1187

BUSINESS NEWS JACOBS NAMED IN FORBES JUST 100 LIST Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. was named in the inaugural Forbes Just 100, a list of America’s best corporate citizens. Jacobs was ranked as one of the most just companies in the Capital Goods category. The list ranks large publicly-traded companies against the expectations of American employees on several drivers of justness, including pay and benefits, worker treatment, leadership and ethics, environmental impact, and others. “At Jacobs we are committed to keeping our company strong and our people engaged; we work every day to improve and build on these

values,” said Jacobs Chairman and CEO Steve Demetriou. “We’re very proud to receive recognition from Forbes as one of America’s best corporate citizens and we will strive to continue to make Jacobs a great place to work.” According to Forbes , this is the first time America’s top companies have been ranked according to the most important issues facing American employees. The list was compiled through a survey of approximately 50,000 Americans over the course of 18 months using focus groups, interviews, polling, and analysis of attitudes and perceptions. To complete the survey research, Forbes

collaborated with JUST Capital, an independent nonprofit organization based in New York City, and NORC, an independent research organization at the University of Chicago. JUST Capital provides continual data, information and rankings on how large corporations stack up against the American employee’s definition of just business behaviors. The complete list of the just companies can be found at forbes.com/just100 and was featured in Forbes Magazine ’s December 20, 2016 issue.

JULIE BENEZET , from page 3

other words, new initiatives push people outside of their comfort zone. That is where many next gen leaders stall out. “Developing next gen leaders calls upon the current leaders to promote the risk- taking that comes with finding new ideas and to support them while they work through the discomfort of making them happen.” How can a firm support its next gen leaders to take the risks that come with new ideas and behaviors, while recognizing they will enter the zone of discomfort? Here are some important starting points: ❚ ❚ Make it a priority for next gen leaders to generate strategic ideas that will move the organization forward. ❚ ❚ Help them identify personal motivators to give them the drive to push through the discomfort of trying new ideas and behaviors. ❚ ❚ Recognize that defensive behaviors are normal and appear in many forms, including micromanagement, personalizing, and conflict avoidance. ❚ ❚ Make it a strength to admit defensive behaviors and to deal with them openly. ❚ ❚ Work with them on behavioral approaches to manage their discomfort while testing new ideas. ❚ ❚ Celebrate every gawky effort toward creating the future. Developing next gen leaders calls upon the current leaders to promote the risk-taking that comes with finding new ideas and to support them while they work through the discomfort of making them happen. That is how the future gets built. JULIE BENEZET spent 25 years in law and business, and for the past 15 years has coached executives from virtually every industry. She is the author of the recent book, The Journey of Not Knowing: How 21st Century Leaders Can Chart a Course Where There Is None . She can be reached at julie@businessgrowthco.com

Leadership simply defined is about discovering strategic ideas that lift the organization to a better place and bringing others along to make them happen. It takes you away from the well-worn routines of business life into corridors not seen before, unknown places that hold endless promise, ambiguity, and trepidation. In short, to succeed as a leader you must pursue ideas whose outcome is unknown. That can be scary, and as a leader you need to be OK with that. That is the leadership mindset. For most mortals, the pursuit of scariness sounds, well, silly or ill advised. Who in their right mind would want to move in the direction of discomfort? Answer: someone who dares to dream and believes that the bumpy road to get there is worth taking. How does this apply to A/E firm leadership? Think of the possibilities for growth that need attention to build a future. Some of them are: ❚ ❚ What work will our clients value enough to pay higher fees? ❚ ❚ How do we teach our professionals to listen actively to clients not only to deliver better work, but also to discover broader opportunities to serve them? ❚ ❚ How do we build a culture that attracts the best talent and motivates them to stay and do generative work, without us having the ability to pay them more money than our competi- tion? “For most mortals, the pursuit of scariness sounds, well, silly or ill advised. Who in their right mind would want to move in the direction of discomfort?” Finding strategic ideas to address these issues requires testing them. It also involves adopting new behaviors for their implementation. Next gen leaders often find themselves in the awkward place of motivating team members to experiment with new initiatives with no guarantee of success, holding difficult conversations when others react cynically to anything new, and giving full throated praise when teams achieve success, of any size. In

THE ZWEIG LETTER February 13, 2017, ISSUE 1187

Made with FlippingBook Annual report