Blue Sky Thinking

Let’s be honest: it’s been one hell of a year for Wall Street. The last 12-18 months have been tough for all industries, but the financial sector has been hit spectacularly hard. Despite this, Goldman Sachs reported record sales and profits last year meaning that, while many financial institutions are begging for handouts, Goldman finds itself splattered all over Fortune’s rankings. Currently, Goldman is 3rd on the 25 Most Desirable MBA Employers list, 9th in the 100 Best Companies to Work For list and 10th on the 20 Most Admired Companies list . In spite of a continued deluge of market uncertainty, Goldman is making headlines for all the right reasons.

We continue to face a time where everyone is tightening their belts, the sub-prime crisis and the credit crunch don’t seem to be getting any easier and marketplaces across the globe are feeling the squeeze; this isn’t news, but hard fact. Which begs the question, just what is Goldman doing so right?

“There are always challenges that present themselves,” says Edith Cooper, Global Head of Human Capital Management at Goldman Sachs. “That’s regardless of the market circumstances. Our job in HCM is to make sure that we have the right people in the right seats, and I think that’s particularly true in challenging markets.” Further to this Cooper believes that Goldman continues to be a very interesting place to work: “Why? Because we value all of things that create an environment where you look to your left and you look to your right, and you say, ‘Wow, that person’s really talented.’”

Cooper certainly knows a thing or two about talented people. Joining the firm in 1996, she was named managing director in 1998; and by 2000 she was a partner. It is fair to say that her rise at Goldman has been pretty stratospheric and not one Cooper herself could have predicted. “I built my career on understanding market opportunities,” she says. “For me it's always been about how we align our resources with our clients and that's been a theme that I've really come back to in all of my different roles.” Brought in to the firm to help lead the energy client business, Cooper was then working in London as co-head of the firm's entire commodities business in Europe and Asia. Today, her role sees her back in New York, having responsibility for relationships with many of the firm's most important clients. Over the years she has taken on many positions that have really stretched her professionally and she believes it is important to do this from a professional advancement perspective. “I think it's really terrific to go into an organization and work with, or develop, a strong team and look back and say, ‘This is really great, I don't need to be in the team anymore because we've done a great job of bringing these people in.’”

A global focus

Certainly, as Goldman continues to expand its footprint and become a global business, Cooper is able to draw on her past experiences. “My transition into my current role is really just a combination of the building blocks of my career,” she says. “I've always been very involved in focusing on our people as our greatest resource, which is what all senior leaders here do, and I've also been very involved in people initiatives too.” Whether that's through leadership at a variety of levels, or recruiting or mentoring, Cooper says she is thrilled to have all these components as part of her global responsibilities in Human Capital Management. In parallel with this, the firm operates a number of programs that really highlight the commitment it has towards the communities it operates in. “We've recently launched 10,000 Women, which is the most recent of initiatives we have taken on to expand our impact,” explains Cooper. The scheme, which was launched in March of this year, is Goldman Sachs’ global effort to provide 10,000 underserved women in developing countries and key markets with a business and entrepreneurial education. “It will leave a lasting legacy as it strengthens the quality of business education around the world,” says Cooper. Goldman’s people are completely behind these initiatives also, seeing them as another way to get involved and to make an impact. As she points out, “It's one thing to launch the initiative, but it's unbelievably exciting to see how many people at the firm want to be involved from a mentoring perspective or from a brainstorming perspective.”

Other initiatives at Goldman see every employee with an opportunity to take one day off and work in one of the many organizations that Goldman has partnered with around the world. “It allows our people to make an impact outside our business system,” says Cooper. “It's everything from painting schools, cleaning parks, educational services, hospitals; it's really phenomenal. And it gives people a real sense of the fact that we care. That's the theme. Goldman Sachs really does care.”

There are some rather impressive numbers with regard to these schemes as well. Goldman’s Community Teamworks program is now in its twelfth year . When it started out there were only around 150 to 200 organizations involved, today, the number is closer to 700 . Add to this the fact that out of Goldman’s 31,000 global employees, over 25,000 participated last year . The figures speak for themselves. “It’s a really good insight into how much our people want to be involved,” says Cooper.

The experience of working with an organization for one day often leads people to continue to volunteer on a regular basis, and there are many examples of this . Cooper herself admits to personally following up with a number of the organizations that she has been involved with, simply because of the great work they do. “I want to be able to leverage my experiences at the firm and professionally be helpful to these organizations.” Cooper notes that the initiatives are meant as an introduction for Goldman’s people enabling them to gain some experience of the voluntary organizations that are out there . Getting them involved through work often sparks their interest and leads them to follow up in their own time. “If you look at the number of organizations who have come back to us and said, ‘Last year you worked with us on this. Here are three or four more ideas. Can you help us with these things?’ Well, it really is a tribute to the commitment that our people bring to these one-day assignments and what the organizations get out of them.”

Cooper also tells us about a global initiative that is giving some of Goldman Sachs’ top performers a unique opportunity to serve the public and develop their leadership skills in entirely new areas. “It underscores the firm’s commitment to leadership and really gives people the opportunity and the platform to be catalysts for change in their community,” says Cooper. “It is developing leadership that's going to be valuable to that individual's career and their life.” The Public Service Program, which was launched in 2004 will this year see Cooper and her team select another group of MD's and VP's for a unique experience. “We’re aligning the Public Service Program with some of the other, broader corporate engagement initiatives,” says Cooper. “I think all of these things are just a reflection of how important it is for Goldman Sachs to have an impact beyond the positive impact on our shareholders.”

Creative culture

“It really comes down to what makes Goldman Sachs the firm that it is,” says Cooper when asked how creativity plays a part in t he way the organization works. And ultimately, creativity is big business at Goldman Sachs. “If you look at how the markets have evolved, you know there is no one-size-fits-all for anything that we do anymore. Our ability to work with our clients, and for our internal areas to work with each other in coming up with creative solutions, really allows Goldman to be at the forefront of new market opportunities.”

As well as this, and despite the growth that Goldman has seen on a personnel level, Cooper still believes that it feels like a firm where people are aware of each other’s business. “It’s about how people think and behave individually,” she explains. “And it gets a further boost by the attention that the senior people here at Goldman pay to being proactive and coming up with new and different ideas.” Creativity has to play a part when it comes to hiring and retaining top talent as well. “We want to make sure that we're hiring people that are not all the same from an academic perspective ,” she continues. “We want to make sure that our people don't all come from the same background, that they don't have similar experiences.” If everyone's the same, the firm’s ability to accomplish global diversity is very limited.

“When we're interviewing on campus,” Cooper tells us, “we really do think about who's done well academically and who has the skills and experiences that we think are going to be valuable here. It's not just for somebody who has worked on Wall Street for three summers, although that's terrific, but it's someone who has shown entrepreneurialism by working with a family business, or shown intellectual interest by pursuing a line of research, or those that have focused on an academic route. Those are the things that we think about when we talk about our war for talent.”

Cooper tells us that there is a standard baseline at Goldman Sachs that everyone shares . This is the sense of not only wanting to be excellent and contribute to what the team's goals are, but also to make an impact themselves. “The thing that drives our business principles and the thing that really differentiates us is the people of the firm,” says Cooper. Hearing a HR executive talk like this isn’t exactly a surprise: it is Human Resources, after all. But as Cooper points out, culture at Goldman Sachs is Goldman Sachs. “When you look at where our most senior people spend their time, it's with the people and this really terrific, close connectivity between all of our functions.”

In defining its culture, Goldman Sachs has a great concentration on communication. “We all communicate a great deal. It defines the culture, the prioritization of our clients' interests – putting our clients' interests as the number one priority.” Cooper explains that diversity is a really big part of the culture of the firm as well. “We want to make sure that as our global footprint grows geographically, over time, our workforce will be a reflection of the global markets we serve.” Other aspects of Goldman’s culture, such as leadership and training, are equally important. “Leadership helps us prepare our employees to adapt to circumstances that they will need as the firm continues to evolve,” says Cooper.

Speaking with Cooper there are several things that become clear. Goldman Sachs is who they are because of the people that they have at their firm and the culture that those people support. There is currently a lot of excitement around Human Capital Management. This is especially true at Goldman Sachs. “As we continue to focus on HCM,” Cooper says, “we will be able to support the firm's effort for continuing growth around the world. These markets are dynamic. They offer many interesting, exciting things, and they also present us with real challenges, and it's our responsibility to really position our people appropriately to make the difference.” Cooper is, in particular, referencing more challenging environments, like today’s market. “We just can't take our eye off of that goal,” she says. “It would be very easy in great markets to take people for granted; it would be very easy in challenging markets to do the same thing, and we've seen over the years that a consistent approach to managing our people is a key component of our success.” She adds, “Goldman Sachs is its culture, and without that, we wouldn't continue to be one of the premier financial institutions in the world.”

There’s no ‘I’ in Teamwork – a key value to Goldman’s ethics

I think that there are a number of ways that highlight why teamwork is just so important to Goldman. First and foremost, the thing that has remained strongest after our partnership and going public many years ago is that we all feel that it's our ability to communicate and work with each other that will really differentiate us with our clients, and that's really the key.

The question becomes, how do we make a real impact to the extent that our clients can speak to one area of the firm, and it's that person's instinct – not just job, but instinct, to figure out how they can be helpful in other ways. That really does make a big difference, and if we thought it was important historically, we certainly believe it's even more important now, given the fact that we really are operating on a global basis.

The reality is that all of our people are really very busy and we try to make sure that we have a standard of performance that people really do expect to deliver in their roles. And in the way that we reward people and communicate, we always highlight, ‘What have you done for your franchise and what have you done for the firm's overall effort in areas that touch yours?’ That's why teamwork is particularly important to us.

• The importance of being diverse
  
  Goldman Sachs is moving forward, they are looking to the future. While running the day-to-day business means they must focus on their present, the people at Goldman also realize that their clients rely on them to provide the freshest thinking on business trends and shifts to capital and build relationships within the marketplace. These challenges may make many corporations falter, but at Goldman, through leveraging the diversity of their people these challenges are met and overcome.
   
  Diversity is critical to Goldman Sachs’ global footprint. The company’s global client base reflects a multitude of cultures. According to the company CEO Lloyd C Blankfein, the diversity of Goldman’s people is not ‘just an enhancement of our problem-solving or our creativity or our ability to get on with our clients. It is a source of business opportunity.’ Ultimately, it is noted that Goldman’s ‘commitment to diversity is therefore unconditional; it is what we must be.’
   
  This unconditional element is highlighted further by the Affinity Networks at Goldman Sachs: The Asian Professionals Network serves as a bridge for the recruitment, retention, development and promotion of Asian professionals; The Firmwide Black Network aims to enhance professional development and advancement opportunities for Black employees and advises senior business managers regarding the firm's diversity strategy and issues of importance to the firm's Black community; The Firmwide Hispanic/Latin Network focuses on recruitment, retention, promotion, development and advocacy for the Goldman Sachs Hispanic/Latin community; The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Network advocates a work environment that respects, welcomes and supports lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender professionals; The Goldman Sachs Women’s Network enhances the Goldman Sachs experience for female professionals by implementing programs that foster greater interaction among peers as well as the broader community, while acting as a collective voice for raising women's issues to senior management. Just look at Edith Cooper.