- July 2, 2009
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CareerBuilder Leadership Series: Spotlight on Jim Rose of Mosaic Sales Solutions Corporation
This week, our spotlight is on Jim Rose, Chairman and CEO of Dallas-based Mosaic Sales Solutions Corporation, a 10,000-employee, privately held field sales and marketing company. In the Q&A to follow, Jim shares his thoughts on the importance of collaboration over individual success, the power of candid feedback, the coveted “White Glove” award, the importance of your employment brand, and more.
As a leader, what has influenced your strong emphasis on people?
People are absolutely critical to our business. If you look back over my nearly 15-year executive career, I’ve always been in the service industry, where people are the product. In these types of businesses, we aren’t making widgets. Instead, the input of people drives 100 percent of our company’s output. I have regard and respect for high-quality people because they contribute the best knowledge and skill sets to produce the best return for our customers. Aside from professional experience, my executive education has driven this value deeper. I earned my MBA from the Kellogg School of Management where people are the foundation of that program. The emphasis is on collaboration, teamwork and getting a job done together over individual success.
How do you describe your personal leadership philosophy?
My view is to lead very much by example. I have never believed that as CEO I am all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-being. I see myself as just another member of the team. I have a set of responsibilities and skill sets that are good for what needs to be done, but others have abilities and skill sets that are right for what they need to accomplish. I see everyone as playing an integral role in our team and collaboration as the cornerstone to success. I strive to be an action-oriented leader and, because I believe in management by walking around, I am with people all the time. Whether it is spending time in the field, attending meetings, rewarding people, or sending encouraging emails for a job well done. I am very engaged with our people at all levels. And this extends to social activities. I play on our bowling and softball teams and believe this helps people at all levels know who I am and that I am relatable. I enjoy giving our people the ability to ask questions and they know their opinion matters. In return, these gestures have an incredibly powerful effect on the team’s confidence and their contributions.
What is one value you feel leaders can emphasize to develop their people?
Feedback. It is easy to give positive feedback, but at the same time, good leadership means delivering the not-so-good message. I believe in showing appreciation for the things a person does well, but also providing constructive direction for the things that may have not gone so well. I am candid about areas of growth, suggesting why they are in need of attention and what steps can be taken to improve. This whole element of constructive feedback is a difficult practice, one that some leaders can be better at. In the moment, people don’t always appreciate the candor, but in time they respect the openness and honesty because they know the feedback is given with sincerity.
Is there a memory that had an impact on your professional development and influences how you lead today?
I have tons of those memories! The key point you’re hitting on is to have good mentors at a young age. And I think that’s huge. In high school I was a fry cook at Kentucky Fried Chicken, and my manager was phenomenal and took his business very seriously. After cleaning, he would point out areas I missed and taught me at a very young age that doing a job right took less time than redoing the work a second or third time. Each year, he would strive to win KFC’s “White Glove” award, which is an assessment from people hired to mystery shop at the store. The evaluation was based on the friendliness of the staff, offering French fries and Cokes, and whether the food was prepared properly and served at the right temperature. We were one of two or three locations to win the “White Glove” award that year, a very high honor. The award was not worth millions of dollars, we received an inexpensive plaque, but those things left a big impression in my life about quality, service, focus and discipline.
How do you define the value of your people at Mosaic?
As a client-facing organization, our whole business is service. Our purpose is to help our customers, both retailers and brand owners, be more effective in retail. Our field staff works hard to ensure that products are on the shelves, promoted and priced right. And they know that whatever communication or engagement we have with customers must be delivered appropriately because it ultimately drives sales for retailers and brands – and for us.
With nearly 10,000 employees, the bulk of our people are in the field performing sales-driven activities. Aside from the field organization, typical back office functions like finance, HR and IT are very front and center. They communicate with customers, participate in customer meetings, and contribute to solutions for our customers. Having people in these roles who understand the business and think practically is a significant value. With everyone at Mosaic able to interact with customers and be fully customer-focused, we differentiate and drive business forward for our clients.
What is the impact to your business when you have a vacancy in a field position? Is that a client who is either underserved or not served at all?
If we are understaffed or have the wrong individuals in place, we miss opportunities to be effective in retail for our customers. If we’re not out in the field making visits, we cannot generate revenue. Such a significant part of our business is driven by field activity, so the goal is to always be fully staffed with competent, well-trained and focused people who do an incredible job. As I mentioned before, people are our product.
How does your executive team strategically consider talent to sustain and grow business?
Talent is so important that I have weekly staff meetings with my senior team, and people are part of that agenda. Who is coming in, what is the collective skill set, who are we moving, who are shifting, and so on and so forth. Certainly, human resources is, by definition, the functional area that strategies are driven to, but we never place them in a vacuum to figure it out. I would describe my approach as very holistic. The opinion of my executive team matters, and, even when we talk about benefits and adjusting certain things, the dialogue is at that table. It’s a collective nature of the business coming back to the fundamental point that, if we have the right people in place, things go well.
How has the company become more people-centric during your tenure?
I prefer to see our organization as the inverse of a typical organizational pyramid. Where the leader is generally at the top and everyone else is beneath, my pyramid is upside down, and I’m at the bottom. The front-line, customer-facing people are the ones at the top of my pyramid. My job is to enable the rest of the organization with resources, priority, focus, and anything necessary to serve our customers well. I continually instill that everything starts with the customer. I use our monthly Towne Hall meetings to not only announce birthdays or anniversaries, but also discuss the state of our business. I always end that meeting with “Take care of our customers,” because without our customers, none of us really have a purpose here.
Your employment brand is fun and energetic. What role did you play in the development?
Some of the elements of our employment brand were here when I came on board, and I’ve worked to crystallize it. And, of course, my team reinforces that in the marketplace. In my opinion, developing an employment brand is no different than creating a product brand in the marketplace. That brand is comprised of an image and what you say about it; but at the end of the day, the brand really lives in the people’s behavior. Our brand hinges on the values of honesty, integrity, and doing what’s right in retail, and consistently behaving that way is what solidifies it for us.
Do you have a story about how an employee made a big difference to a client relationship?
Yes, this actually happened last week with a very big tech company. The company spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for point-of-purchase materials, and our people realized very quickly that components of the display were improperly constructed. We saw three things happening: the client was spending money on a product that was not serving the intended purpose; retailers were growing upset after the displays they built began falling apart; and the customer’s experience was being degraded. Our people discovered this and, although it is not our responsibility, involved the key clients to notify the supplier and ultimately fix the issue. The displays were replaced in a very short period of time, and we helped avoid unnecessary cost and embarrassment for all parties involved. In this example, our staff was not obligated to get involved in the issue, but that’s not the attitude of our people.
Do you have a story that encapsulates the culture at Mosaic?
The most recent involved a group in the field, and a person wasn’t doing their job right. A member of that team communicated that up through the management ranks so we could address the issue and educate the individual. It turned out the person was not a good fit for the role. Other stories that stand out in my mind are personal ones, for example, when a member of the team is having a health issue or a personal problem our people fill in. We have an individual right now who is diagnosed with cancer. The person still comes to work, but people been more than happy to fill the gaps and pick up additional work if necessary; and honored to do it. It all comes back to the people – we truly are a caring organization.
What role does HR play in your strategic business objectives?
In most other companies, human resources often focus on staffing functions, administering benefits, etc.; but they are that and so much more at Mosaic. Since people are truly our product, we hire thousands of people a year. It is an ongoing process of hiring people, administering background and drug checks, training them, deploying them, and constant development thereafter. HR is very much an operational function in responding to new client interactions. For example, if we need to hire 500 people, it is typically across various geographies, at different rates, and targeting specific skills and capabilities. It’s all about the people for us and the operational aspects to that, which is why my HR leader and the team are key contributors in strategic business planning.
How do you retain the talent you attract?
How we train talent once they are in our organization is critical. Human resources runs what we call our organizational effectiveness group. It’s more than just a training department. The group is comprised of professions with advanced degrees in adult learning content and content development. The group drafts content and structures programs to engage people using a variety of means, from in-person, Web-based learning to Webinars. Some courses are highly customized by client and retailer to ensure the employee is best equipped to excel.
How do you measure employee satisfaction and engagement?
Like most companies do, we conduct an employee satisfaction survey every six months. On a scale of one to five, we average between 4.4 and 4.6 at Mosaic. It is amazing. I’ve never worked for a company that consistently measures that high. People really enjoy working here, and I believe that is because we bring them on board with the right expectations, train and enable them with technology in the right way, and communicate openly and honestly with them. This approach pays immeasurable dividends.
Do you have any additional advice on how you lead your people or give the best return to your shareholders?
Yes, I think the first advice for all executive leaders is that we are responsible for generational, intellectual capital. The way my legacy will be measured after I am gone is by whether the business is here and better than it is now. So it is my responsibility as a leader to see that we have the right kind of young, thought leaders shepherded in, trained right, and developed to be high contributors.
The second advice I give to everyone is around the importance of being relevant and differentiated. In a world where you no longer work in an assembly line for 40 years and retire, it is ever important to be agile, current, and constantly bringing a unique and relevant perspective to whatever you do.
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- Categories: CareerBuilder Leadership Series, Employee Attraction, Employee Engagement, Employee Retention, Employer Advice, Leadership Development
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