that kind of global experience, David Says, lessons in managing diversity "get drilled into your skull really quick."

United Technologies is truly an international entity, with more than 50 percent of its revenue coming from businesses that operate outside the United States, and more than half its non-U.S. work force non-American. On the domestic side, the challenge to promote diversity among American employees is one that David, who became president of UTC in 1992 and chief executive officer in 1994, takes very seriously.

United Technologies' U.S.-based diversity efforts go back at least to 1988, when it formed a Workforce 2000 task force that targeted, among other goals, four percent minority representation in its executive ranks by the end of 1993. The corporation achieved 5.9 percent. Its college-level recruiting includes a continuing presence at several historically Black colleges and universities. Out of 2,313 college-level hires in the last eight years, 26 percent were female and 14 percent minority.

While he is proud of these accomplishments and of the awards UTC has received for its work force diversity efforts, David told participants at a corporate diversity workshop last fall that there are two key areas where progress is lacking: There is still no person of color on the United Technologies board of directors, and no female or person of color who reports directly to David as CEO. In other words, he remarked, "at the highest levels of the corporation we remain a White male organization, and it's my goal to change that."

In a recent interview with THE BLACK COLLEGIAN, David talked about his efforts to make United Technologies more representative of America's diversity. He also talked about the kinds of job skills required to succeed in the global marketplace of the 21 st century.

TBC: With all of the changes and challenges that aerospace and other defense-related companies have faced in recent years, students in the job market are likely to be concerned about the outlook for those companies. What is your own vision for United Technologies in the post-Cold War years?

David: We have a great future in front of us for a couple of very important reasons. The first is that we have a really unusual benefit of being the number-one or market-leading company in all the businesses that we're in, and our businesses are incredibly diversified.

Second, we are a remarkably international company. We have about 60 percent of our sales outside the United States, which is rather unusual. We do business in 175 countries.

Having just finished one of those big restructuring programs that American companies go through from time to time, we are very well positioned in terms of costs and performance of our products, and our strong market position in every country. So, I think things are terrific for the future.

TBC: What are some of the skills and qualifications that United Technologies needs among its workers to continue that success, or to take you to the next stage?

David: Well, I guess I'd like to address the issue of skills among young people coming out of college. I do lots of recruiting at about a half dozen schools around the United States.

People always ask what it takes to succeed. A lot of young people spend lots of time with their heads down in their books, but I think there are lots of other things that people need to pay attention to as well. One of the things that young people need to work on is relationships - team building and team participation. Just by the nature of the educational process, we tend to learn as individuals, and then later on we do most of our work in groups. People have to learn to make that transition.

I think, also, young people need to learn that phrase of Edwards Demming - "constancy of purpose," which is his first principle of management. Lots of people in America get terribly short-cycled and terribly short-fused. Almost anything we do, we want to see the results instantly - that is, in the next five minutes or so. And yet, I think we learn from all history that you build the really important things in life by virtue of care and nurturing and paying attention to them over a period of years.

TBC: How do young people learn these things? Since they can't know everything there is to know about these types of skills when they enter the job world, how do they at least begin to learn?

David: The luckiest people in the world are those who fall into great mentoring relationships. Not official, not formal, not company-directed, it just happens. And I've seen it happen hundreds and hundreds of times, and it's what actually makes careers come together. And it's not because some big, brass executive has guided or directed an individual's career. It's more because that person - by virtue of example, persuasion, consultation, talks - actually coaches and educates people.

I was very unusual in the amount of overseas work I had and all of the exposure I had to people of all different types and nationalities and cultures. I did that with a wonderful man, Hubert Faure, and we had a great mentoring relationship. He taught me lots of things like diplomacy, negotiation, bartering, and so forth. So, mentoring is a huge benefit for anyone.

TBC: As more and more companies are becoming global in their focus, what advice do you have for students who are trying to prepare for the new global job market?

David: First, go work for a globally oriented company. The extent of our global reach is one of the most unusual characteristics of this company. More than half of all UTC employees are not Americans. We have a small number of Americans overseas, but normally our companies are staffed by local nationals. So, the very fact that we have now about 94,000 out of over 170,000 employees as non-Americans is unusual.

Secondly, we have a huge geographic reach. I said we do business in 175 countries of the world. We have employees located in 1900 cities of the world. That's almost six times more [offices] outside the United States than the State Department has.

We are a company of extreme diversity, and we always have been: I came up 20 years ago with a heavy international focus, traveling all over the world. I think I've been in practically every country of the world, and one of the things that get drilled into your skull really quick when you do that is the entire issue of diversity and how to manage an extraordinarily diverse environment.

What we have done in the best parts of our company (and I'll be quick to say that they don't do it everywhere) is to achieve an environment where differences are genuinely second-nature.

I speak here, of course, of differences between people. And it's not that we ignore differences or that we mandate that they don't exist, but that differences don't make any difference. They are utterly second nature.

We don't achieve that environment in every part of our company. There are pans [such as] old aerospace - that is, heavy engineering content - that have traditionally not been especially well penetrated by the diversity agenda. And, frankly, we are concentrating on that part of the agenda.

TBC: What are the real advantages that diversity brings to Corporate America?

David: You know, the usual office-shop answer is that it's good for business, and I guess I can put a lot more muscle behind that statement than most people can. When we operate as we do, for example, in India, where we have about two-thirds of the elevator business (and we've had it for about forty years), we do that with. people of India. That is to say, management, professionals, engineers, and people that build elevators in factories, erect them, maintain them, and sell them are Indian people. And the simple fact of the matter is that if you want to do business in the '90's and in the 21st century in the world, you do it with the nationalities and the ethnic grouping of the people that you find. Period. We've been doing it around here for 50 years and, frankly, I feel rather strongly about that.

TBC: In terms of working with and making ethnic minorities in America a full part of the company, you mentioned in one of your speeches that you wanted to have a person of color on your board of directors. Have you made any progress in that direction?

David: We have an objective to do that as soon as possible, ideally this year. I'm very confident about that. That's something that's very important. I guess I made that comment in our big diversity conference in September or October last year. I said there was about a one year-time period, and I feel quite confident that we will do it.

I want to speak to the question of diversity in the domestic company, because, internationally, in India you work with Indians, in Japan, you work with Japanese. In the American environment, though, this is a case where you transition from being the way many old American companies were ten, twenty, thirty years ago. They were not particularly diversity-conscious. We need to transition into the new era - and we're doing that about as aggressively as anybody you will find.

We do it in a couple of different ways. I think that to aggressively change an organization in the short term, you need to be prepared to have agreed targets between members of management companies. Three years ago, we set ourselves some fairly good goals with respect to representation by females and minorities in the management ranks of the company, and we've achieved those goals. We've gone back and we have set goals for 1996 at higher levels still. It's important that we achieve these goals. These are the kinds of things that we do in the short term.

I think in the longer term, the way you really change an organization is to change the feeder ranks of the company. I am especially proud of what we have done in terms of female and minority representation in the recruiting ranks of the company.

When you log the post-graduate hiring - people with advanced degrees, be they MBAs or advanced engineering degrees - in the last five years we've had 25 percent of those people to be female and 30 percent minorities. To the extent that the advanced-degreed population is the future management of the company, that's how we will get people of all backgrounds at the most senior level of the company.

TBC: Any special advice for African-American students entering the job market?

David: A lot of young people spend a lot of time trying to strategize how to work their way through management ranks so they get the top job. And that's not what it's all about. What people are going to find is that there is vastly greater need for their services and the opportunities for promotion will come much faster than anybody ever has any idea. So the answer is not to worry about the future when you're a young person in the company. You should worry about the present.

The best and strongest people are ones who have a voracious appetite to learn, who never quit asking questions. Second, it's people who are trying to participate. Third, it's people who are always looking ahead and not back. That is, they're not sitting there criticizing and saying what's wrong. They're trying to say, "How can we make it better?" It's people who are positive and not negative. That is, they're hopeful, optimistic, upbeat, excited. And it's people who are really trying to figure out, "What can I do for this organization to try to make it a little bit better."

If young people follow this advice, I think they will find that their advancement opportunities in corporations will come with amazing speed.