What's stopping you?

Some barriers at work are good, but most are not. In any large organisation we are sure to come across them, real or perceived - hindering our ability to be successful. Unconscious bias, unhealthy competition, cultural differences, competing priorities, different communication styles, historical baggage and a raft of other challenges can all conspire in different ways to restrict collaboration and a sense of common purpose and achievement.

Being alive to these barriers, working with them or breaking them down are what help teams excel. So how do you do this in a complex, diverse organisation where the need for people to routinely come together to innovate and deliver is paramount?

We think our people know best, so we went out to ask them. Our recent global employee opinion survey shows that while we have made positive strides, there is always more we can do. So, looking into the data, we identified some of our people who have mastered the art of breaking down barriers across RELX. These nine colleagues have over 120 years’ of RELX service behind them so I think we can consider their counsel wise.

This is the definitive guide based on what they said.

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that we start here. After all, the meaning of communication is the response it elicits, not the intent of the sender. So, there are always opportunities for miscommunication. As someone who has worked in this field for over 30 years it seems to me that effective communication may very well be the solution to every business challenge. I’m also reminded at this point of a quote by the Irish Playwright George Bernard Shaw: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

‘It may very well be a cliché, but I’ll say it anyway. It means listening as much as talking,’ said Vijay Raghavan, EVP and Chief Technology Officer in Risk in the US who has been with RELX just shy of 20 years. ‘My global team is around 3,000 people, in multiple time zones so it’s not like we can easily gather. The biggest barrier is that many people simply don’t know me in the true sense. But one way in which I keep dialogue open and ensure we are all aligned on those things that matter most, is to share a monthly briefing note where I talk about what’s on my mind. I encourage feedback and conversations start on the back of it. I’ve been doing this for a decade and while it may sound simplistic, it works.’

‘If I can’t break down a barrier between me and my team members, then how can I expect them to break down barriers between each other? My briefing is a way for people to get to know me, at least to some extent, even if it’s an imperfect way - and for them to understand a little bit about how I think, my goals and for them to feel free to challenge me. Each of my direct reports does similar things with their own teams. We see it as a collective responsibility to communicate effectively.’

Chien-Ee Yeh, President for APAC region for RX in Singapore agrees. ‘In my region we have offices in seven countries. We also need to work very closely with colleagues in Europe and the US since we have many global customers and visitors coming to our events. Understanding that people react differently to the same questions is important. With the pandemic, more communications are conducted online or behind masks. That makes it even more difficult as one cannot pick up the body language or nuances like one would do at an in-person meeting. These subtleties matter a great deal to me, so I pay special attention. In addition, I find it is very important to create space for those who are more reserved to voice their opinion and share their views. I also believe we need to be better listeners. Over time, it seems like listening skills can worsen as one becomes more senior. Sometimes we forget that it is the collective wisdom of all the people in the team that makes us different and successful. I believe everyone in the office deserves to be heard.’

For Anita Chandraprakash, EVP of global operations for STM in the Netherlands there’s one stand-out area in terms of breaking down barriers to success.

‘Collaboration rather than competition between colleagues and teams is all-important. This means overcoming barriers that get in the way of executing on our customers’ priorities. In my experience these blockages arise when people stop working together as equal partners.’

‘It’s important to keep removing these barriers and to keep people aligned in the same direction. When we do this, we drive innovation by making better use of each other’s different skills and by increasing organisational agility, and as a healthy by-product we simplify the operating model leading to better engagement for our people. By doing this we have increased employee engagement in my area by 24 percentage points in the last four years.’

‘Cross-functional and cross-geographical collaboration where people feel included is critical for success in our business. But this is also one of the biggest challenges faced by our people on an almost daily basis. Solutions that our customers need are, in many instances, an outcome of this collaboration as this brings complementary expertise together irrespective of hierarchies, geographies or cultures.’

Vijay Raghavan shares this sentiment. ‘Barriers are often ones that result from a colleague’s lack of understanding of how their own goals fit into the broader organisational goals. Part of understanding goals is to question them. Because if you don’t, you may end up working on the wrong thing and inadvertently create barriers because you’re artificially competing against other team members.’

‘I’m incredibly fortunate to have a fantastic bunch of direct reports who instinctively gravitate towards looking out for each other, as opposed to competing against one another. I can’t begin to tell you how important that is when it comes to breaking down barriers, because that sets the tone for my organisation and it’s infectious. We have arguments and disagreements like any group but, for the most part, my team approaches these arguments in the spirit of solving the problem at hand rather than trying to one-up each other. In fact, a good way to assess whether a team has barriers between its members is to see how they do when things go wrong. It’s easy to have camaraderie when things are going well, but when things go wrong it’s much harder.’

Nick Large is head of audit & risk management at RELX in the UK and shares the sentiment on collaboration. ‘Our mission is to enable better performance through risk insights, control improvements and governance assurance. We do this through an established set of processes and carry out over 70 internal audits a year across a wide range of risk areas such as cyber, technology, resilience, finance and Environment, Social & Governance (ESG). This remit puts us in a unique position to work across all areas of RELX, so we need a good understanding of each areas’ objectives, strategies, risks and how they are managed. Given RELX’s federated structure we must work collaboratively across the entire business and all geographies. I have a diverse team with a range of language skills and experiences. It’s this breadth of experience that means we are great collaborators and it’s this approach that enables us to remove barriers to success.’

For Alex Smyth, general counsel and head of HR for Exhibitions based in the UK, the pandemic has brought our people’s resilience into sharp focus. ‘RX has been through a period of significant change, the speed and urgency of which was driven by the global pandemic. We have had to very quickly change how we work and how we deliver our products to customers. At its most obvious, we have had to find alternatives to face-to-face shows in periods where regulations meant we were not able to run them. But we have also had to change the way we deliver in-person events where they have been allowed. A lot of these changes were untested and we had no precedent to follow. So, we have all been feeling our way through and while it has been challenging, we have never given up. We have had to pull together across the business with each of us out of our comfort zone. The lines delineating responsibilities have never been so blurred and so, in many instances these old barriers to success have been washed away. For example, we have had lawyers on site at shows working side by side with operational teams in figuring out how we complete vaccination screening at events where this has been required. You would never have seen this kind of close collaboration pre-pandemic. It seems to me that the last couple of years has afforded us the opportunity to break down barriers in ways we never thought possible before and as we emerge from the pandemic, this thinking has made us even more agile for the future.’

Bruce Cottingim is VP for global operations in Legal, based in the US and is a 33-year veteran of RELX. He agrees. ‘To break down barriers means pushing hard for change that improves the business. Too often people will stop once they face an obstacle or receive push-back. Driving change is hard, but we all have a responsibility to make our company constantly better. Standing still is not an option. We must challenge ourselves and the business to consider new ways of interacting with our customers as well as considering new ways to leverage technology if we are going to remain successful in the markets we serve. I have learnt from my mistakes over the years and if there is one thing that stands out for me it is that past history of change resistance can be a formidable block to progress. It’s important not to let these ghosts haunt you. You should never give up.’

Rutger van der Wall is SVP of product management for Risk in the US and has been with us over 20 years. For Rutger, unnecessary complexity creates the worst kind of barrier. ‘There is a wide range of activities that we all do on a day-to-day basis to make things better for our customers. We solve problems for them which in many instances save time, reduce cost, speed up decisions and lead to better outcomes. In essence we take the friction out of the process for our customers and we break down barriers for them. So, we must always be mindful not to create unnecessary complexity either for our customers, or our people. I am sure many of us have been confronted at some stage with an awkward situation that basically left our customer trying to do business with us and we are inadvertently making it hard for them to succeed. Within our group we often say: “it’s not your fault, but it is your problem to solve”. We encourage people to take this as a message of empowerment to do what’s right for the customer.’

Mark Lwin is managing director of REPH in the Philippines, and he couldn’t agree more. ‘As a shared services organisation for RELX, the very essence of REPH’s value proposition lies in breaking down barriers. We have over 4,500 colleagues in the Philippines working with all the RELX businesses around the world. But the power of our team is greater than the sum of its parts and that comes from creating an exciting and rewarding place to work for all of us, where sharing is just part of what we do. Large organisations often evolve to become complex bureaucracies where people don’t have real connections with real people. RELX has largely avoided this trap and is working hard to create a culture where people feel involved, consulted and empowered. This is where breaking down barriers is really about culture. Do we actively promote and reinforce a culture where reaching out across the business is encouraged and is seen as wholly natural? I think we do, and I’m proud to be part of an organisation with a culture that strong.’

Vijay Raghavan also agrees on this point. ‘The term barrier comes with some baggage, so I want to clarify that not all barriers are inherently bad. In technology, for example, there is this concept called separation of responsibilities designed to ensure that a developer can’t write a piece of bad code and unilaterally push that code into production without any checks and balances. Those are good barriers. The bad barriers are often the ones that people tend to create themselves, sometimes by over complicating things - what one might call not seeing the forest for the trees. Sometimes I think these barriers are more perceived than real - either way they can cause frustration and impact performance.’

Finally in this section we go back to Alex Smyth for another example of eliminating complexity. ‘For the first time in its history, RX now has a single, unified legal team. We all interact regularly with one another, share knowledge and ideas. We have simplified the way we work. This has allowed us to deliver a much higher quality service to the business, benefiting from the combined experience of lawyers across the world. Before this, we likely would have had the legal teams in each geography independently grappling with how to address the many and varied issues which the pandemic has thrown up for our business. We still have to deal with these issues but knowing that others are looking at the same issues has been incredibly powerful.’

For Rutger van der Wall, accepting our differences is the first step to removing those things that get in the way of success. ‘At RELX we have so many intelligent and bright people. We have more ideas than capacity to execute. Our characters, opinions, backgrounds, values, education, religion, ethnicity and language skills make us a highly diverse and talented workforce. But all these traits can drive unintended consequences. Some people communicate directly, others prefer high-context and are offended by too much directness. Some prefer decisions to be made by leaders, others prefer a more consensus-based approach. Some build trust based on relationships, while others on sticking to commitments. Some prefer an egalitarian leadership style while others are more hierarchical. Some prefer flexibility, others prefer to follow rules. To my mind they are all valid, just different. But instead of focusing on where people are different and solve for that, it is so much easier and healthier to identify what unites us as a team of diverse people and create energy around those things. That energy is needed for teams to move forward to deliver for each other, our customers and ultimately for our shareholders.’

It’s a theme also picked out by Chien-Ee Yeh. ‘All colleagues must be able to speak openly and freely about what they feel and what they think. As managers of people, we have a responsibility to create a space that people feel is psychologically safe in which to share what is on their mind and we must, always, be sensitive and open to cultural differences which I think is sometimes easy to underestimate.’

Jan bij de Weg is global general counsel for STM in the Netherlands and has been with RELX for over 24 years. ‘I have found that it’s the human things that make the biggest difference in removing the roadblocks at work. In my team we work hard to celebrate the successes of others, value everyone’s contribution, ensure all voices are heard and demonstrate respect and show concern for others. We talk a lot to help create certainty and clarity, which means that information is not a currency to trade but transparency is. We create choice and personal control where possible, allow people to take responsibility for suggesting solutions to problems, but also hold them accountable for that responsibility. We share credit, opportunities and workload equitably. We focus on shared goals instead of individual goals. We aim to show empathy, loyalty, concern, respect and trust - finding shared experiences and similarities, demonstrating that we are in this together and accept that things sometimes go wrong. I try to be a mentor instead of a manager, provide constructive feedback instead of corrective feedback and confront the issues, not the person.’