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folks good morning good afternoon good evening wherever you are great pleasure to have you all with us today this is
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the warden schools virtual Leadership Conference our theories with knowledge of warden of leaders talking about
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issues facing large organizations businesses government etc and particularly in the context of the
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challenging events we're seeing around the world and today it's great pleasure
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to have with us Lori Reichert Lori is the CEO chairman of the board president of Celanese company a global chemical
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company operating through headquarters in Dallas and Lori it's a great pleasure
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to have you with us today welcome thank you great to be here so Lori wanted to talk first just a little bit about your
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own career everybody on these calls listening is interested of course in their own careers as well and I think
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yours has had some particularly interesting aspects to it I was telling Lori before we started that we had done
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a study a few years ago looking at the top executives in the largest US corporations and about 20 years or so
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ago there was not a single woman in any of the top ten positions in any of the oil gas or chemical companies in the
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United States it was an industry that seemed particularly resistant or at least late coming to having women in
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these top positions and your career has been in that industry he didn't come in
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laterally he started out in it and worked your way up in it and I wonder if you just had any thoughts or folks
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though we're listening about what that journey was like for you and anything
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you could share with them about you which experience was I'm sure it was interesting to get to the top there yeah
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it certainly was in your in your right it has not been an industry oil and gas 'add that really attracted a lot of
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women or did a very good job retaining or promoting women so I came in as a chemical engineer I was really an
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engineer that's all I wanted to do was engineering and you know join joined Exxon in Baton
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Rouge in in 1984 you know as an entry level engineer and in many ways you know like I was you know 21 years old blonde
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from the Midwest in the south I was not a good fit I was the only woman hired at
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that facility this year that year and I could tell you I mean I heard everything
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you would imagine you would hear at that point in time I mean you know you shouldn't be here what you're doing a
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man's job why aren't you my babies I mean it was you know is that everything
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you would expect to hear and you know fortunately I grew up with three older brothers and so there was really
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probably nothing you could say or do to me that would terribly insult me at that
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point in time and I think that was a really gift actually because you know and I didn't really on took it took the
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attitude that was you know I can't control what you think or say but I will control how I respond so I ignored a lot
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of it and I just kept working because I loved the work I loved engineering work I loved the complexity of it I liked the
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operating environment and luckily I work for Exxon and Exxon is a company that really values contribution over anything
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and if you worked and got good results and you know you know it's knowledgebase
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it's getting things done pretty much you would have new opportunities open up for
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you and and I really benefited from that kind of meritocracy system where it was
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based more on that than it was based on relationships or anything else and so you know I developed through Exxon I
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have a lot of interesting experiences along the way but in credits of the company I was given a lot of
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opportunities and a lot of chance to grow and develop not just my engineering skills but then very early on becoming a
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supervisor developing leadership skills commercial skills and other skills you know ultimately you know running a very
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large refinery in Texas running a chemical plant Louisiana brain a joint venture living in Hong Kong running a
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global organization around public relations government relations so I had a lot of great opportunities
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you know a few other things I learned you know yeah you're gonna run up again
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as a woman in that industry I mean you stood out that could be a good thing if you did things well but it
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was obviously a curse you know you didn't have some of the room to make fakes other did and so you know more
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pressure I think related with that but on the other hand again the company I was in it was a meritocracy and that
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that was a big a big help I think and that's in some ways I think it's the
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advantage of some of the technical fields for women to go into where there's not a really strong power
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structure it's more about knowledge and ability to get things done versus who
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you know at least in that company you know the other thing I learned coming along because I had two children along
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the way is a lot of the things that I thought initially were big problems like how do you dress and you know never
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bring up your kids at work I mean I had some very funny experiences that's it
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you know what actually those things don't matter at least when you're working with men engineers they're not
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really comprehending any of those things so as long as you do a good job and you
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can talk their technical language you know it was actually a reasonably level playing field I think it don't be wrong
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it was it was hard it was you felt isolated and you know but you but even along the way I had some it was before
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the days of really mentors and sponsors I never had one of those but I had some really good supervisors who were all men
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but who gave me good advice and guidance I had some really bad supervisors but that was also helpful because that gave
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me a good example of what I didn't want to be like as a leader and I had some
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great opportunities but quite frankly at 25 years I really wanted to I was in government relations and public affairs
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I really wanted to go back to running a business I wanted to run a P&L that it
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didn't look like that opportunity was going to be available for me for some time most women in my level were being
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moved into kind of corporate functions and support roles I didn't want to do
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that so I left Exxon I went to Hess for a year and a half it was a great experience it taught me what the meaning
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of cash is which is something you often don't get at a big company like Exxon
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but ultimately it was too small and I ended up going to shell and how to doing the job in shell I always wanted to do
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an exon which is running you know running a business at that time Europe and Africa so living in Europe and
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Africa that was a big transition I often think you know shell chose me for the job because I was a American female from
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Exxon in Europe and Africa so I guess that way if I felt it would be easy to fire me because I certainly kind of had
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everything against me going to the role but really enjoyed the job loved running
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that team and after three and a half years was asked to move on and kind of run the global role for shell which I
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did then for five years before I retired which I then failed that because six months later I went back to work I'm
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taking the CEO role at Celanese yeah well that's a falling up by retiring up
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issue of one of the things I wanted to ask you about is the Royal Dutch Shell Exxon story these are two companies that
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are famous for operating in very different ways very different cultures and they also don't like each other very
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much and going from one to the other must have been a fascinating experience how are you welcomed or I'm sort of
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initiated in Royal Dutch Shell when they knew you really we're an Exxon person in
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terms of your training and expertise yeah I mean there really are very different companies and you know Exxon
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is very data-driven very focused I mean you know it also has evolved over time but during the period I was there it
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wasn't really about people liking you it was really about getting things done and
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so you had some characters that you know work really all that likeable but we're
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you know but we're successful in getting things done and so it was a very you
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know in some ways it was it was a tough culture but you actually knew we're used
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to it I mean it was very straightforward and and you know shale is is much more about relationships you know do people
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like you did you get along with everyone more so than even getting things done and again their culture also continues
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to evolve but you know and I would almost put it down to as much the difference between kind of an American
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culture which is about you know get it done success what you know and a European culture which is more about
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social values and you know a cohesive society and even in Holland we call it the polder culture you know which is
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everybody puts their finger in the dike to save the city so it's all about doing
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things collectively so it was very different I mean when I went into shells put you joining in Europe yeah I think
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initially people who were going to be working for me we're really you know afraid I was kind of the devil coming in
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because I mean these are all the things right they really didn't want and and
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but again in some ways I was fortunate because I was going in into a manufacturing organization and so I had
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the opportunity when people realize oK you've actually you actually know a lot
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about refineries and chemical plants and you can talk the technical talk and and
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you've done it all from coming up all the levels and you can talk to operators
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as well as mechanics and as well as the senior people you know at least four people working for me in my organization
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having that technical credibility goes a long way in establishing your credentials and then people start to
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learn your style and okay you're here to help us get better and get better results and you know you have to be more
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careful in the relationship side and build those relationships which Indian wasn't as big of a deal in Exxon and you
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know in my early days you know that you just had to take a very thoughtful approach it really it really helped
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actually that when I was in Exxon I lived and worked in Hong Kong for nearly four years because that was a really
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good experience for me and learning how to how to work in a different culture and you know how to respect you know in
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in Asia if you're very direct people will always follow the guidance of the leader they'll never express their
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opinion you had to learn to keep your own opinion to yourself to really draw people out and Europe you know every
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country in Europe had its own nuance in Africa a different nuance and so being able to take that experience I had in
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in my global jobs from excellent Estelle really helped to learn to you know and it was a skill I had to learn as I went
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through my career you know listen more try to understand other people's point
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of views still focus on results and getting things done but with that opening myself up more to kind of that
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relational side and that communication side I just ask you on that advice that you would have for people when you're
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moving into a new country or a different company you're trying to figure out the
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rules and things any advice that you have but you could offer people on how to do that
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got it fairly often yeah I mean this will go against I got a lot a lot of the leadership books that always talk about
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oh you're first hundred days you need to have a plan you mean to make all these
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changes I actually would tell you your first hundred days especially if you're
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moving into a new country a new company or a completely different culture is you
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actually need to spend that first hundred days getting to know people getting to know the company talking to
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people talk to customers talk to suppliers bid in that time actually keeping your mouth shut and and hearing
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what everybody else has to stay and really understanding the entirety of the landscape not just the technical work
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but the social situation the community situation and the reputational situation all of that it just becomes so important
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the more senior you get and the more time you learn kind of immersing yourself and learning from others I
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think for the first hundred days that's how I would suggest doing it because
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otherwise you really can make some big misstep early on that you will spend the next five years trying to recover from
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yeah that's great that sounds exactly right we wanted to ask you a little about your experience in the pandemic
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here because you your company has operations around the world and you've kind of seen Dina coming I guess to the
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US and starting out in China could you tell us a little bit about what the company faced and you faced as a CEO
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when we started to see this I guess you probably saw it before most US business people right because you saw it in China
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yeah well and you know to be fair I had a little bit of experience all right when I was living in Hong Kong which I
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referenced earlier was actually during the SARS epidemic so it felt a little bit deja boo' I mean I remember during
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Czar's and working through that living in Hong Kong you know with my family managing the situation there thinking
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well this this is a once in a lifetime experience it's been interesting but I
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hope to never repeat it so I've gotten to repeat it and in this hope it's been
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different because ko bid was much more global than SARS it's been much longer
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duration as a company we did start dealing with it back in January when I first emerged I mean my facilities in
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China are mostly centered around shanghai zoo shanghai zoo Han so you know we did you know we did start taking
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action then and then we saw it moved to Europe a lot of my office of my my two biggest centers in Europe are Italy so
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again one of the districts really heavily impacted and then Germany which was later more impacted and then of
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course then we move to the US and so we've really been dealing with this all
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year round we've been able to run all of our manufacturing facilities we've kept
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we could we're able to keep all of them up we had no cases of COBIT actually we
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had no cases of COBIT for any of our employees in Asia we've only had ten cases total in Europe
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and the US and we'd been able to you know through better hygiene better social distancing all of that interrupts
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being able to keep our operations up and running you know as needed for demand we
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did we did go to work from home at all of our offices you know consistent with government
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guidelines and w-h-o and CDC guidelines we went from work from home I have a fantastic team around the globe they
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have all been extremely productive working from home we've been able to do closes we've kept contact with customers
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you know but it's been different we've all had to learn we've really had to
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increase communications you know we all like to think we're good communicators
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but I think this is something that's really changed and their role as the CEO
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over the years I mean if I go back to when I started I really knew who the CEO was I mean you
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might have gotten a form letter once a year from the CEO but they never even showed up at site I mean during this
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period of code bed you know I send a note out to my organization twice a week and we sure as a we have blogs and we
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have ways to connect the community and we have videos that we post new videos every week some you know business leader
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talking about new business or things that are happening just ways to really try to keep people connected and engage
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and even working from home you know saying you know we're all still here the
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business is still running we're financially secure but also a lot reminding people we have mental health
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services available everywhere in the world reach out if you're having trouble
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or if your family members are having trouble and you know because we also feel responsible for the well-being of
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our employees so telling them take care of yourself not just physically but you know but mentally so it's it's been a
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real change we've all had to learn as we go we've had to stay really connected as
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a leadership team and each of them with with their teens but I think the organization has responded really well
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and now the question is okay how much of this do we keep up going forward how long can we keep it up going forward we
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are starting to get people now back to work people are happy to be getting back to the office quite frankly and starting
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to get some of that social interaction again but even that we're having to be
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really careful in social distancing and people wearing masks and when they're in
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common spaces in the office and you know like I think all businesses we're just
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learning as we go right now and one last question on this because I know we got we got people chomping here to ask you
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some questions but but the executive ranks it sounds like you are kind of on and off you and other leaders are not
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there at the same time to sort of prevent the spread of the virus yeah yeah so really you know we've a lot of
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our leaders are continuing to work from home although we have a schedule now or kind of everybody back through you know
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through middle to in July depending on where in the world they are my CFO and I for the same reason we don't travel on
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the same airplane where we're alternating weeks currently to make sure if there were
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to be an emergency COBIT it will at our location in Dallas that we both wouldn't
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get it at the same time we're probably only a few more weeks of doing this and
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then you know I think we've seen the case rate decline sufficiently and we've
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seen this society open up enough that we'll we'll go back to both being in the
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office but yeah but these are all kind of unusual things and keeping our board informed I mean a lot more time being
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spent keeping the board informed and and rightly so you know they're making money
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to make sure not just that we're taking care of the business but that we're also
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taking care of the employees and the social environment our community that's
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great I'm going to turn it over to Stephen now my colleague who's got the questions
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queued up for so Stephen welcome thank you thanks Peter Lorre thanks so much we do have a lot of great questions we'll
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never get them all but I'll hit you with a few of the are the most relevant ones
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for our discussion about the pandemic which which changes positive changes in your corporate culture that have sort of
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arisen from this crisis do you think will most likely carry over beyond it you talked about great communication
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emphasis on mental health which changes you think are really going to be sort of
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an emphasis going forward permanently I didn't what actually one of the really
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good changes that has happened here is this has made us a better global company if I could just you know our be our
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headquarters is in Dallas and although we have people around the world I would say we were a little Dallas centric so
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if you think about it when we even though I have leaders at our other parts of the world we know we have the big
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group of leaders together in Dallas and then other people calling in and quite frankly they probably never had an equal
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voice at the table now that we've gone to everybody having to call in we start
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to hear more from our leaders in Asia and our leaders in Europe and they're able to get their voice better in the
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room and we start to realize you know what we probably more being as inclusive with our leaders who weren't sitting
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physically with us and that really changes up how we think about our global model and how if we really wanted you
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know we don't want to be a US company that operates globally we want to be global company but that means we need to
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rethink how we communicate how we make sure we bring everybody in and that we're not being to us centric in our in
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our viewpoints so I think that's a really positive experience that we've
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had and I think our leaders in other parts of the world have commented positively about how much actually more
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inclusive they think it feels now that we've all been working from home and kind of on a more level playing field so
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I think that's a really positive learning I think we've also learned we you know we have a lot of customer
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interaction and supplier interaction and we've maintained all that now through
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video and phone by technical folks are actually have you know over you know FaceTime and other apps you know
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providing technical services with people who have molding issues or if different
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issues using our polymers and we've been able to do a lot more remotely than we
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ever would have thought beforehand and so I think it tells us actually we can probably have better customer service
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and better customer relations if we do more virtually not that we're going to
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completely get rid of seeing our customers but maybe we see them less often face to face but a lot more often
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virtually I think it will change change that dynamic as well and then I think I don't like everyone we've just found as
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we've worked from home you know I there's a few things we've quit doing
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that we never need to start doing again we found opportunities to streamline be more efficient and frankly we found a
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lot of opportunities to automate and start using more digital technologies that is really sped up our our plan to
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go digital but this has sped it up a lot because we've been forced to in many
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aspects right if you had known a year ago that this pandemic was coming what would you have done differently no I
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don't know I would do any different anything different I mean like as business leaders you know look I've
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lived in manufacturing and so we always have something happening right whether it's a hurricane or a typhoon or
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snowstorm or an electrical outage I mean you know one thing I think as leaders we
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need to realize is the we'll always be something happening we can't anticipate and what we need to
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build is an organization that is resilient and robust and that you know takes on the challenges and realizes hey
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look if we're going to get a 90% right and that's good as long as we communicate and we keep talking to each
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other and learning from each other we're going to get through it I think actually
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doing that building that organization and having that inclusiveness as an organization gets you through anything
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because I don't know what the Knicks I I don't know what the next thing is going
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to be right right he knows right but we have time for just one more question so the question is how has your own
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leadership style changed as a result of the pandemic I think my own leadership style so again I grew up in a very
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results-oriented company and so I tend to be very results oriented you know I always thought I was a good communicator
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but when you go into this kind of situation where you have to do it remotely you realize you can be a lot
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better communicator and you can do a whole lot more and there is no amount of communication that people think is too
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much communication people want to hear from the leadership and not just corporate speak they want that personal
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experience they want the video they want the virtual town halls they want the letters they want to see pictures they
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want their leaders to be real people and I think this is you know this is a change from you know what I started
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three five years ago where the CEO felt like this big important person who must live in a castle somewhere you know now
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people they know where real people they want us to be real people they want to see that side of us they know it's okay
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that we're not always right it's okay that we occasionally stutter on a call
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it's it's all fine and people you know this generation and all of us actually
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we respond better to real people and but that means a lot more communication a lot more times that talking listening
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communicating through airiest forms and and realizing that everybody but some people love online other people need
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push emails some people want video some people want written everybody needs a different form and the
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only way to really get to all of your folks is to use every possible form available and you know I think again I
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thought I was a good communicator I wasn't doing nearly enough before this and so that will be a permanent change
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you know maybe it won't be twice a week but it will be more often more intentional communication than I would
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have done prior to this crisis oh thanks very much Laurie thank you I think it's
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back to me here to to wrap up a little bit you know Laurie one of the things that listening to you certainly struck
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me as if we had turned back the clock and this was 20 years ago interviewing your predecessor in this job I don't
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think we would have heard nearly as much about the importance of listening and communicating that was just not such a
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big deal and it is a big deal now it's a really important change and I think
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those were great points so please folks if you could virtually help me thank Laurie for being with us today well I'll
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do a virtual Thank You Laurie great pleasure to have you with us Laurie right quick again is the chairman and
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CEO of the Celanese Corporation and has been operating globally for a while and the company and also herself across your
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really interesting career let me just say just a little bit about what's happening next next Thursday we have
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another speaker in our series and next Thursday with this is my land land plant who will be with us at the same time
00:25:45
10:30 to 11:00 o'clock when is the CEO of the amway corporation and we look forward to having you all with this then
00:25:53
this presentation will be podcast and available on our knowledge of Wharton site so if you want to pass it on to
00:25:59
your colleagues you can see it all then so on behalf of the knowledge of Wharton
00:26:03
crew and our work Leadership Conference thank you all very much for being with it okay and we hope to see you next week
00:26:16
you