An interview with Jerre Stead, EXCEL award recipient.

Jerre Stead is chairman, CEO and "head coach" of Legent Corporation, based in Herndon, Va., a global provider of integrated software product and service solutions. Throughout his 30-year career, he has established a solid reputation for using communication as the key element in leading a company into new strategic directions. When with AT&T Global Business Communications Systems, he was also known as head coach. He subsequently was named chairman, CEO (and head coach) of AT&T Global Information Solutions (AT&T/GIS) formerly NCR, in Dayton, Ohio. He led GIS in a new strategic direction, combining the strength of computing and communication to provide customers with solutions to help them get, move and use information. His leadership resulted in "stanching more than U.S. $100 million in annual losses," according to a Wall Street Journal article. In this interview, he gives us insight on the value he places on effective communication, and how it has contributed to his success.

Have you developed any particular strategies that contribute to your own style of communication?

I have operated most of my career at Honeywell, Square D, NCR, AT&T and now Legent with a couple of beliefs. One is that the only way you really win in business is through your own associates, or employees, being externally focused on customers. Over the years I've gotten to the point where I really do believe that the only sustainable competitive advantage any company has is its people.

Two, I also start out with the assumption that's proved to be pretty accurate over time, that the people power available to a corporation, or organization of any kind, is very rarely tapped to its potential because of the lack of trust that we have, conscious or unconscious, in our people. So I start out with the assumption that I trust 100 percent of our people, and that each and every person knows how to do his or her job better than anybody else.

I also believe that because people really do, in a corporation, develop, sell, market, support, innovate, create - everything is done by people - one of the most important things we can do is create really world-class internal communication vehicles and systems. If you're not keeping all of your people current and constantly up-to-speed, and sharing with them the facts, we won't be allowing them to be accountable; to make a difference. I actually tell people that coaching responsibilities are management responsibilities. They should be spending at least 50 percent of their time in communication, and that includes sharing facts, as well as listening.

Have you had any formal communication training?

About the only formal training I've had was when I was debating during high school! I also had two days of learning how to handle adversarial press people. I think that most of my learning has been through experiences over my career.

How do you think your style of communication has contributed to the changes you've made in a variety of companies throughout your career?

I try to be totally open. I'm available, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I also put as a very, very high priority that I spend a significant amount of time with our people, all around the world, in small groups, as well as in large groups.

When you were with AT&T/GIS, was that a considerably larger firm than you're with now?

The answer is yes. To give you a little bit of perspective, when I was chairman and CEO at Square D, we had 25,000 people. When I was CEO of Global Business Communications Systems, we had 32,000, and we had 58,000 at AT&T/GIS. At Legent we have 2,700 associates worldwide.

What are the areas you find most challenging in working with increasingly diverse cultures, both globally and locally?

I think two things: One is that we complicate the global environment much more than we need to. For example, one of the things I always do when I join a company is to make sure that we set an agreed-upon vision and mission and set of values. It is incredible to me how often we get the question, "Will these values be accepted in Spain? or Europe or someplace else?" Because we are so insulated in the United States, we think the rest of the world is different. I have lived and managed outside of the U.S. for many years; people value values equally around the world. Secondly, we do not do nearly enough interchange; if we're running a global company, it's coincidental that in the case of Legent or AT&T or anybody else that our headquarters happen to be in the United States. We need a very diversified set of leaders. For example, the person whom we have just selected to run our North American sales organization at Legent is from Australia.

You created a major cultural shift at AT&T/GIS as well as other companies. Can you elaborate on some of the programs that you've instituted, and why you feel a vision and mission and values statement to be so vital?

One of the wonderful things about AT&T/GIS and Legent is that we are the kind of companies we are, with the number of associates that we have. At both of these companies, I have relied on many of the same communication programs. At Legent, I'm now able to communicate by E-mail more efficiently, and faster, around the world than any place I've ever been. It's a wonderful vehicle. We also have a once-every-two-months video that we produce. We do a Coach's Corner once every two weeks in addition to Coach's Rallies and Juice with Jerre.

What are "Coach's Corner," "Coach's Rallies" and "Juice with Jerre?"

Coach's Corner is an article, via E-mail, on a subject that allows a return on that subject from anybody. Coach's Rallies bring all of our associates together in a location for an organization update. Then I do what has become known over the years as Juice with Jerre. I try to do this at least once a week, which involves sitting down with 20-25 of our associates, in a location anyplace in the world, with a real cross-section of our associates, and just talking. I always try to get three things done there, one is Q&R (question and response), two, any rumor control, and then three, I try to get folks to think of what are we doing that we need to do more of, what are we doing that we need to do less of, and what aren't we doing that we should start doing.

I also send a tremendous number of notes and voicemail messages out to people thanking them for any number of things.

Do you have any way of measuring the effectiveness of your communication efforts?

Several ways. One, after each Juice with Jerre, we have an internal customer survey, which is a survey that our associates fill out about how we did during that session and asks for questions and comments. We do the same thing with the videos. Then, we have put in place what I call an "Associate Delight" benchmark, which is a series of questions that we do twice a year with our people around the world. I've done this to see how they feel we are doing on communication, as well as other key subjects: accountability tools, development and training, etc.

What are some of the philanthropic organizations that you give time to?

There have been dozens over the years. I try to focus our energies on education and, in most cases, at the university level. For example, recently I gave a speech to 1,100 university deans of business colleges around the world.

What are some of the toughest issues you've had to communicate?

I try to always communicate bad news openly and factually, as well as good news. I think that's one of the real issues and certainly requires a lot of leadership today. That's something I happen to have very strong feelings about. Some of the toughest things I've had to do involve announcing massive cutbacks in organizations. I try to do that in person, I try to do that live, and then I try to follow up with small-group sessions afterward. I've also had situations where, for example, back in Honeywell, we had some product safety issues that created national news, and I was our spokesperson since I was group vice president. Those are some of the tougher ones I've had to go through. Probably the toughest situation I've had is when I've had to tell groups of people I was leaving.

What would you say to other CEOs to help them improve their communication skills, to have mere effective working relationships with their associates and customers?

Listen, listen, listen. In fact, you don't even have to be a good speaker. If you go out and spend your time listening, you'll learn more and make a bigger difference to your people, your customers and your company than anything else you can do.

What do you consider the most serious problem facing management today that you think communication can help solve?

Openness and trust.

What areas would you recommend students just coming out of school specialize in, or should they specialize at all?

I usually do one or two university graduation speeches a year; in fact I recently spoke at the University of Iowa, my alma mater. I always advise, "As quickly as you can, get a place where you can get experience working with teams of people, where you can get experience in learning to communicate." Learning to communicate starts with listening and then being crisp and thoughtful and sharing what I call open, caring communication. I hit that really hard because I worry that so many of our kids come out of school - and some of them aren't kids by the way (some of them are 29- and 30-year-old people) - with almost no help at the university level in being able to communicate or recognizing that people and relationship skills are critical. The other thing I say is to work really hard on conflict management. Learn how to handle conflict. We have an avoidance behavior, certainly in America, where we will go out and whisper in the hall about something we don't like. If we can get everybody sharing openly their thoughts on what they believe is right, and what they believe is an issue, and then recognizing that it's okay to disagree, we'd make tremendous progress. I try to get people coming out of college to think about that.

Tell me something about the business of Legent.

We are the number-two systems management product and service company in the world. We are one of the top 10 ISVs - independent software vendors - we're a company a little more than six years old with some 2,700 associates, [U.S.] $525 million dollars in revenue, if you look at the last four quarters, of revenue. About 45 percent of that comes from outside of the U.S. It's a company that's been growing very quickly, that's recognized, fortunately, by our customers as being the most responsive customer-focused company in our industry, and we will do much better than that in the future. And one that I believe does a great job of applying technology to provide solutions for our customers. We're also a company that, because of our youth, all of our people who come to us have experience from someplace else, which makes us a rather fun and unique place.

How many people do you have in the corporate communication department?

We are growing so quickly it's hard to keep track. Right now we have nine.

When we look at the bottom line, and I'm talking about the profit/loss, financial bottom line, how important do you think good communication is?

Over the long haul, that's more important than anything else we can do. To really maximize the resources of the company, people have to know what's going on. We'll start at Legent, as an example, soon, with scoreboards letting folks know exactly how we're doing from our revenue growth standpoint, our profit growth standpoint, our customer delight standpoint, so our people know what's happening. It's critical.

Do you have any other advice or suggestions that you could offer our readers?

The only additional comment I would make is I try to create an environment where we have a single class of people, a world-class group of folks. We are all equally important. I work on an objectives, measures and rewards system, and work very hard to get those of us who have coaching responsibilities to make sure that we are adequately trained and adequately rewarded for communicating with our associates. That's critical to the ultimate success of any organization.

Gloria Gordon is editor, Communication World.