help their own leaders drive change while keeping the best of their ... financial inclusion, where we're work- ing with ... lars Michael mentioned, we also think.
VOLUME 41 | ISSUE 1 | WINTER 2018
T H E P R O F E S S I O N A L J O U R N A L O F H R P E O P L E + S T R AT E G Y
Maximizing Potential
FEATURE
Getting the Right People in the Hi-Po Pool IN FIRST PERSON
The Future of C-Suite Potential in the Age of Robotics
Executive Roundtable
Enhancing employee experience to maximize potential in the workplace Companies across many industries are making substantial pivots in their business models. Pace and level of disruption pose new challenges for identifying future potential. Regardless of the degree or severity of the pivots envisioned, success requires talent — talent that can thrive in an often-ambiguous environment. How do companies help their own leaders drive change while keeping the best of their own legacy? What is required of leaders today to make the workplace the engine of any successful strategy? Executive Roundtable Editor David Reimer and colleague Sonja Meighan recently sat down with the CHRO of Mastercard, Michael Fraccaro, and three of his senior leaders to discuss their journey toward maximizing the potential of their talent at a critical inflection point for the company. 42
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Participants from Mastercard Michael Fraccaro Chief Human Resources Officer Edgar Aguilar Group Executive, Infrastructure and Operations Services
Susan Kunreuther Executive Vice President, Global Talent Rewards Sarah Gretczko Senior Vice President Organizational Development and Chief of Staff
People + Strategy: One of the core challenges in spotting and grooming future talent is that in the majority of industries, disruption is waxing while long-established business models are on the defensive. How is your business changing today, and where is your strategy taking you? Michael Fraccaro: Our business strategy is built on three foundational pillars — growing, diversifying and building our business. The ‘growing’ is about our core businesses in credit, debit, commercial and prepaid, which have been at the heart of our company from the beginning – and are still vital to our ability to generate revenue and engage customers. Beyond that, we’re diversifying into new areas like financial inclusion, where we’re working with governments and NGOs to provide un-banked and under-banked people around the world access to financial tools. We also diversify by enhancing our partnerships with digital
work with governments, especially in emerging markets, to ensure we’re showing up as an organization that has the thought leadership and capabilities to address the policy landscape and requirements in each market. At the same time, we’re constantly looking for opportunities to grow. Our acquisition of Vocalink is a perfect example of how focused we are about identifying and moving on the right opportunities to expand our capabilities, diversify our business and connect with new possibilities. P+S: You talk about yourself as a technology company. Three years ago, if someone was talking about Mastercard it is likely they would have referred to you as a consumer or financial transactions organization. Edgar: To us, it’s a matter of perspective. As a company, we have technology and innovation in our DNA, but we also have longevity as a business that
We are working through how to best integrate the capabilities we acquired into the rest of Mastercard to capitalize on the growth opportunity. players like Google and Apple. Finally, we want to build new businesses by exploring new ways to use information services, data analytics and insights to help merchants and other businesses make better decisions based on their own data. By focusing on these pillars, our intent is to future-proof the company and set ourselves up for success now and into the future. Edgar Aguilar: In addition to the pillars Michael mentioned, we also think in terms of three key journeys that are essential to our business – the customer journey, the consumer journey and the employee journey. Michael: We’re also learning and adapting as a company based on our
gives us important perspective. Back in 1982, when the internet was invented, there were only 1,000 connections. Ten years later that number had increased to one million connections. Today, there are somewhere between 8 billion and 10 billion internet connections in the world, giving us the ‘internet of things’ and tremendous change across industries. Mastercard is in a unique position to help drive smart, simple and safe payments regardless of the form factor being used to make those payments. Technology is a core enabler for us and always has been. That requires us to constantly bring new ideas to life and always think about how we can enhance the consumer experience. It also requires us to acquire forward-thinking talent
and companies to better serve our customers. That intersection of our mission, mindset and drive to innovate are the very essence of a technology company. Michael: That mindset Edgar mentioned is especially important in helping us adapt to the changing world around us. For example, we’ve seen and continue to see new players and some non-traditional players coming into the payment space. We could view their entry through two different lenses — either as a competitive threat or as an opportunity. Mastercard has chosen to view it as an opportunity. We’re constantly asking ourselves, how can we work together with other organizations around the world to capitalize on the respective skills and capabilities we can both bring to the table? P+S: How do you align the employees to this strategic positioning? Edgar: This is where the importance of our employee journey comes into play. We know that talent is key to our future success. We also know that hiring the right people is only part of that journey. We need to make sure that once they’ve accepted the offer, we’re doing all we can as a company to set them up for success. That requires us to not just make an investment in our people, but to also focus on making sure they’re able to fulfill their potential. Susan Kunreuther: One of the most important decisions we made was to take the essence of our marketing platform, Priceless, and bring it inhouse to our employees. The emphasis was identifying and distilling what it means to work at Mastercard and the truly once-in-a-lifetime experiences a person can have working at our company. As a result, ‘Priceless’ becomes the ultimate expression of the experience that we’re providing our employees and it’s the foundation for a lot of our thinking. Michael: Susan brings up a great
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point. The idea was to bring a connected sense of our well-known, external brand in-house to create an internal story for our employees around the world. Over the last five to seven years, Mastercard has acquired a number of companies and it became apparent that we needed to find a way to create a common identity across the world. We wanted to establish an identity and aspirational vision that employees could resonate with that’s grounded and, at the same time, connects with Priceless possibilities. Susan: Another component of our employee value proposition that we have connected to Priceless possibilities is the idea of “the whole you.” It’s about understanding and celebrating the employee as a whole — their life at work and their life outside of work. We’ve rolled out rich parental leave and flex work globally. We recognize that in today’s world, people work differently. Embracing that and provid-
Mastercard employee and learn how we can make the experience even stronger. A key component to this is making sure our approach is scalable so all employees around the world have the same experience. Edgar: An integral part of this is keeping the digital nature of our space at the forefront. Technology must remain our enabler. We’re determined to make our employees incredibly productive no matter where they are or what function they own. We’re doubling down on automation and system tools enhancements that can make the employee experience better. We’re constantly looking to incorporate best practices from companies we work with and those we acquire to enhance our employee experience. Michael: About six years ago we had only 5,000-6,000 employees. Today we’re an organization of 14,000 plus. What has remained consistent, and I believe our employees will point out,
Today’s environment is not conducive to certainty. We have to help leaders create some level of clarity for their teams around expectations and prioritization. ing opportunities for our employees to work when and where they want will optimize their work and their life. Sarah Gretczko: We recognized that we couldn’t separate the consumer brand from the employee brand. They’re two sides of the same coin. We’re leveraging this insight obtained from “the whole you” as we think about our employee experience and journey and what our role is as an organization in an environment that’s dynamic and in flux. Michael: We’ve just brought someone on board to help us with the digital experience and mapping the employee journey from initial recruiting through to early-stage career moves. The purpose is to better understand what the experience is like for a 44
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is how people-oriented our culture is. Employees often comment on the relationship and network focus of the organization. We want this theme to continue, so much so, that a principle of our branding we talk about a great deal is being a “human-centered technology company.” The digital nature of our business and the fact that technology is an enabler are meant to improve the employee experience. They’re absolutely not intended to take away from the intimacy of human relationships that we want to preserve. P+S: What do you see as the leadership implications of your strategy as similar to or different from Mastercard’s leadership legacy? Sarah: I think there are aspects of what it takes to be a great Mastercard
leader that still remain true from our origins as a company. That said, I do see us starting to pivot to match the volatility of the global environment. We’re zeroing in on how to help leaders think about things that may have been true in the past that are no longer applicable for the future. For example, we spend a lot of time in our leadership programs talking about the past being about solving problems and the future being about dilemmas and how to navigate them. The solutions are no longer clear-cut. The question becomes: How can we help leaders get comfortable knowing there is not always one right answer? Michael: As we’ve looked at this, three things become apparent. The first is the globalized workforce. The implication of this is learning how to lead teams that are not sitting in the same office. Virtual teams require a different set of skills to ensure employees still feel they have access to their leader as it relates to feedback and direction. Edgar: The globalized workforce Michael is talking about definitely impacts us. We’ve had to run quickly the past few years as we continued to make acquisitions. We’ve tried to shape our technology organization around technology hubs in Europe and Asia Pacific to keep up with the pace of the environment. Michael: The second development we see relates to the diversification of the talent we recruit. In the past, a high proportion of our recruiting efforts targeted financial institutions. Today, 45% of our hiring comes from non-traditional backgrounds, such as people with a consulting background, a data analytics background, or a consumer goods background. These diverse backgrounds allow us to look at our product design and development in a different way. From a leadership perspective, how do you get the best out of a diverse team of individuals who are globally distributed? Acting with a sense of urgency is critical, so how do our leaders get things to market quickly with the support of resources that are vastly spread out?
Sarah: And I would add that we must take into account the reality of the environment our leaders are operating in. Today’s environment is not conducive to certainty. We have to help leaders create some level of clarity for their teams around expectations and prioritization. We’re looking for leaders who have a mindset that enables them to deal with change. We need resilient leaders who bring people along and instill a sense of followership. Michael: Right, and that’s a natural tiein to the third element we see, relating to the speed of decision-making and the risk-appetite that comes along with that. How do leaders empower their teams to make decisions as fast as possible? Having the right level of governance and risk tolerance to enable them becomes key. We can’t have the teams and projects slowing down due to an overly centralized decision-making process. Edgar: Sixty-five percent of our resources are in the technology hubs I mentioned and they’re all guided by the same principles and best practices. They remain efficient because they’re given the autonomy to move at their own pace and they’re not held up by the inertia of hierarchy. This has been successful because of the tight alignment between the business partners, product development managers and the customers, and our tolerance for smart risk-taking. Michael: We‘ve also become more intentional about integrating our product and technology teams to ensure the consumer and customer experiences are built into the user requirements and specs. The next step for us is identifying other areas of the organization where we can create that same agility by bringing different teams together to create a better end result. Edgar: A great example of this is “The Fusion Center.” We’re integrating cyber-security experts with our communications and legal teams to create communications that address concerns faster. We’re leading the industry when it comes to bringing teams together and empowering them
About Mastercard Our strategy advances GROW
DIVERSIFY
BUILD
Core Business
Customers & Geographies
New Business
• Consumer Credit • Debit • Commercial • Prepaid • Physical-Digital Convergence
• Merchants • Businesses • Governments • Financial Inclusion • New Markets
• Advisors • Safety & Security • Loyalty & Rewards • Processing • Fast ACH
Enabled by Brand, Data, Technology and People Mastercard is a technology company in the global payments space. Every day, everywhere, we use our technology and expertise to make payments safe, simple and smart. Company Overview As of December 31, 2016: • 2.3 billion cards (Mastercard and Maestro-branded cards) • 11,300 employees, of which approximately 6,200 are employed outside of the United States • More than 210 countries and territories • 150 currencies • More than 56 billion transactions processed in 2016 • 160 million transactions per hour capacity • $10.8 billion – net revenue Now in its 20th year, Mastercard’s iconic Priceless campaign crosses borders and cultures (113 countries and 53 languages) to connect people to priceless possibilities.
to make quicker and more informed decisions. P+S: How are you assessing for leaders of the future? Susan: I see significant value in our legacy, as it’s a compilation of lessons learned. This is about taking all of the successes of our past and transitioning them to be more relevant to how the world is changing today. Sarah: For us, it is very much about getting back to where we started around the employee experience. To Susan’s point, we are trying to preserve the legacy around our culture and what our brand name means. We recognize that we’ll need different
talent and skill sets for the future. In fact, we have identified three types of talent we will need for the future. The first is people who are comfortable in the traditional manager role. The second is those who can be our change agents. The third is those individuals with critical technical expertise, such as cyber-security. What becomes important is determining how to best support these groups of people and place them in the appropriate roles for their strengths. Michael: We have a very deliberate approach to how we look at leadership and leadership potential. In addition to the regular assessment tools such as the nine-box of performance and potential, we spend a significant VOLUME 41 | ISSUE 1 | WINTER 2018
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amount of time with our board, the CEO and his direct reports discussing the depth of our talent. Sarah: We are constantly thinking about what people bring to the table and how we can develop them along different paths. Instead of thinking of a succession pipeline, which denotes that a person steps on another person to get to the top, we are thinking of it as a portfolio of talent on a team. On any sports team, you have people who complement each other. You don’t need three first basemen on a baseball team. We’re applying the same thinking to the diversity of talent we need and how we groom and assess our leaders. Michael: We developed our 2+2+2+5 model, which helps us create structured development plans for individuals. The first “2” represents our desire for leaders to have experience in a product organization and a sales organization because these are core to our business. The second “2” represents our desire for leaders to have two experiences in functional roles, such as finance and technology. The third “2” represents our desire for leaders to have experience in two different geographic locations to ensure they have a global perspective. The “5” considers other experiences that might help this individual grow, such as being part of an M&A team or running an underperforming portfolio. We want all of our leaders to have a vast range of experiences. P+S: Rather than grooming a specific type of leader, you’re deliberately developing well-rounded leaders who create an interesting candidate pool. Michael: Our focus gets sharper when we see people in critical roles and a clear succession path begins to form. We value our culture of grooming and developing leaders to ensure they’re not just focused on the outcome and end-result, but also emphasizing the “how” of delivering it. This is an important part of our leadership behavior reinforcement. At a broader level, we have a people manager effectiveness survey, which gives our employees the opportunity to provide annual feedback 46
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to their manager on 16 elements of people leadership skills. P+S: What does the organization require of HR that is new or different today? Edgar: First and foremost, we need to recognize the importance of Mastercard, not just from a brand perspective, but what it means for people. We provide an important service to 2.4 billion cardholders. If our services are not working properly, it has a direct impact on their experience with us. We have to take responsibility for that. As such, we need to continue to emphasize that we are evolving. Secondly, we are a true global company. We need to think about how we operate in 210 countries and territories. Thirdly, we need to adapt to be less policy-driven as an HR team and more aligned with best practices.
Michael: Edgar recently ran a program called “The Rising Stars” in India for the technology operations group. The program provides visibility to talent who are located in remote locations and identifies talent that has the potential for either a technical career or a general manager career. Those selected are given the opportunity to work on a project and present their findings to the leadership team. Edgar: This program is forcing us to go deeper and recognize the talent that makes magic happen every day for us. We identify the talent and then spend an entire day with them. While salary and compensation are important, spending a day with emerging talent is truly priceless. It makes an impactful difference in how they feel about the company and the way they look at their careers.
Susan: In my opinion, it even goes beyond best practices. We need to be looking through a different lens. It is all about improving the employee experience – adapting policies or saying they don’t work anymore. We are constantly focusing on what makes the most sense for Mastercard and our employees, even if it is not necessarily a best practice in other companies. We’re honing in on what we’re trying to create for Mastercard employees.
Michael: The program has been so successful that we are trying to scale it globally. We want to get deeper and more connected to our talent around the world.
Michael: We also need to be focused on scale. Thinking about solutions that can scale is important in terms of driving the principles for our HR organization. Everything we drive needs to connect back to the overall strategy. How do we continually iterate and adapt? Often people get a sense that the HR function is governance and policy driven. What we want to be known for is being thoughtful risk-takers and meeting the needs of various employees and segments that we have in the business.
Sarah: I would add it is very important that our leaders remain accessible. We do a good job of this. Junior leaders need to know their leaders are present for them.
Edgar: At the core of this is our desire to evaluate situations through a lens of being fair. We need to make people understand that they are signing up for an adventure. Every day will have its own twist and wrinkle, but that is what makes Mastercard unique.
P+S: What is the business leaders’ own role in identifying and developing the next-generation of talent? Susan: We need senior leaders to stay relevant, open-minded and flexible.
Edgar: We also need our leaders to practice active listening. The decisions that we make need to be based on what is fair and good for the vast majority, not just based on historical trends or relationships. Michael: Some of the best learning happens on the job. We need our leaders to make the work interesting. We need them to link the work back to the strategy and purpose of Mastercard. Our leaders can play a key role in driving the experience we want for our employees.
