The US Division œżÉ«”Œșœof Wacker Chemie says tech chiefs should think beyond run, grow, and transform, and consider how they are uniquely positioned to promote social values across the business and beyond.
CIOs hear constantly that their position has evolved, that itâs now a business position. But whenever this is pointed out, the emphasis tends to fall on the tactical responsibilities of such a positionâthe âplan, build, and runâ of it all. But just as important now are holistic matters of peopleâdiversity, inclusivity, employee welfare, and so on, and perhaps few technical leaders have concerned themselves with these as enthusiastically as Raj Polanki, the US Division œżÉ«”Œșœof Wacker, the seven-billion-dollar German chemical manufacturer, and the co-lead of its DEI council.
Wacker Chemie
âThe way I see it,â he says, âthe œżÉ«”Œșœrole obviously needs to make sure the business can run while contributing to growth and transformation. All those are well and good, but the current, evolving œżÉ«”Œșœrole, itâs not just about going from technology to business, but from business to people. As a technology executive, I have a unique position to contribute to the human aspects of it allâŠDEI aspects.â And accordingly, since coming to Wacker in 2018, Polanki has worked both to embody Wackerâs DEI principles and, alongside his fellow council members, to inject such principles into the organizationâs ethos.
Now, he hopes to amplify his impact by sharing some of what heâs learned with other technical officers who might themselves hope to make a bigger and longer-lasting impact. âWhat leaders get wrong about DEI is that it concerns much more than what can be observed by the naked eye. We are all shaped by our experiences, and the better we understand each othersâ, the more we can achieve.â Indeed, Polanki suggests that any leader can reap better outcomes across all their responsibilities by embracing this philosophy. Here he offers five steps for doing so.
Step 1: look inward.
Be the change you wish to see. Itâs a well-known adage and clearly present in Polankiâs first bit of advice: âStart with self-awareness. Look inward.â
Embedded in this philosophy are two propositions. The first is that you do in fact want to change something. Therefore, a good place to start might be to understand why you do. While itâs fine to cite common talking points about the benefits of DEI, youâll find yourself more motivated (and therefore more able) to employ such principles if they mean something to you personally. Polanki, for example, found inspiration in his background, in which technology and business overlapped significantly. âIâve always thought in terms of how I could bring these things together to create real value for people, and value can mean many things. I recognized that Wackerâs DEI council would present a great opportunity to provide an important value pulling on both business and technology.â
The second proposition is that you must embody the change, and as Polanki suggests, you can do this in few ways more effective than to consider your own unconscious biases. He implores leaders to constantly ask themselves: âAm I jumping too soon to a conclusion? Am I assuming certain things?â And if you think you donât have any biases, congratulations: You just discovered your first. Itâs called objectivity illusionâthe belief that we are more objective and less biased than othersâand it underscores the gravity of Polankiâs advice. Everyone has biases, and they shape our societies. They lead us to elect taller CEOs, hire certain candidates, and sink money into failing projects. According to one survey, unconscious biases may cost the workplace $64 billion annually. Having biases doesnât make you a bad person, but making yourself aware of them, as Polanki suggests, can free you to make better decisions and thereby become a better leader.
Step 2: start small.
Next, start embodying your principles among the circles that you immediately influenceâlike the teams you oversee. When Polanki came to Wacker, he inherited a team whose previous manager had served the company for thirty years. Although that leader had left behind a solid team, Polanki wanted to suffuse it with his own ideals, two in particular.
âOne was self-respect and respect within the team,â he recalls. âYes, I had a list of things they could do better, but I started by respecting [the team]. I used not just my words, but showed it in my actions. I recognized them for the things they didnât even know they were doing well, and with time, they would even come to me and say, âYou donât seem to get upset easily. You really maintain your composure.ââ Soon, Polankiâs reports began imposing the same warmth, patience, and appreciation on their own teams, and the respect collectively expressed across the department grew steadily. It also nurtured Polankiâs second ideal, âcustomer oriented.â
âBecause I came from an outside consulting and value-driven mindset,â explains Polanki, I put the customer in the front. I would tell my team, âIf the business comes to us with a problem, weâre not trying to fix the problem alone; weâre trying to save their day to be more productive and efficient. That means we directly affect the business. We are not just a back office. We are sitting with the business. We are partnering with them to support them, and we should take pride in what we do.â He recalls evoking a sentiment he had once heard from Starbucks: âI asked them, if ninety-nine out a hundred coffees are right but the hundredth is wrong, is that acceptable? I explained that this was part of taking pride in yourself.â
And pride they took. Together, these two idealsârespect and customer orientedâenergized the team and propelled what became a virtuous feedback loop. It improved morale as the teams began to celebrate small wins and to believe in themselves as more than order-takers. And the changes showed. Polanki recalls that the business partners would remark, âYour team is really solving issues, and theyâre very approachable.â And in one of the teamâs internal customer-satisfaction surveys, they scored 97% positive feedbackâone of their highest scores ever.
Step 3: become a catalyst for your principles
After youâve proven that you can instill DEI principles among your own teams, you can become a catalyst for wider adoption through mechanisms like your companyâs DEI council. Or, if your company has no such council, you can start it.
âThe first thing youâll want to do, if it hasnât been done already, is specify the councilâs DEI principles. And donât squander this opportunityâ, warns Polanki. Too many councils adopt principles that are either generic or otherwise similar to another companyâs. Contemplate what DEI really means to your organization and connect it to the goals and mission of the enterprise. At Wacker, Polanki and his fellow council members conducted extensive internal research to ensure they did just that, and in the end, even became an advisory council to the executive team.
Next, you have to spread the wordâand show your employees that you stand behind it. âAfter we had defined our principles,â recalls Polanki, âwe published them on posters, which were put up across Wackerâs offices. They had our signatures on them, and the executivesâ, so people knew we meant it.â Polanki and his council also took advantage of town halls and modified several of the companyâs programsâincluding the leadership and management development programs and new-hire orientationâsuch that they incorporated DEI principles. âWe even hired an external person to help us connect the content to the programs.â They also dedicated a SharePoint site and several communication channels to the cause, and instituted internal advocacy groups, including one for LGBTQ+ members and one for veterans. Polanki says more will follow.
Step 4: amplify your principles with data.
Once youâve spread your principles, and others have started acting on them, you can further amplify their effects, says Polanki, by âstarting with the data.â It makes sense. ESG-related efforts are driven heavily by metrics, and so few tools can propel you toward your DEI goals as forcibly as data can. And as a technology leader, few have the power that you do to mobilize that data and to do so not only for your department but for others.
Polanki recommends that, above all, to employ your data more meaningfully, you make it more visible, which you can do even by simply starting conversations with other leaders, since many of them will hesitate to ask whatâs possible. He recalls one such conversation with Wackerâs very own ESG team: âWe asked them, what can we do for you? Whatâs on your mind? And it was only then that they said, âWell, actually, weâre having a lot of containers shipped to California and weâre concerned about the waste.â I explained that we could give them some visibility by pulling data about those containersâwhat materials they contain, whether theyâre recyclable, and so on. They didnât know we could do that, and it helped them act much more effectively.â
The other tool is longstanding data solutions, like dashboards and accompanying analysis, both of which Polankiâs team constructed for Wackerâs Environmental Health and Safety group. As a result, the group could now get, in mere hours, data that once took them at least days to collect. And it came with trends, to boot. âWe could now ask questions like, okay, where is it happening? Is it a seasonal thing? Why does this one area have so much variation?â
Step 5: look outward.
Polanki plans to resign as the co-lead of Wackerâs DEI council later this year. He feels that he and his fellow members have built a sturdy foundation from which the next leaders can further expand the councilâs influence. âIf you think in terms of crawl-walk-run,â he says, âweâre finally walking. The next council can take it further. They can set up new resource groups, engender more inclusivity, and start to have a more direct impact on the business.â
Yet Polankiâs far from finished improving the welfare of the people around him. A graduate of University of Michiganâs Ross School of Business, Polanki has been approached by that community to become more involved with certain university activities, like becoming a resident council member for the universityâs Flint division technology and innovation center. When asked by the university, Polanki asked Wacker whether they saw any conflict. They didnât, and encouraged him to participate, knowing that his doing so would advance their own mission to âmake the world a better place with our solutions.â
This outward growth demonstrates Polankiâs last bit of advice for looking beyond your traditional responsibilities as a technology leader. âBe thinking, can I help my communities where we operate? Can I partner with the local community? With universities? How can we make a bigger difference?â Leaders who ask these kinds of questions and embrace these responsibilities, he says, will find they create better results across the board, in part because they have wide-ranging intangible effects.
