How One Leader Built Relationships with 42,000 Employees

Those of us with a few decades in the corporate world under our belts have usually encountered at least one senior leader who made everyone sit up straight and speak more eloquently, just by the way they would enter a room.

This is an example of Statesmanship.* We recently explored the importance of statesmanship to Systems Leaders, and I wanted to examine another example. 

One Systems Leader who embodies an empathetic approach to stewardship and statesmanship is Jim Fish.

Jim Fish is the CEO of Houston-based Waste Management, North America’s leading provider of trash collection and recycling services. They have more than 20 million residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers. 

WM’s industry is the opposite of sexy or cool, and it doesn't attract many graduates of leading business schools. But I’m impressed by the way Fish balances WM’s business imperatives with its non-financial purpose; his empathy for and humility with employees; and his resolve to preserve WM’s long-term success and reputation, looking ahead to a future when he will be long retired. He’s also exceptional at speaking out on nuanced issues without imposing his views on employees who may disagree. 

Since his promotion to the top job in 2016, he has transformed Waste Management by reconciling its financial goals with its mission to serve the public good, in large part via the aggressive adoption of advanced recycling and energy generation methods. Those created a win-win-win: improved profitability; more and higher-skilled jobs for employees, and the satisfaction of fighting climate change by “recovering valuable resources and creating clean, renewable energy.” The company now puts sustainability at the core of its public messaging. Its website proudly states: “We're constantly seeking to find the best ways to extract the most value from waste. It's what drives us every day, as individuals and as a company.”

This mission also helps WM improve employee engagement and reduce turnover. When interviewing Fish for my book he shared with me that “[a] lot depends on how valued you feel, how appreciated you are, how much of a contribution you can make to the mission, and whether you subscribe to that mission.”

Fish’s concern for getting employees enthusiastic about the mission dovetails with his empathy. While some leaders may still assume that employees care mostly about money, benefits, and working conditions, he quoted to me the wisdom of Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher. 

“Herb said something in his book that stuck with me. 'If your people feel valued and feel like they're making a difference, because you remind them that they’re making a difference, they will be happy in their roles and will want to stay at the company for the long-term. And if your employees are happy, your customers are going to feel that happiness. And if your customers are taken care of and feel happy, then your shareholders are also going to be happy.'”

How Jim Fish Built Relationships with 42,000 Employees

Fish has used two main tactics to express his empathy and build relationships with more than 42,000 employees. The first is extensive travel to WM’s far flung operational centers. 

“My father-in-law, who was a pipefitter with a 10th grade education, told me that great leaders go out to meet their people and really get to know them. That advice strongly influenced how I operate and why I travel to so many locations to meet frontline staff,” he explained to me.

His second key tactic is “Fish Food for Thought” — a regular email that he uses to share his views and values with everyone. 

The topics are often serious, but the language is always simple, straightforward, and modest. He positions himself as a real person who doesn’t have all the answers, not an omniscient authority figure. “I want people to understand that my priorities are my Christian faith, my family, and my job, in that order. When I say I'm a Christian, that doesn’t mean I’m trying to evangelize at work. But I want my teammates to know exactly who Jim Fish is. I believe everyone needs to set clear priorities for themselves. Yours don't have to be the same as mine, but you need clarity about yours.”

Whenever his emails touch on controversial issues, Fish is careful not to lapse into hectoring or lecturing. For instance, after the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting he wrote: 

“We all cope with tragedy in our own way. For me personally, it starts with anger as to why we can’t seem to stop these types of mass killings. I desperately wish I could stop them. At this time, the only thing I can do is stay firm in my faith. My belief is that we all deserve better, and while God doesn’t control all human events, there is a full reckoning coming for those evil doers who perpetrate such crimes. I encourage you to leverage our Employee Assistance Program and to support one another in coping with these recent tragedies and finding your own opportunities to influence change in your communities when you feel compelled.” 

Notably, the email doesn’t mention his own views on gun regulations.

Fish also threaded a needle in his 2021 email announcing the company’s decision not to require WM employees to get the COVID vaccine, at a time when emotions ran high, both pro and con, about vaccine mandates. He wrote in part: 

“WM will not require our team members to get the COVID-19 vaccine, unless required by a federal, state or provincial government mandate. We'll continue to encourage it and are currently exploring pilot vaccine incentive programs…. But at the end of the day, after doing your own research and talking to your own families, I believe that this truly is an individual decision, and you should always do what is best for you and your family. Like me, I'd encourage you to seek your physician’s advice.”

Fish shared with me how he reached that conclusion: “Several people on our board and my senior team both put a ton of pressure on me to mandate the vaccine. The way I saw it, if you haven't gotten the shot, you should seriously consider it. But it’s still your decision, and your employment will never, as long as I'm here, be dependent on your shot status. You will not lose your job over COVID.”

After his “Fish Food” about the vaccine went out, Fish said that it “upset some on our board and our senior team. But when I went out in the field and talked to frontline people, so many of them thanked me for letting them make their own decision.”

Fish knows that he walks a fine line between living his values and imposing them on the organization. He never wants anyone to think they’re being censored or “canceled” for their views. “You and I may have different opinions on something, but if you're at least willing to listen to my opinion, and I'm willing to listen to yours, maybe we’ll find some common ground. Or maybe we won’t, but we can agree to disagree. But we’re in a bad place if the new rule is, ‘Here's my view but I don't want to hear yours, and I'm going to prevent your point from coming out.’”

Fish encourages all leaders to show similar restraint on controversial issues, to focus on their responsibility as organizational stewards. He summarizes this principle with a pithy question that I’d recommend as a sign on every leader’s desk: “Whose brand is it anyway?” 

It may feel like your personal brand, but every company is its own distinct entity — even if it’s a startup that you founded. And that company may last well beyond one’s time as a leader in the organization.

*The words statesman and statesmanship are intended to describe people of any gender or sex, and are used solely for the purpose of simplicity and to avoid the awkwardness of writing “statesman or stateswoman” over and over.

About The Systems Leader:

A groundbreaking blueprint for mastering “cross-pressures” in a rapidly changing world, teaching leaders to execute and innovate, think locally and globally, and project ambition and statesmanship alike—from a Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer and consultant to some of the biggest and most innovative CEOs.

Actionable and powerful, The Systems Leader is a playbook for riding turbulent waves instead of drowning in them—and for taking readers from chaos to clarity.

About Robert:

Robert Siegel is a Lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a venture investor, and an operator.

At the Stanford Graduate School of Business he has taught nine different courses, authored over 115 business cases, and led research on companies including Google, Charles Schwab, Daimler, AB InBev, Box, Stripe, Target, AngelList, 23andMe, Majid Al Futtaim, Tableau, PayPal, Medium, Autodesk, Minted, Axel Springer and Michelin, amongst others.

Robert is a Venture Partner at Piva and a General Partner at XSeed Capital. He sits on the Board of Directors of Avochato and FindMine, and led investments in Zooz (acquired by PayU of Naspers), Hive, Lex Machina (acquired by LexisNexis of RELX Group ), CirroSecure (acquired by Palo Alto Networks), Nova Credit, The League (acquired by Match Group), Teapot (acquired by Stripe), Pixlee (acquired by Emplifi), and SIPX (acquired by ProQuest).

He is the author of The Systems Leader: Mastering the Cross-Pressures That Make or Break Today's Companies, and The Brains and Brawn Company: How Leading Organizations Blend the Best of Digital and Physical.

He is the co-inventor of four patents and served as lead researcher for Andy Grove’s best-selling book, Only the Paranoid Survive.

Robert holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Stanford University. He is married with three grown children.